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This is one of those scary things with a cryptocurrency based society that I worry about. We want decentralisation (supposedly), but this is one of the benefits

This is one of those scary things with a cryptocurrency based society that I worry about. We want decentralisation (supposedly), but this is one of the benefits of centralisation where I can speak to and very my identify with someone with authority to access my funds should I happen to lose my password/key. Bank's provide this protection. Perhaps I'm ignorant of other aspects/solutions. But this is my take with being solely responsible for access to my own funds.

kaba0 4y ago
It’s like we have made laws/rules in society to prevent/solve a litany of edge cases when it comes to money. It has problems for sure, but crypto would just hard reset all that without even thinking about the consequences.
rendx 4y ago
I don't see how a "cryptocurrency based society" would actually work, but key management is not really the issue? You can give a copy of your key to a "bank" to hold (or even let them generate and keep it for you), use shamir's secret sharing schemes to split it for redundancy, etc. In a society where cryptocurrency was of any actual relevance, services and tools would be widely available to assist, just like you need to interface with and learn about banks today. Plenty of people in the world are still unbanked and even from those that are I would assume plenty "prefer to store cash in their mattresses".
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Involving a third party in key management like a bank is entirely antithetical to the principles espoused in the white paper. Trustlessness is all or noting, and once you trust someone you are just doing what we do now but far less efficiently. A classically envisioned crypto society requires individual custody, or to borrow a turn of phrase “not your keys not your coins.” Most people are unbanked not because banks don’t exist for them but because they don’t have money to put into an account. In the US online banks like Ally or Schwab are way better for folks who are legitimately unbanked than a crypto wallet - esp one they are unlikely to properly custody. Postal banking is an approach that has been historically hugely successful too. Outside the US honestly I don’t know how folks wouldn’t be better served with for instance access to an account at circle.com vs USDC. People not having money is a social problem that deserves a meaningful social solution - not digital magic beans.
  - junofan 4y ago
    You’re talking about Satoshi’s whitepaper? Because it talks about escrow services, etc. What principles are you talking about?
  - rafaelero 4y ago
    Bitcoin's trustlessness is not affected by people choosing to store their keys with a centralized entity; although the same can't be said about PoS coins. It's all about giving people the option to choose their preferred method of interacting with it, each with its own pros and cons.
  - throw0101c 4y ago
    > Trustlessness is all or noting, and once you trust someone you are just doing what we do now but far less efficiently. Not true at all, as the GP explicitly mentions Shamir's secret sharing: > Shamir's secret sharing (SSS) is an efficient secret sharing algorithm for distributing private information (the "secret") among a group so that the secret cannot be revealed unless a quorum of the group acts together to pool their knowledge. To achieve this, the secret is mathematically divided into parts (the "shares") from which the secret can be reassembled only when a sufficient number of shares are combined. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing So you can trust various persons / entities such that m out of n need to come together before the secret is revealed. And each person doesn't need to have just one share out of n: if you trust one person more that you can give them two (or more) shares out of the n.
- enlyth 4y ago
  > give a copy of your key to a "bank" to hold The irony, lol.
throwaway98797 4y ago
social recovery wallets mitigate this look at argent.xyz
zmgsabst 4y ago
Nothing stops you from having a custodian with crypto; you’re merely allowed not to — and instead directly execute digital transactions. If you don’t want to manage a wallet, just use Coinbase.
yieldcrv 4y ago
There are plenty of solutions, “account abstraction” with social recover is making big waves this week in some crypto ecosystems This guy is using one solution from nearly 10 years ago, and it has some user experience issues all the UX improvements are developed in bear markets, and they onboard the next million users that help result in the next bull market
twawaaay 4y ago
> This is one of those scary things with a cryptocurrency based society that I worry about. No, not really. It is the same kind of story as people putting all their money in a bag in a chimney to find out their family decided to finally lighten the mood by making a fire in long unused fireplace. It is an actual story about my neighbour when I was a kid. People have been doing stupid things with money for thousands of years. You can store crypto safely. It is essentially the same problem as storing encrypted backups. It has been solved. As much as I hate cryptocurrency, I would actually be more at peace having lots of crypto than lots of stock on my account (if not for the fact that crypto is just a scam).
progrus 4y ago
In happy magic future society, the community may decide to mint 232 billion ghost satoshis as a tribute, and they would accrue value out of sentimentality or whatever. Something to keep in mind when talking to people about these ideas, they’re usually paired with some “apes together strong” kind of magnanimous idealism, where the community/market would come up with solutions.
Ralo 4y ago
How is this different than cash though? You need to be responsible with it or you'll lose it. No different than if he kept $232M in cash, buried it somewhere and forgot where. When we don't want to be responsible with cash, we give it to a bank. Same with BTC.
- mmastrac 4y ago
  Nobody sane and honest would keep $232M in cash, however.
  - disambiguation 4y ago
    Hmm https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-q1-cash-hoard-heres-how-much-apple-has-on-hand.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-q1-cash-hoard-heres-ho...
    - belltaco 4y ago
      Its not held as actual cash https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/companycash.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/companycash.asp http://www.ahead-education.eu/why-apple-sits-on-so-much-cash.html http://www.ahead-education.eu/why-apple-sits-on-so-much-cash...
  - Ralo 4y ago
    Nor should they. That's an insecure, single point of failure to have all your cash stolen. Same with storing $232M in BTC on a single HDD. Of course, at the time it wasn't worth anything near that and he wasn't concerned. The point is, BTC should be treated as cash. If you can't handle it yourself, you give it to someone else to secure for you.
disambiguation 4y ago
Centralized solutions are often better in every single way save for them being the easiest to misuse and abuse.
rstuart4133 4y ago
> Bank's provide this protection. A similar problem arises under other circumstances. And yes, there are off-the-shelf solutions now, eg: https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/ https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/ Technically, "I forgot the key" access is not a difficult problem to solve. And because of they have digital contracts as part of their DNA, crypto currencies provide all the tools you need to solve it even without things like Bitwarden. You are right about there being no "banks" in one aspect though. While there are any number of solutions out there to the crypto-currency key problem and some will do a better job than a bank, there is no easy and low risk way to find the solution that works for you. Certainly nothing remotely as easy and low risk as "walk into any USA bank and open an account". The real magic of a conventional bank is not all the protections in place (who hasn't been screwed over by a bank or credit card company at some point?), it is that it is a "well understand, everybody knows about it" convention.

