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> But, to absolutely steal the originators example -- the "superfragility" of crypto systems is the same as the superfragility of individual NYC restaurants Wh

> But, to absolutely steal the originators example -- the "superfragility" of crypto systems is the same as the superfragility of individual NYC restaurants What? That's not at all what I was talking about. I was talking about fragility for the user. When I buy something online even at a new and kinda dubiously run place, I'm only risking the $50 or whatnot I put in, and even then I can do a chargeback. And all the site knows is that John Smith spent $50 on their stuff. When I interact with crypto, I need an online wallet, which means everything and everyone knows what's the balance in it, and how much cash they'll get if they succeed in finding a bug, or an exploit, or to trick me into revealing my key, or they trick me into allowing more access to my wallet than I should. And then I'm not out of $50, I'm out of everything, and there's no recovery possible. That's what I mean by "superfragile". Crypto needs you to do everything right, consistently, forever, or the results of a lapse in security that somebody succeeds in taking advantage of are catastrophic. > I agree, you'd be nuts to throw a lot in. I just also think you'd be nuts to not throw a little in as well. The era of crazy gains when somebody spent $5 on a lark and ended up with $500K is long over. Look at the stats. In modern times if you're really, really lucky you can double your money. But doubling $5 is insignificant. You need to risk a lot for the gain to actually be significant.

jrm4 4y ago
Sure -- but again, your superfragile here doesn't mean never, it just means "not now for most people," not unlike e.g. manned flight.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  I think "never" is the most likely answer. Crypto's raison d'etre is being a decentralized system without any central authority. That requires you to be your own bank. For most people that's just not a good tradeoff. There's no good reason why buying a coffee should expose me to a risk of losing all my money with zero recourse. That's a tradeoff that only makes sense for a small segment of people, eg, drug dealers who can't get any help from the normal system anyway. But if you fix those issues by delegating that work you're just using Coinbase or whoever as an alternative to Paypal. Yeah, technically that works but you get none of the perks crypto is supposed to provide and at that point even Paypal is a more stable place with less drama. This is because even if your interface resembles traditional systems a crypto exchange is still linked to all the instability, drama and chaos of the crypto space. Bitcoin is 14 years old and unlike aviation isn't getting any safer because the difficulty of dealing with it is inherent to the space. The whole point of it is that there's no central party in control who can force your hand, which equally means the lack of a central party in control to rescue you from your mistakes.

jrm4 4y ago

Sure -- but again, your superfragile here doesn't mean never, it just means "not now for most people," not unlike e.g. manned flight.

dale_glass 4y ago
I think "never" is the most likely answer. Crypto's raison d'etre is being a decentralized system without any central authority. That requires you to be your own bank. For most people that's just not a good tradeoff. There's no good reason why buying a coffee should expose me to a risk of losing all my money with zero recourse. That's a tradeoff that only makes sense for a small segment of people, eg, drug dealers who can't get any help from the normal system anyway. But if you fix those issues by delegating that work you're just using Coinbase or whoever as an alternative to Paypal. Yeah, technically that works but you get none of the perks crypto is supposed to provide and at that point even Paypal is a more stable place with less drama. This is because even if your interface resembles traditional systems a crypto exchange is still linked to all the instability, drama and chaos of the crypto space. Bitcoin is 14 years old and unlike aviation isn't getting any safer because the difficulty of dealing with it is inherent to the space. The whole point of it is that there's no central party in control who can force your hand, which equally means the lack of a central party in control to rescue you from your mistakes.