> With no evidence to support your claim that this is a nightmare You want evidence for a figure of speech? > BPI/Winkdex/etc. values Those measure people s

> With no evidence to support your claim that this is a nightmare You want evidence for a figure of speech? > BPI/Winkdex/etc. values Those measure people smugly happy that they did not put their money elsewhere, or probably cut off from the sentiment that so many hacking it burying the perception. Given how easy it has proven to be to manipulate BitCoin, I doubt holding value is nearly a problem. My point was not that people already convinced are unhappy, but that those that need convincing are not going to be with an accounting ploy that will only widen the spread, but something that address the story—whatever is the digital equivalent of a thick vault door. And the story is that BitCoin is too complicated to be tamperproof. > The "hot/cold wallet" design is a choice that many naive but greedy people are choosing in building their Bitcoin-based systems but it is not the only choice. In banks you usually only STP low-value, low-risk transactions; in the current breed of Bitcoin-based systems, it would appear that system designers are naivly STPing everything. STP: standard transfer protocol? Your point would be that BitCoin ‘banks’ (on-line hosting of your keys) when asked to transfer above a certain sum need to ask for escrow and wait for two-point authentification? It seems convoluted (which is too say a lot in BitCoin's case) but not a bad idea. > There is some kind of strange unstated assumption on HN that regulation magically makes banking safe all by itself, and until that regulation is in place Bitcoin-based systems cannot be safe or effectively risk managed. It's neither unstated, nor an assumption: it's the point of regulation. Some people claim to regulate, but actually try to cover their asses (namely, the many people whom I’ve known personally for a decade, in charge of monitoring Kerviel) it doesn’t change the stated goal. > until that regulation is in place Bitcoin-based systems cannot be safe or effectively risk managed Nope, greed, expensive individual verification and the fact that security is costly says so. There are plenty of options (all conveniently listed at the end of Akerlof‘s _A Market for Lemons_, a recommended read) many self-enforced, but none is: “My bank is safe because I said so. [Tug on fedora.]” > Using a service that doesn't implement these policies is a risky choice Then it's not a service, nor more than you’d expect to find an economy based on nitroglycerin as currency.