kaba0 4y ago

It’s like we have made laws/rules in society to prevent/solve a litany of edge cases when it comes to money. It has problems for sure, but crypto would just hard reset all that without even thinking about the consequences.

rendx 4y ago

I don't see how a "cryptocurrency based society" would actually work, but key management is not really the issue? You can give a copy of your key to a "bank" to hold (or even let them generate and keep it for you), use shamir's secret sharing schemes to split it for redundancy, etc. In a society where cryptocurrency was of any actual relevance, services and tools would be widely available to assist, just like you need to interface with and learn about banks today. Plenty of people in the world are still unbanked and even from those that are I would assume plenty "prefer to store cash in their mattresses".

arcticbull 4y ago
Involving a third party in key management like a bank is entirely antithetical to the principles espoused in the white paper. Trustlessness is all or noting, and once you trust someone you are just doing what we do now but far less efficiently. A classically envisioned crypto society requires individual custody, or to borrow a turn of phrase “not your keys not your coins.” Most people are unbanked not because banks don’t exist for them but because they don’t have money to put into an account. In the US online banks like Ally or Schwab are way better for folks who are legitimately unbanked than a crypto wallet - esp one they are unlikely to properly custody. Postal banking is an approach that has been historically hugely successful too. Outside the US honestly I don’t know how folks wouldn’t be better served with for instance access to an account at circle.com vs USDC. People not having money is a social problem that deserves a meaningful social solution - not digital magic beans.
- junofan 4y ago
  You’re talking about Satoshi’s whitepaper? Because it talks about escrow services, etc. What principles are you talking about?
- rafaelero 4y ago
  Bitcoin's trustlessness is not affected by people choosing to store their keys with a centralized entity; although the same can't be said about PoS coins. It's all about giving people the option to choose their preferred method of interacting with it, each with its own pros and cons.
- throw0101c 4y ago
  > Trustlessness is all or noting, and once you trust someone you are just doing what we do now but far less efficiently. Not true at all, as the GP explicitly mentions Shamir's secret sharing: > Shamir's secret sharing (SSS) is an efficient secret sharing algorithm for distributing private information (the "secret") among a group so that the secret cannot be revealed unless a quorum of the group acts together to pool their knowledge. To achieve this, the secret is mathematically divided into parts (the "shares") from which the secret can be reassembled only when a sufficient number of shares are combined. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing So you can trust various persons / entities such that m out of n need to come together before the secret is revealed. And each person doesn't need to have just one share out of n: if you trust one person more that you can give them two (or more) shares out of the n.
enlyth 4y ago
> give a copy of your key to a "bank" to hold The irony, lol.

