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From where I stand, this seems to be true of Bitcoin as well. I've never had any Bitcoins personally, but don't you have to store them in a wallet, which you're

by CoryG89 13y ago

From where I stand, this seems to be true of Bitcoin as well. I've never had any Bitcoins personally, but don't you have to store them in a wallet, which you're either going to have to worry about backing up, keeping secure, etc on your own. Or you're going to have to trust someone else to do it for you.

Noxchi 13y ago
You can also store it physically, like on a piece of paper I believe. Or on a USB.
- bigiain 13y ago
  Yep: https://blockchain.info/wallet/paper-tutorial https://blockchain.info/wallet/paper-tutorial As with _all_ security, there's a tradeoff between security and convenience. Inline wallets are spectacularly convenient - and guess what that implies security-wise? Paper wallets are much more hassle. But a paper wallet in a bank vault is arguably up there with the most secure bitcoin storage techniques. As the stored value of your bitcoin varies - so should your security requirements. If I need to keep under $100USD available to pay for my anonymous vpn or my torrent-box vps - an online wallet (who's operator could make off with my half or quarter of a bitcoin at any time) might be a sensible choice. If I'd been mining bitcoin at a reasonable rate since 2009 and was sitting on a house-worth of bitcoins, I'd make a _very_ different choice. Consider the value of your wallet(s) - if they were piles of $50 notes, how much would you spend securing that? Would you leave it in your pocket? Hide it under you mattress? Buy a lockbox or a safe for your home? Rent a safe deposit box? At what stage is a never-internet-connected laptop a perfectly sensible expense to incur? I'd suggest a lot of people I see posting in forums about how much they lost in onine-wallet-hack-de-jour who should be kicking themselves for not having a dedicated $300 laptop fr storing their wallets on.
brownbat 13y ago
There is a difference in how the two scale, because one is physical. Adding a BTC to a transaction doesn't really require any additional infrastructure. But once you've packed your first tanker with gold, you kind of have to hire a second boat. Given the way each scales, it seems that BTC transfers are easier, at least at some values.
- shitgoose 13y ago
  There is not enough gold in the whole world to fill up a tanker.
  - brownbat 13y ago
    The word "tanker" was evocative, I wouldn't get hung up on it. All I was saying was that physical stores of value increase in awkwardness (principally through weight and volume) when you increase their number, not so for digital. Challenges in movement of large sums of gold: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/23/how-to-get-12-billion-of-gold-to-venezuela/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/23/how-to-get-... Here's what $300 Billion in gold looks like: http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/wondered-315-billion-worth-gold/ http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-arti... (Note that it would be harder to transport, than, say, the amount of gold one can fit in a pocket.)

by CoryG89 13y ago

Noxchi 13y ago

You can also store it physically, like on a piece of paper I believe. Or on a USB.

bigiain 13y ago
Yep: https://blockchain.info/wallet/paper-tutorial https://blockchain.info/wallet/paper-tutorial As with _all_ security, there's a tradeoff between security and convenience. Inline wallets are spectacularly convenient - and guess what that implies security-wise? Paper wallets are much more hassle. But a paper wallet in a bank vault is arguably up there with the most secure bitcoin storage techniques. As the stored value of your bitcoin varies - so should your security requirements. If I need to keep under $100USD available to pay for my anonymous vpn or my torrent-box vps - an online wallet (who's operator could make off with my half or quarter of a bitcoin at any time) might be a sensible choice. If I'd been mining bitcoin at a reasonable rate since 2009 and was sitting on a house-worth of bitcoins, I'd make a _very_ different choice. Consider the value of your wallet(s) - if they were piles of $50 notes, how much would you spend securing that? Would you leave it in your pocket? Hide it under you mattress? Buy a lockbox or a safe for your home? Rent a safe deposit box? At what stage is a never-internet-connected laptop a perfectly sensible expense to incur? I'd suggest a lot of people I see posting in forums about how much they lost in onine-wallet-hack-de-jour who should be kicking themselves for not having a dedicated $300 laptop fr storing their wallets on.

brownbat 13y ago

There is a difference in how the two scale, because one is physical. Adding a BTC to a transaction doesn't really require any additional infrastructure. But once you've packed your first tanker with gold, you kind of have to hire a second boat. Given the way each scales, it seems that BTC transfers are easier, at least at some values.

shitgoose 13y ago
There is not enough gold in the whole world to fill up a tanker.
- brownbat 13y ago
  The word "tanker" was evocative, I wouldn't get hung up on it. All I was saying was that physical stores of value increase in awkwardness (principally through weight and volume) when you increase their number, not so for digital. Challenges in movement of large sums of gold: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/23/how-to-get-12-billion-of-gold-to-venezuela/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/23/how-to-get-... Here's what $300 Billion in gold looks like: http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/wondered-315-billion-worth-gold/ http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-arti... (Note that it would be harder to transport, than, say, the amount of gold one can fit in a pocket.)