3 ms·
Ever since we've had cryptography, money on the internet has always seemed unnecessarily clunky to me. Everyone should have a password, then it's just a matter
by jordigh 11y ago
Ever since we've had cryptography, money on the internet has always seemed unnecessarily clunky to me. Everyone should have a password, then it's just a matter of encrypting who has how much money. While people make fun of how "fake" bitcoins are (as if any other money were not just a slightly more consensual mass hallucination), I really do like how they have demonstrated that internet money can be a lot more convenient. I hope that bitcoins or something like them become the standard for money online.
As to the whole fraud problem that intermediaries like Paypal or credit card companies are supposed to solve; this is orthogonal to the problems of authentication, authorisation, and consensus, which bitcoins solve. We could have both, such as banks, escrow, and arbitration (in the sense of having a third party decide if a transaction should proceed or not) even with bitcoins. We really do need better systems than what traditional internet money has done so far.
- pjc50 11y agoBitcoin has shown how critical the fraud problem is. Between wallet loss and exit fraud by bitcoin companies, bitcoin users have lost vast amounts.
- jordigh 11y agoDo we have a comparison of how much is lost to fraud otherwise, without bitcoins? Anecdotally, the only time I have ever been defrauded of money was when my debit card was skimmed. The fraudsters kept trying to withdraw money, which I didn't keep in that account as I immediately took it elsewhere. It was the account in which I received my paycheque. The fraudsters were able to steal one of my paycheques, and the bank was completely ineffective in protecting me. I got no warnings of unusual activity, and I got no money back. I should have gotten some sort of warning, since someone was repeatedly trying to withdraw money from unusual locations from my empty account. Even my account history showed nothing. Not until I asked the bank after the money was already gone did I learn that the fraudsters had been attempting every day to withdraw the money. How many stories like mine are there compared to bitcoin stories?
- pjc50 11y agoA few seconds of googling gives me UK figures of £479m fraud on a volume of £573bn, which is under 0.1%, and much of that falls on merchants. http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/plastic_fraud_figures/index.asp http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/plastic_fraud_figure... http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/plastic_fraud_figures/index.asp http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/plastic_fraud_figure...