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If your bank gets hacked and your savings stolen, there are laws, policies, procedures, and insurance (like FDIC) that will guarantee you eventually get most, i

If your bank gets hacked and your savings stolen, there are laws, policies, procedures, and insurance (like FDIC) that will guarantee you eventually get most, if not all of your money back. If your bitcoin wallet gets hacked, you're basically SOL.

chucksta 6y ago
Policies and procedures for fraud are at the bank level afaik, and the purpose of FDIC is to protect against bank failure up to 250k USD ( https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111815/does-fdic-cover-identity-theft.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111815/does-fdic-co... )
- icedchai 6y ago
  Yes, you are right. FDIC does not cover this sort of thing.
WinstonSmith84 6y ago
If you think the current system is that good... think again. In Europe, the protection is capped to 100K Euros. And that's the EU, not a third world country .. :-) https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/banking-and-finance/financial-supervision-and-risk-management/managing-risks-banks-and-financial-institutions/deposit-guarantee-schemes_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/banking-and-... We are not speaking about hacking here, simply about banks failing. Bank which failed, it happened 10 years ago, who knows when the next crash is happening...
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Bank failure is completely orthogonal to fraud. Do the regulations cap bank's liability in case of fraud? If there are such regulations, I have not heard of one. > Bank which failed, it happened 10 years ago For what it's worth, governments have gotten progressively better at regulating banks in a way to make such failures increasingly unlikely. We have a similar system in Canada, with protection capped at 100k CAD. The last time they had to pay out was 1996. Failures were frequent in 80s and 90s, and then they just stopped. Not by miracle, but by regulation. The government had learned how to avoid failure instead of allowing it to happen and reimbursing the stakeholders. https://www.cdic.ca/about-us/our-history/history-of-failures/ https://www.cdic.ca/about-us/our-history/history-of-failures...
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    It does not matter if a bank is liable if it doesn't have money to give back to you.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      You are conflating two unrelated failure modes: 1. A fraudster obtains your credentials and steals money from your bank account: The bank reverses the entire transaction and makes you whole. You get your whole money back, no matter the amount. 2. The bank goes out of business: Worst case scenario, the bank has no assets, the government reimburses you up to 100k CAD/100k EUR/250k USD depending on the country the bank is located in. A lot of times, bankruptcies are due to liquidity issues, not insolvency, so you would get back most of your money, even above the caps here, eventually. Also, because the government is not just the insurer, but also the regulator, it has gotten much better at avoiding bankruptcy and this does not happen often these days (at least in Canada). I am not sure what failure mode you are concerned about: one where fraudsters steal so much money that the bank goes under, like tens or hundreds of billions of dollars? And the transactions are somehow irreversible?
      - lostmsu 6y ago
        I am not sure what are you referring to when you say "bank reverses the entire transaction". Who gives you that guarantee?
- kaba0 6y ago
  That’s for a bank crash or some other shit.
tshaddox 6y ago
There are plenty of phone scams that trick people into sending money such that the money is unrecoverable (like using retail gift cards). The victim’s recourse in these cases is also zero.

chucksta 6y ago

Policies and procedures for fraud are at the bank level afaik, and the purpose of FDIC is to protect against bank failure up to 250k USD ( https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111815/does-fdic-cover-identity-theft.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111815/does-fdic-co... )

icedchai 6y ago
Yes, you are right. FDIC does not cover this sort of thing.

WinstonSmith84 6y ago

If you think the current system is that good... think again. In Europe, the protection is capped to 100K Euros. And that's the EU, not a third world country .. :-) https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/banking-and-finance/financial-supervision-and-risk-management/managing-risks-banks-and-financial-institutions/deposit-guarantee-schemes_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/banking-and-... We are not speaking about hacking here, simply about banks failing. Bank which failed, it happened 10 years ago, who knows when the next crash is happening...

smnrchrds 6y ago
Bank failure is completely orthogonal to fraud. Do the regulations cap bank's liability in case of fraud? If there are such regulations, I have not heard of one. > Bank which failed, it happened 10 years ago For what it's worth, governments have gotten progressively better at regulating banks in a way to make such failures increasingly unlikely. We have a similar system in Canada, with protection capped at 100k CAD. The last time they had to pay out was 1996. Failures were frequent in 80s and 90s, and then they just stopped. Not by miracle, but by regulation. The government had learned how to avoid failure instead of allowing it to happen and reimbursing the stakeholders. https://www.cdic.ca/about-us/our-history/history-of-failures/ https://www.cdic.ca/about-us/our-history/history-of-failures...
- lostmsu 6y ago
  It does not matter if a bank is liable if it doesn't have money to give back to you.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    You are conflating two unrelated failure modes: 1. A fraudster obtains your credentials and steals money from your bank account: The bank reverses the entire transaction and makes you whole. You get your whole money back, no matter the amount. 2. The bank goes out of business: Worst case scenario, the bank has no assets, the government reimburses you up to 100k CAD/100k EUR/250k USD depending on the country the bank is located in. A lot of times, bankruptcies are due to liquidity issues, not insolvency, so you would get back most of your money, even above the caps here, eventually. Also, because the government is not just the insurer, but also the regulator, it has gotten much better at avoiding bankruptcy and this does not happen often these days (at least in Canada). I am not sure what failure mode you are concerned about: one where fraudsters steal so much money that the bank goes under, like tens or hundreds of billions of dollars? And the transactions are somehow irreversible?
    - lostmsu 6y ago
      I am not sure what are you referring to when you say "bank reverses the entire transaction". Who gives you that guarantee?
kaba0 6y ago
That’s for a bank crash or some other shit.

tshaddox 6y ago

There are plenty of phone scams that trick people into sending money such that the money is unrecoverable (like using retail gift cards). The victim’s recourse in these cases is also zero.