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Irreversibility of transactions is not a feature I want. If someone wants to rob you of all your bitcoin, they can hold a gun to your head until you give it to

Irreversibility of transactions is not a feature I want. If someone wants to rob you of all your bitcoin, they can hold a gun to your head until you give it to them. A bank, on the other hand, has transaction limits. If I buy something online with a credit card and soon after discover it's fraudulent (which has happened to me on multiple occasions), I can reverse that too.

commoner 7y ago
That criticism also applies to cash.
- tempestn 7y ago
  True, although most people wouldn't hold nearly as much cash as is commonly held in bitcoin.
  - leni536 7y ago
    I guess wallets are called wallets for a reason.
mlyle 7y ago
Note that the property we're talking about isn't really irreversibility of individual transactions. We can come up with whatever policy about what can show up in a ledger, including "undo" transactions. But what we want is that once transactions are recorded to a ledger, that it's not possible to remove that record. This durability is a highly valuable property for financial transactions and other things where non-repudiation is desired. However, it's a possibly scary property, too (what if something copyrighted or illegal ends up in the forever-durable and public ledger?)
Lucadg 7y ago
You'd keep in yourself a small amount of Bitcoin. You'd keep at home a bigger amount. You'd keep in a safe place the rest. Exactly as with cash.
- junipertea 7y ago
  You put cash in a bank.
  - Lucadg 7y ago
    You can put your seed words in a bank safety deposit box.
    - davidgerard 7y ago
      Safety deposit boxes turn out not to be secure or guaranteed. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-22/don-t-put-your-valuables-in-the-bank https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-22/don-t-...
      - Lucadg 7y ago
        It depends on the country but I agree. Being programmable money I expect better solutions to come in the future. This is a recent and interesting one https://blog.trezor.io/shamir-backup-the-revolution-of-private-keys-backup-is-here-858687ed7fe7 https://blog.trezor.io/shamir-backup-the-revolution-of-priva...
        Fnoord 7y ago
        > Based on a cryptographic algorithm created by Adi Shamir, publicly known as Shamir’s Secret Sharing, Shamir Backup is a revolution in how you use, store, and protect the backup of your private keys. A "revolution". They just applied SSS. Hardly rocket science.

commoner 7y ago

That criticism also applies to cash.

tempestn 7y ago
True, although most people wouldn't hold nearly as much cash as is commonly held in bitcoin.
- leni536 7y ago
  I guess wallets are called wallets for a reason.

mlyle 7y ago

Note that the property we're talking about isn't really irreversibility of individual transactions. We can come up with whatever policy about what can show up in a ledger, including "undo" transactions. But what we want is that once transactions are recorded to a ledger, that it's not possible to remove that record. This durability is a highly valuable property for financial transactions and other things where non-repudiation is desired. However, it's a possibly scary property, too (what if something copyrighted or illegal ends up in the forever-durable and public ledger?)

Lucadg 7y ago

You'd keep in yourself a small amount of Bitcoin. You'd keep at home a bigger amount. You'd keep in a safe place the rest. Exactly as with cash.

junipertea 7y ago
You put cash in a bank.
- Lucadg 7y ago
  You can put your seed words in a bank safety deposit box.
  - davidgerard 7y ago
    Safety deposit boxes turn out not to be secure or guaranteed. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-22/don-t-put-your-valuables-in-the-bank https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-22/don-t-...
    - Lucadg 7y ago
      It depends on the country but I agree. Being programmable money I expect better solutions to come in the future. This is a recent and interesting one https://blog.trezor.io/shamir-backup-the-revolution-of-private-keys-backup-is-here-858687ed7fe7 https://blog.trezor.io/shamir-backup-the-revolution-of-priva...
      - Fnoord 7y ago
        > Based on a cryptographic algorithm created by Adi Shamir, publicly known as Shamir’s Secret Sharing, Shamir Backup is a revolution in how you use, store, and protect the backup of your private keys. A "revolution". They just applied SSS. Hardly rocket science.