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Imagine if forgetting your bank account password meant your account was unrecoverable. Or if a bug in the bank’s software meant you could lose your life saving

Imagine if forgetting your bank account password meant your account was unrecoverable. Or if a bug in the bank’s software meant you could lose your life savings. Or if no transaction could be reversed, even in the case of obvious offline fraud? All these things and more can be found in the incredible world of crypto.

kybernetyk 4y ago
Imagine you lost your secret key and no one could decrypt your secret files. Bug or feature?
- bsdz 4y ago
  For me, I'm happy for my money to be stored in a bank. The bank keeps multiple back-ups of their books and is heavily regulated by our national government. If someone attempts to steal from me or commits fraud there's some recourse by notifying the bank and potentially having those criminal/fraudulent transactions reversed. No electronic inertia (i.e via crypto blockchain) for my bank to approach another and reverse a transaction. There are also several security features to extracting money from my account: there's an account number, name, physical access to debit card, ccv, account password, OTP, pin numbers. All of which are missing in the typical crypto ccy net. Furthermore, banks are forced to record identity information from their customers making it difficult for a nefarious actor to conceal their identity. One advantage for crypo ccy is potentially making anonymous transactions. I don't really have anything to hide in that regard. The mundane shop at the supermarket, ebay or even buying drinks at the pub.. nothing very revealing. If your life savings are at risk from losing a secret key or simply by someone nicking your secret key then I'd call this a "bug".
  - irfwashere 4y ago
    Some could argue that your life savings is also at risk in a bank in high inflationary countries like Turkey or Lebanon. I think bitcoin's main argument in its favor is that its supply is not controlled by bankers. All the risks associated with holding onto it is worth it to me. Anonymous transactions are not interesting to me personally but complete sovereignty is. The chances of someone guessing your key are very low. But if you are worried about that then you put the funds into a multi-signature arrangement. It certainly takes time to understand these things but it's worth it for the benefits it brings. Nobody can steal or tax your funds against your will. If it takes 6 months for an average person to wrap their head around all the concepts it's not the worst thing in the world. It takes 6 months, at least, to learn how to operate a tank. But it does slow adoption rates.
    - angelbar 4y ago
      "Some could argue that your life savings is also at risk in a bank in high inflationary countries like Turkey or Lebanon" Convert your savings to physical assets (materials, tools).. And guns, lots of guns.
  - bollos 4y ago
    Only a minor remark: (most) crypto is pseudonymous rather than anonymous. Your spending is public to all and takes little to effort to effectively stalk the more you use it for every day things.
    - angelbar 4y ago
      Use wallet mixing services
      - bollos 4y ago
        Can you tell me what happened to Tornadocash again? Besides that, if privacy was at all a concern for crypto bros we’d see something like XMR be the default from the start.
ls15 4y ago
So I know a victim of a phishing scam. She got tricked into confirming a transaction from her bank account. She called her bank minutes after it happened, but they told her that they are not able to reverse the transaction. However, according to them they are investigating if they can do something for her based on what they call "good will".
- null_object 4y ago
  > She called her bank minutes after it happened, but they told her that they are not able to reverse the transaction Which bank is this? Why wouldn’t they be able to reverse the transaction? What do the police say? Obviously she has contacted the police? as (unlike crypto) the police can get involved.
- elkos 4y ago
  Where the bank was based? Not all jurisdictions have the same banking standards.
  - ls15 4y ago
    Switzerland (I was as surprised as you are). As far as I know, successful SEPA transactions are impossible to reverse. She was tricked during a weak moment into confirming via 2FA what she deemed a legit transaction, but as far as I can tell, she was on a fake banking website. The bank can claim willful negligence, which is hard (but maybe not impossible) to disprove.
mudrockbestgirl 4y ago
I don't understand where the bank analogies always come from. Crypto is not a bank. Holding crypto is like holding cash. If you put it under your bed and it's stolen, do you go to the government and complain about reverting the transaction? If you want a third-party (bank) to secure your cash so you can do that with crypto, but then you're also exposed to the counterparty risk that comes with it. But that has nothing to do with crypto or fiat or whatever. If you don't trust yourself with managing the keys, put it on Coinbase or Kranken, centralized banks. If you want full control, put in your safe, i.e. manage your own key. There are also decentralized alternatives that offer something in the middle, e.g. smart contract or social recovery wallets.
- analognoise 4y ago
  Banks have federally backed deposit insurance. If crypto was cash, it would be the worst form of it - at least if I bury dollar bills in a drum in a nearby forest, people have to do legwork to guess the location of the drum - they can't just guess numbers on a computer and when they guess right, everyone throws their hands up and goes "too bad". If crypto was cash, it would be the worst form of cash imaginable. I posit that crypto isn't cash, or if it is, it's the worst form of it.
  - angelbar 4y ago
    In this analogy (There in no such thing as a perfect analogy), the multiple hole digging is the password guess.. so like crypto
  - janalsncm 4y ago
    Crypto puts every cyber criminal in the world at zero distance from your money. They can spend all the time they need trying to crack into your vault, arousing zero suspicion. The fact that cryptographic protocols are unbreakable (today) is only relevant if we knew there were no other the weaker links.
- D13Fd 4y ago
  > If you put it under your bed and it's stolen, do you go to the government and complain about reverting the transaction? Literally yes. You go to law enforcement and, if they can figure out who stole it, the law allows for the return of your property.

