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Great. So, when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party s

Great. So, when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? This is exactly a "schlep blindness" problem that a startup could be solving. Deliver a turnkey solution for consumers to store their own coins. Don't make them learn a labyrinthian set of rules, or worry about what's dangerous or what isn't. Protect consumers, and bitcoin adoption will follow. Large-scale bitcoin adoption can't occur until bitcoin is made safe. Did you hear about the guy who took his macbook into an Apple store for some routine repairs, and one of their employees made off with his 15 BTC? The employee hooked his harddrive up to a different computer, scanned it for a "wallet.dat" file, saw it was unencrypted, and robbed him. Was it dumb of this customer not to be using encryption? Yes. On the other hand, was it dumb of him to be storing so much wealth in bitcoin right now, given how easy it is to lose your money? Objectively, yes. This isn't an insurmountable problem, but people have to start working on it in order to solve it.

runeks 12y ago
I think hardware wallets (like the Trezor), or smartphones with a TPM module is the solution. This will take time, however (the latter more than the former). The reason it will take time is that the concept of storing your own money digitally, like is the case with Bitcoin, is an entirely new concept that software and hardware needs to adapt to. With all other solutions (VISA, PayPal, bank wires), you're asking someone else to transfer your money, with Bitcoin you're doing it yourself. Basically, each user needs a greater level of security than PayPal, VISA and banks have internally, since Bitcoin payments are generally irreversible after an hour or so (and often much sooner). This isn't something that is done overnight, and people have started working on it, but it takes time to, first of all, develop the hardware, and, second of all, develop and implement the interface between the hardware wallet and the actual payment request (ie. when I arrive at a BitPay invoice payment page, how do I pay using my hardware wallet?).
ogig 12y ago
There is people working on that issue. For example Trezor is an easy to use bitcoin safe. I think it's headed in the right direction: http://www.bitcointrezor.com/ http://www.bitcointrezor.com/
swimfar 12y ago
Here's the Bitcoin theft reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233230
user24 12y ago
> So, when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? Given the huge amount of developer interest, I'd be pretty surprised if several groups of smart people aren't kept awake at night by their awesome ideas about how to fix this.
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mcherm 12y ago
Your question doesn't make sense to me. > when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? As you point out in your own statement, there are companies meeting the need for a "turnkey solution": you list Coinbase and they are an excellent example of a company doing that well and being quite successful at it. You apparently reject them because working with Coinbase requires the customer to "trust their coins to a third party service". Trusting the third party service is pretty much mandatory for using ANY third party service. Imagine a hypothetical service that provided "turnkey" software to store wallets on your own computer -- you would still need to fully trust the provider of this service to ensure that they actually stored the money rather than siphoning it off someplace else. The only way to (mostly) avoid having to trust a third party is to avoid using a "turnkey" solution that is fully packaged without user serviceable parts. You would instead need to learn on your own how to safely store the coins yourself. Which is ALSO a choice, and many people do it. You complain that it takes "a solid week" to learn how to do this -- and indeed, it does take a few days to become an expert on any subject; there are 10 minute tutorials, but I presume you (rightfully) reject them as being insufficient to really teach a user enough to be fully safe. Honestly, I think that you are just being unreasonable in your expectations.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  there are companies meeting the need for a "turnkey solution": you list Coinbase and they are an excellent example of a company doing that well and being quite successful at it. And if Coinbase goes bankrupt, all their users lose all their money. I've written about this extensively several times before, so I won't rehash the old points. But the summary is, if you trust your money to an entity that doesn't have insurance, you're being very, very brave. Coinbase can go bankrupt for a multitude of reasons, some of which aren't fair. One could counter this with, "Don't store very much money in Coinbase." Sure, but then consumers don't have much money on hand to buy things on a whim, which reduces consumer adoption. That's why I've been saying: Make bitcoin safe, and adoption will follow.
  - 12y ago

runeks 12y ago

I think hardware wallets (like the Trezor), or smartphones with a TPM module is the solution. This will take time, however (the latter more than the former). The reason it will take time is that the concept of storing your own money digitally, like is the case with Bitcoin, is an entirely new concept that software and hardware needs to adapt to. With all other solutions (VISA, PayPal, bank wires), you're asking someone else to transfer your money, with Bitcoin you're doing it yourself. Basically, each user needs a greater level of security than PayPal, VISA and banks have internally, since Bitcoin payments are generally irreversible after an hour or so (and often much sooner). This isn't something that is done overnight, and people have started working on it, but it takes time to, first of all, develop the hardware, and, second of all, develop and implement the interface between the hardware wallet and the actual payment request (ie. when I arrive at a BitPay invoice payment page, how do I pay using my hardware wallet?).

ogig 12y ago

There is people working on that issue. For example Trezor is an easy to use bitcoin safe. I think it's headed in the right direction: http://www.bitcointrezor.com/ http://www.bitcointrezor.com/

swimfar 12y ago

Here's the Bitcoin theft reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233230

user24 12y ago

> So, when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? Given the huge amount of developer interest, I'd be pretty surprised if several groups of smart people aren't kept awake at night by their awesome ideas about how to fix this.

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mcherm 12y ago

Your question doesn't make sense to me. > when can customers expect their money to be protected after they convert their savings into bitcoin, without trusting their coins to a third party service like Coinbase, and without spending a solid week learning how to safely store their coins themselves? As you point out in your own statement, there are companies meeting the need for a "turnkey solution": you list Coinbase and they are an excellent example of a company doing that well and being quite successful at it. You apparently reject them because working with Coinbase requires the customer to "trust their coins to a third party service". Trusting the third party service is pretty much mandatory for using ANY third party service. Imagine a hypothetical service that provided "turnkey" software to store wallets on your own computer -- you would still need to fully trust the provider of this service to ensure that they actually stored the money rather than siphoning it off someplace else. The only way to (mostly) avoid having to trust a third party is to avoid using a "turnkey" solution that is fully packaged without user serviceable parts. You would instead need to learn on your own how to safely store the coins yourself. Which is ALSO a choice, and many people do it. You complain that it takes "a solid week" to learn how to do this -- and indeed, it does take a few days to become an expert on any subject; there are 10 minute tutorials, but I presume you (rightfully) reject them as being insufficient to really teach a user enough to be fully safe. Honestly, I think that you are just being unreasonable in your expectations.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
there are companies meeting the need for a "turnkey solution": you list Coinbase and they are an excellent example of a company doing that well and being quite successful at it. And if Coinbase goes bankrupt, all their users lose all their money. I've written about this extensively several times before, so I won't rehash the old points. But the summary is, if you trust your money to an entity that doesn't have insurance, you're being very, very brave. Coinbase can go bankrupt for a multitude of reasons, some of which aren't fair. One could counter this with, "Don't store very much money in Coinbase." Sure, but then consumers don't have much money on hand to buy things on a whim, which reduces consumer adoption. That's why I've been saying: Make bitcoin safe, and adoption will follow.
- 12y ago