No way is that an obvious answer. The average consumer is massively more at risk of fraud & theft from their hosted bitcoin wallet than via their charge account

No way is that an obvious answer. The average consumer is massively more at risk of fraud & theft from their hosted bitcoin wallet than via their charge account. All cards offer protection against theft and fraud including a means of disputing and getting refunds (chargebacks). Definitely not the case for bitcoin wallets. Here's why. Cards may have weaker authentication but they have an intermediary party involved in governing the transaction. Bitcoin has no intermediary party, which places a heavier burden on authentication, and no recourse in case anything goes wrong. So, the only way for bitcoin to increase protection against fraud is to ratchet up the level of security around authentication. Two factor, cold storage, all that. All things that are significant inconveniences for consumers. You can point to them and say "it's safer than card numbers" but that's missing the other tier of protection. Overall it's less safe, because if fraud does happen there's no recourse, and the more you inconvenience the consumer the less likely they are to secure things properly not to mention use the thing in the first place. For everyday commerce, the two-tier level of protection that cards offer is much more amenable: a "decent" level of security at the time of the transaction that's still very convenient for the consumer, and the safety net of chargebacks. By the way, you mentioned the lack of chargebacks as a security benefit.. but you're confusing merchant benefits (they don't like chargebacks) and consumer benefits (definitely benefit from the ability to dispute fraudulent charges and defective goods).