kybernetyk 4y ago

Imagine you lost your secret key and no one could decrypt your secret files. Bug or feature?

bsdz 4y ago
For me, I'm happy for my money to be stored in a bank. The bank keeps multiple back-ups of their books and is heavily regulated by our national government. If someone attempts to steal from me or commits fraud there's some recourse by notifying the bank and potentially having those criminal/fraudulent transactions reversed. No electronic inertia (i.e via crypto blockchain) for my bank to approach another and reverse a transaction. There are also several security features to extracting money from my account: there's an account number, name, physical access to debit card, ccv, account password, OTP, pin numbers. All of which are missing in the typical crypto ccy net. Furthermore, banks are forced to record identity information from their customers making it difficult for a nefarious actor to conceal their identity. One advantage for crypo ccy is potentially making anonymous transactions. I don't really have anything to hide in that regard. The mundane shop at the supermarket, ebay or even buying drinks at the pub.. nothing very revealing. If your life savings are at risk from losing a secret key or simply by someone nicking your secret key then I'd call this a "bug".
- irfwashere 4y ago
  Some could argue that your life savings is also at risk in a bank in high inflationary countries like Turkey or Lebanon. I think bitcoin's main argument in its favor is that its supply is not controlled by bankers. All the risks associated with holding onto it is worth it to me. Anonymous transactions are not interesting to me personally but complete sovereignty is. The chances of someone guessing your key are very low. But if you are worried about that then you put the funds into a multi-signature arrangement. It certainly takes time to understand these things but it's worth it for the benefits it brings. Nobody can steal or tax your funds against your will. If it takes 6 months for an average person to wrap their head around all the concepts it's not the worst thing in the world. It takes 6 months, at least, to learn how to operate a tank. But it does slow adoption rates.
  - angelbar 4y ago
    "Some could argue that your life savings is also at risk in a bank in high inflationary countries like Turkey or Lebanon" Convert your savings to physical assets (materials, tools).. And guns, lots of guns.
- bollos 4y ago
  Only a minor remark: (most) crypto is pseudonymous rather than anonymous. Your spending is public to all and takes little to effort to effectively stalk the more you use it for every day things.
  - angelbar 4y ago
    Use wallet mixing services
    - bollos 4y ago
      Can you tell me what happened to Tornadocash again? Besides that, if privacy was at all a concern for crypto bros we’d see something like XMR be the default from the start.

ls15 4y ago

So I know a victim of a phishing scam. She got tricked into confirming a transaction from her bank account. She called her bank minutes after it happened, but they told her that they are not able to reverse the transaction. However, according to them they are investigating if they can do something for her based on what they call "good will".

null_object 4y ago
> She called her bank minutes after it happened, but they told her that they are not able to reverse the transaction Which bank is this? Why wouldn’t they be able to reverse the transaction? What do the police say? Obviously she has contacted the police? as (unlike crypto) the police can get involved.
elkos 4y ago
Where the bank was based? Not all jurisdictions have the same banking standards.
- ls15 4y ago
  Switzerland (I was as surprised as you are). As far as I know, successful SEPA transactions are impossible to reverse. She was tricked during a weak moment into confirming via 2FA what she deemed a legit transaction, but as far as I can tell, she was on a fake banking website. The bank can claim willful negligence, which is hard (but maybe not impossible) to disprove.

mudrockbestgirl 4y ago

I don't understand where the bank analogies always come from. Crypto is not a bank. Holding crypto is like holding cash. If you put it under your bed and it's stolen, do you go to the government and complain about reverting the transaction? If you want a third-party (bank) to secure your cash so you can do that with crypto, but then you're also exposed to the counterparty risk that comes with it. But that has nothing to do with crypto or fiat or whatever. If you don't trust yourself with managing the keys, put it on Coinbase or Kranken, centralized banks. If you want full control, put in your safe, i.e. manage your own key. There are also decentralized alternatives that offer something in the middle, e.g. smart contract or social recovery wallets.

analognoise 4y ago
Banks have federally backed deposit insurance. If crypto was cash, it would be the worst form of it - at least if I bury dollar bills in a drum in a nearby forest, people have to do legwork to guess the location of the drum - they can't just guess numbers on a computer and when they guess right, everyone throws their hands up and goes "too bad". If crypto was cash, it would be the worst form of cash imaginable. I posit that crypto isn't cash, or if it is, it's the worst form of it.
- angelbar 4y ago
  In this analogy (There in no such thing as a perfect analogy), the multiple hole digging is the password guess.. so like crypto
- janalsncm 4y ago
  Crypto puts every cyber criminal in the world at zero distance from your money. They can spend all the time they need trying to crack into your vault, arousing zero suspicion. The fact that cryptographic protocols are unbreakable (today) is only relevant if we knew there were no other the weaker links.
D13Fd 4y ago
> If you put it under your bed and it's stolen, do you go to the government and complain about reverting the transaction? Literally yes. You go to law enforcement and, if they can figure out who stole it, the law allows for the return of your property.