throwaway98797 4y ago

social recovery wallets mitigate this look at argent.xyz

zmgsabst 4y ago

Nothing stops you from having a custodian with crypto; you’re merely allowed not to — and instead directly execute digital transactions. If you don’t want to manage a wallet, just use Coinbase.

yieldcrv 4y ago

There are plenty of solutions, “account abstraction” with social recover is making big waves this week in some crypto ecosystems This guy is using one solution from nearly 10 years ago, and it has some user experience issues all the UX improvements are developed in bear markets, and they onboard the next million users that help result in the next bull market

twawaaay 4y ago

> This is one of those scary things with a cryptocurrency based society that I worry about. No, not really. It is the same kind of story as people putting all their money in a bag in a chimney to find out their family decided to finally lighten the mood by making a fire in long unused fireplace. It is an actual story about my neighbour when I was a kid. People have been doing stupid things with money for thousands of years. You can store crypto safely. It is essentially the same problem as storing encrypted backups. It has been solved. As much as I hate cryptocurrency, I would actually be more at peace having lots of crypto than lots of stock on my account (if not for the fact that crypto is just a scam).

progrus 4y ago

In happy magic future society, the community may decide to mint 232 billion ghost satoshis as a tribute, and they would accrue value out of sentimentality or whatever. Something to keep in mind when talking to people about these ideas, they’re usually paired with some “apes together strong” kind of magnanimous idealism, where the community/market would come up with solutions.

Ralo 4y ago

How is this different than cash though? You need to be responsible with it or you'll lose it. No different than if he kept $232M in cash, buried it somewhere and forgot where. When we don't want to be responsible with cash, we give it to a bank. Same with BTC.

mmastrac 4y ago
Nobody sane and honest would keep $232M in cash, however.
- disambiguation 4y ago
  Hmm https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-q1-cash-hoard-heres-how-much-apple-has-on-hand.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/27/apple-q1-cash-hoard-heres-ho...
  - belltaco 4y ago
    Its not held as actual cash https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/companycash.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/companycash.asp http://www.ahead-education.eu/why-apple-sits-on-so-much-cash.html http://www.ahead-education.eu/why-apple-sits-on-so-much-cash...
- Ralo 4y ago
  Nor should they. That's an insecure, single point of failure to have all your cash stolen. Same with storing $232M in BTC on a single HDD. Of course, at the time it wasn't worth anything near that and he wasn't concerned. The point is, BTC should be treated as cash. If you can't handle it yourself, you give it to someone else to secure for you.

disambiguation 4y ago

Centralized solutions are often better in every single way save for them being the easiest to misuse and abuse.

rstuart4133 4y ago

> Bank's provide this protection. A similar problem arises under other circumstances. And yes, there are off-the-shelf solutions now, eg: https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/ https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/ Technically, "I forgot the key" access is not a difficult problem to solve. And because of they have digital contracts as part of their DNA, crypto currencies provide all the tools you need to solve it even without things like Bitwarden. You are right about there being no "banks" in one aspect though. While there are any number of solutions out there to the crypto-currency key problem and some will do a better job than a bank, there is no easy and low risk way to find the solution that works for you. Certainly nothing remotely as easy and low risk as "walk into any USA bank and open an account". The real magic of a conventional bank is not all the protections in place (who hasn't been screwed over by a bank or credit card company at some point?), it is that it is a "well understand, everybody knows about it" convention.