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Safety deposit boxes are quite cheap, around $20/year. It will probably become a norm to store most of your coins in cold storage in a bank. Physical security i
by bufferoverflow 9y ago
Safety deposit boxes are quite cheap, around $20/year. It will probably become a norm to store most of your coins in cold storage in a bank. Physical security is expensive, and banks are good at it.
- IntronExon 9y agoSo none of the convenience of a bank, but all of the centralization.
- aphextron 9y ago>Safety deposit boxes are quite cheap, around $20/year. It will probably become a norm to store most of your coins in cold storage in a bank. Physical security is expensive, and banks are good at it. Still doesn't change the fact that I can kidnap your family and hold them ransom until you go to your safety deposit box and get the bitcoin to send to me. The problem is with the non-reversible nature of the payment system, and the fact that it exists outside the realm of a justice system, not with physical security.
- DennisP 9y agoThey could do the same if you store physical gold in your safe deposit, but rich people vault gold without any problems.
- bb88 9y agoWell... they're rich. So likely they're going to have cash, investments, real estate, etc. It makes the loss of gold painful, but it's not the end of everything.
- 21 9y agoGold is much harder to move around, and when you'll try to convert it back into dollars you'll find out that nobody buys bars of gold without extensive origin paper trail.
- dragonwriter 9y agoBitcoin does not exist “outside the realm of a justice system”; it is as much subject to such systems as any other currency is. Justice systems, like the thieves in this article, operate ultimately by the application of the threat (and reality, as necessary) of physical violence to ensure compliance, and they deal with non-physical subject matter all the time.
- bufferoverflow 9y agoBut we're not talking about kidnapping. We're talking about someone breaking into your place, and hitting you with a wrench till you send your coins. In the case of a kidnapping, it doesn't matter how you store your money, even if it's regular dollars, you will get them from your account and you will send them anywhere.
- sneak 9y agoThis approach suffers from several different problems: 1) governments, banks, regulatory authorities can seize the contents of your deposit box at their discretion and often without due process 2) if the bank burns down, your funds are toast 3) not quickly accessible There are much, much better options for bitcoin security that don't involve depending on steel bank vaults to keep numbers safe/secret.
- _red 9y agoAES256 + 40-char passphrase is more secure than any physical structure ever built. Just encrypt your wallet and save on multiple USB sticks / S3 / Dropbox / etc.
- IntronExon 9y agoCounterpoint which has already been proven effective re cryptocurrency: https://www.xkcd.com/538/ https://www.xkcd.com/538/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/30/cryptocurrency-expert-kidnap-1-million-bitcoin/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/30/cryptocurrency-expert-ki...
- bufferoverflow 9y agoOk, so if I'm a bad guy, I will threaten you with violence, that will be enough for most people to send the coins. There are very few people in the world that can withstand actual torture, especially of the loved ones.