4 ms·
You fail to point out that cash has all the same drawbacks: You can permanently lose cash if destroyed in a fire. Your cash or bank account can be confiscated
by mrb 13y ago
You fail to point out that cash has all the same drawbacks:
You can permanently lose cash if destroyed in a fire.
Your cash or bank account can be confiscated easily by the government.
Etc.
Of course, unlike cash, Bitcoin has advantages because it offers the option to prevent these losses: you can back up a Bitcoin wallet. You can avoid government confiscation (password-protected wallet). Etc.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mrb 13y agoWait a few years for the Bitcoin ecosystem to mature, and all the security mechanisms developed by banks (and more advanced ones that are just inapplicable to cash) will appear and be applied to Bitcoin: theft insurances, properly secured web wallets (HSM, userbased multi-sig, cold wallets, etc), tamper-proof hardware wallets, etc.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Helianthus 13y agoUnicorns!
- eterm 13y agoAnd at which point we'll be back to seeing 0.3+2.9% on every transaction to cover the costs of such...
- mrb 13y agoWhich will be fine. Even with such fees, Bitcoin would remain superior to existing currencies/payement networks: instant transfers across the world, censorship resistance, etc.
- Helianthus 13y ago.
- grey-area 13y agoI'm always astounded by comparisons of bitcoin to paper cash - in 10 years we probably won't even be using paper cash and it is hardly ever used for large transactions now in advanced countries - paper cash is history. I think I've done about 5% at most of my spending in paper in the last month. How about digital cash? Also, Bitcoin can be confiscated by the government, along with the computer/server it sits on (see silk road). A $5 wrench or a jail cell will deal with your encryption. You can also permanently lose it if someone copies your wallet/backup and then spends it particularly while it is on one of these exchanges - that's because transactions are not reversible or traceable to a verified identity. Technically, I think Bitcoin sounds really substantial and love the idea of creating/spending keys which avoid government inflation, but the axioms on which the usage is based are all wrong - I've never lost money in a fire, and never will. I don't want to avoid government confiscation by technical means (which fail), I want to avoid it by law. I don't want to be able to launder money (or for others to). I don't want my transactions to be anonymous and to have no central authority and no accountability when theft/fraud happens.
- qnr 13y ago> Also, Bitcoin can be confiscated by the government Not if you specifically want to prevent this. A bitcoin private key is 256-bit ECDSA, which provides 128 bits of security. If you can remember a 10 word randomly generated diceware phrase[1], you can securely store bitcoins in your brain. [1] calculating the private key as a SHA256(phrase) for example
- grey-area 13y agoA $5 wrench or a jail cell will deal with your encryption.
- aianus 13y agoI don't think the US is at the point where they torture citizens for private keys. And they'd only be able to use jail as leverage by offering a reduced sentence. Even then, you might refuse if, for example, you'd rather stay in prison and leave the money to your family.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]