4 ms·
Money is a creation of government, and frankly, the dollar ain’t so bad. If my bank goes under I’m protected by the FDIC. If Coinbase goes under they have the
by dpweb 4y ago
Money is a creation of government, and frankly, the dollar ain’t so bad.
If my bank goes under I’m protected by the FDIC. If Coinbase goes under they have the right to use my money to pay their creditors.
- throw123123123 4y agoUntil gov takes away your money and then what
- throw123123123 4y agoMoney is a private creation, government just made it illegal to run private money.
- notch656a 4y agoKeeping crypto on an exchange is like keeping gold at the gold dealer. Just why.
- arcticbull 4y agoNobody keeps bricks of gold at home. Just why would they. Way too much risk.
- boznz 4y agono risk if nobody knows they are there, ditto if you are a crypto billionaire and dont tell anyone
- jackvalentine 4y agoYour house burns down. Your house floods. You put your hardware wallet on the kitchen bench after adding/withdrawing crypto and the dog grabs it and chews it up.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y agoDon’t forget about the risk of your brain naturally forgetting a password that isn’t in active use. Especially considering your cold storage solution probably doesn’t share a password you use anywhere else.
- notch656a 4y agoI'm not rich enough to own 'bricks' of gold, but if I was I would be a bit more creative than keeping them all naively stored under a bed or something at home. In any case having been subjected to various government fuckery in my life, I'm keenly aware of the need for wealth diversification. Self custody of (some fraction of) wealth is a means of diversification against risks of thugs in various official capacities. And to say nobody keeps bricks of gold at home, well just peruse reddit [0]. [0] https://i.redd.it/gbtjawvob1g61.jpg https://i.redd.it/gbtjawvob1g61.jpg
- arcticbull 4y agoReddit is the classic trump card haha, you got me there.
- _vdpp 4y agoSame reason you don’t keep all your savings under the mattress. There have been a number of stories about people losing or corrupting their crypto wallets. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mwcremer 4y agoWhich raises an interesting question: what fraction of Bitcoin, for example, is effectively lost forever? I assume minuscule, but like entropy it never decreases?
- andirk 4y agoI assume its some large % of all bitcoin is lost especially from early adopters mining thousands of then worthless tokens.
- woodruffw 4y agoYou assume wrong! Approximately one in five BTC minted so far has been lost. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/business/tens-of-billions-worth-of-bitcoin-have-been-locked-by-people-who-forgot-their-key.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/business/tens-of-billions...
- notch656a 4y agoWould you keep all your cash in the bank? Frankly I feel terrified if I don't have enough cash on hand to last at least a month. For instance the IRS has been known to freeze bank accounts of completely innocent business owners on wild goose chase accusations that small deposits are structured, for instance. It's also worth noting there are certain unique risks to exchanges that aren't really applicable to most bank accounts.
- tluyben2 4y agoNot sure if it’s my circle, but you seem an exception. I live in a tiny village and haven’t touched cash for years (somewhere 2018), nor has anyone I know. Personally I hear what you are saying as I had my accounts frozen (in my country, you can basically sue a company and start by freezing the assets of the company and their owners without any proof) a long time ago, so I always have a lot of accounts no one knows about (the tax office does but they are not allowed to provide those to lawyers). However, cash… Nah. I can kind of see that someone might put gold somewhere just in case the entire system collapses (which will end cash too), but outside that…
- not_kurt_godel 4y agoBecause the only practical way to spend the magical decentralized internet money is to trust a centralized intermediary to not only mediate transactions but hold your entire account with no accountability, regulation, or oversight.
- Nursie 4y agoWhile this is true, and should be taken into account ... I can't help feeling that by the time that becomes relevant, those cryptocurrencies are quite likely to be worth very little anyway, as coinbase going under is (IMHO) quite likely to be correlated with a general cryptocurrency market crash.
- tluyben2 4y ago> correlated with a general cryptocurrency market crash. Which will be correlated with a general market crash. As we are going through one now, it seems to follow that cryptocurrencies should crash more as a lot of tech companies have actual value and make/offer things we want while cryptocurrencies do not.
- 7speter 4y agoYou’re protected upto $250k on deposits by the fdic. Still much better than Coinbase but just sayin’
- ptmcc 4y agoPer account type per bank, importantly. And SIPC covers brokerage accounts up to $500k.
- cube00 4y ago> The standard insurance amount is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category. [1] Spread it around in multiple banks and it's more money then I'm ever likely to accumulate in my savings. Although if you have that much money in the bank arguably you're missing out on much better returns in the market if you're young and have time on your side. [1]: https://www.fdic.gov/resources/deposit-insurance/ https://www.fdic.gov/resources/deposit-insurance/
- WaxedChewbacca 4y ago
- junofan 4y agoWhen your bank goes under, the FDIC uses your money to pay creditors, same as Coinbase. You get a new account with money funded from the Deposit Insurance Fund. You have already paid for this insurance. You are also free to purchase insurance for your Coinbase deposits. There’s not a difference except one’s compulsory.
- gnu8 4y agoWhich insurers are writing policies to protect Coinbase deposits?
- nobrains 4y ago> "frankly, the dollar ain’t so bad." It might be not bad. For you. Perhaps you are an American. Whenever your government prints more dollars, because the rest of the world holds dollar reserves, the value of those reserves go down. So everyone else in the world basically finances the US money printing. So, if you are an American, the dollar is not bad. Its actually very, very good. But for the rest of the world (96% of the world population), its pretty bad. It is used as means to transfer their wealth to US.
- nathanaldensr 4y agoI say this as an American: Thankfully, this is beginning to unwind.
- oceanghost 4y ago* and that transferred wealth is mostly spent on an enormous military budget such that most countries have to spend relatively little on defense.
- ASalazarMX 4y ago* and that transferred wealth is mostly spent on an enormous military budget FTFY. It's not done out of philanthropy.
- mw888 4y agoWow you actually think Coinbase is the apt comparison here? You really believe that the peak use case of Bitcoin is leaving it on Coinbase? I think you should educate yourself.
- dpweb 4y agoCoinbase claims to have 98 million accounts so yes I would consider them a considerable part of the ecosystem.