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this is why I have a hard time believing that cryptocurrencies will achieve mass adoption: eventually everyone gets hit by a 0-day, and then your money is gone

by blibble 13y ago

this is why I have a hard time believing that cryptocurrencies will achieve mass adoption: eventually everyone gets hit by a 0-day, and then your money is gone forever. (I realise cold storage exists, but most people won't bother...)

thisiswrong 13y ago
So you think people will prefer to use worthless plastic/paper currencies that are continuously deflated by governments to fund war and oppression? Cryptocurrencies will streamline the new digital economy - which encompasses all of our lives. Hardware wallets will soon allow people to secure their money with ease. Cryptocurrencies will revolutionize the world in ways that we don't yet understand. It's hard to conceptualize, but bitcoin the 'currency' is so insignificant compared to bitcoin the 'invention'.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > So you think people will prefer to use worthless plastic/paper currencies that are continuously deflated by governments to fund war and oppression? The currencies are continuously inflated, not deflated. But either way, do you seriously think that governments won't simply use cryptocurrencies to fund both war and oppression if those cryptocurrencies ever become popular? Can you possibly be that naïve? At best you'd decouple currency from government to make the concepts orthogonal, but Bitcoin won't get rid of oppression or war, let alone crime like theft and murder-for-hire.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  The main way that governments obtain funds for "war and oppression" isn't by disbursing fiat money, but by taxes. If we switch to 100% cryptocurrencies, taxation won't go away, even if it'd have to be done Roman-style, before such things as 'income declarations' existed; and the cryptocurrencies will no more allow people to "secure their money with ease" than gold allows today.
erikpukinskis 13y ago
Cash has the same problem, which is why banks and credit cards exist. There's no reason your bank account and your VISA card couldn't be denominated in Bitcoins, affording you exactly the same protections you have now. You might lose $100 out of your smartphone wallet every now and then. But that will hopefully be rare.
- xenophanes 13y ago
  If you buy most stuff with a bitcoin VISA, what's the point of bitcoin?
- jerf 13y ago
  No, cash does not. There is no equivalent to issuing one command to a botnet and collecting a hundred thousand people's wallets. Cash has other problems, which is why bank and Visa exist, but there's no zero-day exploit equivalent. It's one of the reasons computer security is so hard. What in the real world would be a minor weakness that really is unlikely to ever be exploited is in the computer world an invitation for a bad actor to "SELECT * FROM private_customer_data" and be walking away with everything you own before the alerting system you probably don't have and probably aren't paying attention to can even go off.
josephagoss 13y ago
The community is working on it. See multi signature addresses as a possible future.

by blibble 13y ago

thisiswrong 13y ago

So you think people will prefer to use worthless plastic/paper currencies that are continuously deflated by governments to fund war and oppression? Cryptocurrencies will streamline the new digital economy - which encompasses all of our lives. Hardware wallets will soon allow people to secure their money with ease. Cryptocurrencies will revolutionize the world in ways that we don't yet understand. It's hard to conceptualize, but bitcoin the 'currency' is so insignificant compared to bitcoin the 'invention'.

mpyne 13y ago
> So you think people will prefer to use worthless plastic/paper currencies that are continuously deflated by governments to fund war and oppression? The currencies are continuously inflated, not deflated. But either way, do you seriously think that governments won't simply use cryptocurrencies to fund both war and oppression if those cryptocurrencies ever become popular? Can you possibly be that naïve? At best you'd decouple currency from government to make the concepts orthogonal, but Bitcoin won't get rid of oppression or war, let alone crime like theft and murder-for-hire.
PeterisP 13y ago
The main way that governments obtain funds for "war and oppression" isn't by disbursing fiat money, but by taxes. If we switch to 100% cryptocurrencies, taxation won't go away, even if it'd have to be done Roman-style, before such things as 'income declarations' existed; and the cryptocurrencies will no more allow people to "secure their money with ease" than gold allows today.

erikpukinskis 13y ago

Cash has the same problem, which is why banks and credit cards exist. There's no reason your bank account and your VISA card couldn't be denominated in Bitcoins, affording you exactly the same protections you have now. You might lose $100 out of your smartphone wallet every now and then. But that will hopefully be rare.

xenophanes 13y ago
If you buy most stuff with a bitcoin VISA, what's the point of bitcoin?
jerf 13y ago
No, cash does not. There is no equivalent to issuing one command to a botnet and collecting a hundred thousand people's wallets. Cash has other problems, which is why bank and Visa exist, but there's no zero-day exploit equivalent. It's one of the reasons computer security is so hard. What in the real world would be a minor weakness that really is unlikely to ever be exploited is in the computer world an invitation for a bad actor to "SELECT * FROM private_customer_data" and be walking away with everything you own before the alerting system you probably don't have and probably aren't paying attention to can even go off.

josephagoss 13y ago

The community is working on it. See multi signature addresses as a possible future.