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Modern banking is also largely reversible, so stolen funds can often be recovered, and insurance covers the other cases. Bitcoin has the problem of having irre

Modern banking is also largely reversible, so stolen funds can often be recovered, and insurance covers the other cases. Bitcoin has the problem of having irreversible transactions, and it's also a lot more difficult to determine whether or not an account has been legitimately stolen from. I don't think it's the case that the current banking industry is insulated from theft due to superior security. From what I've heard from programmers working in the financial industry, the software there can be quite ropey, or at least no better than anywhere else.

beat 13y ago
Reversible transactions are a security mechanism. And not all mainstream financial transactions are reversible - short term bank to bank loans, which can run in the tens of millions of dollars over periods of mere minutes, are not reversible within the transaction process itself (set up another transaction to balance the books if necessary). Of course, this is hardly a realm for consumers! Only a rarified few that have passed stringent regulatory requirements can participate in high-end mechanisms, and they can be booted out easily in case of fraud or failure. Irreversible, unregulated, software-driven money at the consumer level is a thief's wet dream. It's even more appealing than cash. Money can be stolen from halfway across the globe, anonymously. Digital currencies face security challenges that go far beyond those of the fiat currency so many people despise. Besides the theft problem, there's the crime problem. Digital currency is extremely convenient for high-dollar criminals like international drug and arms dealers. They're the first big customers, while mainstream businesses lag far, far behind in their own cautious way. This makes governments even more hostile, and civilians as well. And a currency that isn't accepted by the vast majority of legitimate businesses is not terribly useful. But to your other point... yeah, banking software is not necessarily a paragon of security, any more than any other big enterprise software. But consumer-facing parts are generally fairly limited in scope (worst breach I know of is the recent Target breach), and the really big-money parts are hidden well away from the world and buried under many layers of process as well as software security.
- frankchn 13y ago
  An example of a "big-money" part of the banking system, Fedwire, the money transfer between banks run by the Federal Reserve, cleared an average of 2.85 trillion dollars per day in Q3 2013.
- weavejester 13y ago
  Sure, but the processes that make banking secure mostly rely on human interaction, insurance and centralisation, which are obviously difficult or impossible to apply to Bitcoin. The current batch of Bitcoin businesses are getting hard lessons in information security, whereas the mainline banking system can compensate for any deficiencies in their software with more traditional security processes. To me, one of the more interesting results of Bitcoin is how critical information security is to the businesses that deal in it, and how a flaw in their security can make companies vanish overnight. It really provides some darwinian pressure to get security right!
  - beat 13y ago
    And fiat currency starts looking better all the time. The fact that the most powerful security mechanisms aren't even applicable to digital currency should be a huge red flag. Short the exchange rate + significant DDOS attack on the exchanges = millions in free money. That's just a for example. It doesn't even require explicit crime on the bitcoins themselves, and can be done at a safe remove through multiple cutouts. (Historical point of comparison - shell companies were used to short airline stock just before 9/11, resulting in tremendous windfall profits for presumably close allies of the perpetrators)
    - weavejester 13y ago
      > And fiat currency starts looking better all the time. The fact that the most powerful security mechanisms aren't even applicable to digital currency should be a huge red flag. You could make similar arguments about security on the internet compared to physical security in the real world. The recent Target credit card theft, for instance - it's unlikely that the thieves could have appropriated 40 million credit card numbers by physically taking them! > Short the exchange rate + significant DDOS attack on the exchanges = millions in free money. That's just a for example. It doesn't even require explicit crime on the bitcoins themselves, and can be done at a safe remove through multiple cutouts. Sure, but you could achieve a similar effect by attacking an internet retailer and shorting their stock. It's also a lot easier to short stock, which is a shame, as shorting typically reduces price volatility.

beat 13y ago

Reversible transactions are a security mechanism. And not all mainstream financial transactions are reversible - short term bank to bank loans, which can run in the tens of millions of dollars over periods of mere minutes, are not reversible within the transaction process itself (set up another transaction to balance the books if necessary). Of course, this is hardly a realm for consumers! Only a rarified few that have passed stringent regulatory requirements can participate in high-end mechanisms, and they can be booted out easily in case of fraud or failure. Irreversible, unregulated, software-driven money at the consumer level is a thief's wet dream. It's even more appealing than cash. Money can be stolen from halfway across the globe, anonymously. Digital currencies face security challenges that go far beyond those of the fiat currency so many people despise. Besides the theft problem, there's the crime problem. Digital currency is extremely convenient for high-dollar criminals like international drug and arms dealers. They're the first big customers, while mainstream businesses lag far, far behind in their own cautious way. This makes governments even more hostile, and civilians as well. And a currency that isn't accepted by the vast majority of legitimate businesses is not terribly useful. But to your other point... yeah, banking software is not necessarily a paragon of security, any more than any other big enterprise software. But consumer-facing parts are generally fairly limited in scope (worst breach I know of is the recent Target breach), and the really big-money parts are hidden well away from the world and buried under many layers of process as well as software security.

frankchn 13y ago
An example of a "big-money" part of the banking system, Fedwire, the money transfer between banks run by the Federal Reserve, cleared an average of 2.85 trillion dollars per day in Q3 2013.
weavejester 13y ago
Sure, but the processes that make banking secure mostly rely on human interaction, insurance and centralisation, which are obviously difficult or impossible to apply to Bitcoin. The current batch of Bitcoin businesses are getting hard lessons in information security, whereas the mainline banking system can compensate for any deficiencies in their software with more traditional security processes. To me, one of the more interesting results of Bitcoin is how critical information security is to the businesses that deal in it, and how a flaw in their security can make companies vanish overnight. It really provides some darwinian pressure to get security right!
- beat 13y ago
  And fiat currency starts looking better all the time. The fact that the most powerful security mechanisms aren't even applicable to digital currency should be a huge red flag. Short the exchange rate + significant DDOS attack on the exchanges = millions in free money. That's just a for example. It doesn't even require explicit crime on the bitcoins themselves, and can be done at a safe remove through multiple cutouts. (Historical point of comparison - shell companies were used to short airline stock just before 9/11, resulting in tremendous windfall profits for presumably close allies of the perpetrators)
  - weavejester 13y ago
    > And fiat currency starts looking better all the time. The fact that the most powerful security mechanisms aren't even applicable to digital currency should be a huge red flag. You could make similar arguments about security on the internet compared to physical security in the real world. The recent Target credit card theft, for instance - it's unlikely that the thieves could have appropriated 40 million credit card numbers by physically taking them! > Short the exchange rate + significant DDOS attack on the exchanges = millions in free money. That's just a for example. It doesn't even require explicit crime on the bitcoins themselves, and can be done at a safe remove through multiple cutouts. Sure, but you could achieve a similar effect by attacking an internet retailer and shorting their stock. It's also a lot easier to short stock, which is a shame, as shorting typically reduces price volatility.