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Hate to pile on with the same comment that appears in every "github.com is down" post on HN, but BTC/ETH/LTC are decentralized networks. Why would anyone carry

• thephyber 9y ago
  > Why would anyone carry balances in wallets outside their immediate, local control? To be able to exchange it to a non-crypto currency.
  • FabHK 9y ago
    That. And do it fast, and cheap. Sure, you can keep it in your own wallet, but then you have to wait half an hour and pay > 5$ extra for every round-trip into fiat.
• wayn3 9y ago
  because its convenient, and most people who are exposed to cryptocurrencies dont have the technical knowledge to do it on their own. im in the official ethereum gitter and every day at least one person comes in saying something along the lines of "hello i have just poured half my life savings into this, my money is gone but my eth is not in my wallet please help" - only for some semi-official support guy to tell them that if they screw up, their money is gone. then there are the people who make transactions in the tens of eth (thousands of dollars) to the wrong address, then begging on etherscan for the owner of that address to send their eth back. crypto is in such an infantile state that even most "software engineers" shouldnt get anywhere near it on their own.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• zzalpha 9y ago
  If wallet security didn't require levels of opsec that no regular human can manage or understand, you might have a point. But you can't blame a layman for preferring to trust an ostensibly secure service in lieu of screwing up security themselves, given how many stories are out there of people getting compromised and their Bitcoin stolen.