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It's well-known that you can at least secure your bitcoins as well as you can secure gold, if you use cold wallets. The advantage, however, is you don't have t

It's well-known that you can at least secure your bitcoins as well as you can secure gold, if you use cold wallets. The advantage, however, is you don't have to worry nearly as much about the security of a transaction (moving it from one place to another)

foobarqux 13y ago
Not really. It is much easier to lose or make illegible a piece of paper or data than it is to lose large heavy gold or to damage the gold to a degree that severely reduces its value.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  OTOH, its hard to make redundant copies of a gold bar that retain the full value of the original so that if the original is damaged, nothing is lost.
- foobarian 13y ago
  Actually, you could--you could irradiate the gold to the point where decontamination would cost on the order of the worth of the gold itself.
  - sejje 13y ago
    I don't know about you, but no, I can't do that.
  - reillyse 13y ago
    upvote for mentioning the evil scheming of a Bond villain in a serious conversation as a serious answer :)
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    No one said it was impossible to damage gold (there are easier wayd than to make it radioactive). It's just much harder compared to doing comparable or greater value destruction to a bitcoin address, especially accidentally.
socillion 13y ago
It has been demonstrated that: 1) gold can be stolen due to mistakes 2) bitcoin can be stolen due to mistakes but this does not mean that it is impossible to avoid having either stolen. I agree that long term storage of both of these can be done very securely, but the risk for both is when trading or using them. Additionally, Bitcoin does require a lot of worry about security - how many people do you think have airgapped wallets? Aren't the facts that you shouldn't store Bitcoin at exchanges, should use an airgapped storage mechanism, and are otherwise out of luck if your computer is compromised, enough to demonstrate that you also have to worry a lot about the security of Bitcoin transactions? Your stack of gold ingots won't vanish if you take one from the pile in your safe, but your Bitcoins can if you don't take stringent precautions. If you view a Bitcoin transaction as only what happens on the blockchain, you're missing the context of where it occurs - which gives both gold and Bitcoin risk.
apw 13y ago
Good point, the minimum security of Bitcoin is that of gold; i.e. a safe guarded by people with weapons. But since Bitcoin is digital, its maximum security is far, far higher. Your private keys can be encrypted and safely stored with any desired level of redundancy. Paper wallets are a big step backwards. Also, if secret sharing is used, Bitcoins cannot be stolen unless the attacker gets to k of the n involved parties.

foobarqux 13y ago

Not really. It is much easier to lose or make illegible a piece of paper or data than it is to lose large heavy gold or to damage the gold to a degree that severely reduces its value.

dragonwriter 13y ago
OTOH, its hard to make redundant copies of a gold bar that retain the full value of the original so that if the original is damaged, nothing is lost.
foobarian 13y ago
Actually, you could--you could irradiate the gold to the point where decontamination would cost on the order of the worth of the gold itself.
- sejje 13y ago
  I don't know about you, but no, I can't do that.
- reillyse 13y ago
  upvote for mentioning the evil scheming of a Bond villain in a serious conversation as a serious answer :)
- foobarqux 13y ago
  No one said it was impossible to damage gold (there are easier wayd than to make it radioactive). It's just much harder compared to doing comparable or greater value destruction to a bitcoin address, especially accidentally.

socillion 13y ago

It has been demonstrated that: 1) gold can be stolen due to mistakes 2) bitcoin can be stolen due to mistakes but this does not mean that it is impossible to avoid having either stolen. I agree that long term storage of both of these can be done very securely, but the risk for both is when trading or using them. Additionally, Bitcoin does require a lot of worry about security - how many people do you think have airgapped wallets? Aren't the facts that you shouldn't store Bitcoin at exchanges, should use an airgapped storage mechanism, and are otherwise out of luck if your computer is compromised, enough to demonstrate that you also have to worry a lot about the security of Bitcoin transactions? Your stack of gold ingots won't vanish if you take one from the pile in your safe, but your Bitcoins can if you don't take stringent precautions. If you view a Bitcoin transaction as only what happens on the blockchain, you're missing the context of where it occurs - which gives both gold and Bitcoin risk.

apw 13y ago

Good point, the minimum security of Bitcoin is that of gold; i.e. a safe guarded by people with weapons. But since Bitcoin is digital, its maximum security is far, far higher. Your private keys can be encrypted and safely stored with any desired level of redundancy. Paper wallets are a big step backwards. Also, if secret sharing is used, Bitcoins cannot be stolen unless the attacker gets to k of the n involved parties.