[dragonwriter]

There's no FDIC providing government backed insurance for most commodities, or for non-bank accounts in fiat currency (e.g., those you'd have with a typical brokerage), so I'm not sure bitcoin is really fundamentally different than most commodities as a speculative investment

So for a speculative trader, I dont e that holding keys if any more essential than physically holding goods is for physical commodities; you obviously have to account for trust/security of the entity serving as your agent/broker, but that's typical.

Now, holding the keys may be essential to realizing some of the benefits of bitcoin which drive is value to some users, but for people investing in bitcoin, that may be peripheral to the purpose.

[gohrt]

There's a qualitative difference between "I own stock that might become worthless" and "I own a security that someone could just take from me because they notice my deed just sitting somewhere unprotected."

If someone steals my Schwab account contents for Schwab's servers, I can call on the government for help; and the stock market bookkeeping system has the technical ability restore my shares to me. If someone gets a copy of my wallet key, I've got no recourse unless (unlikely) someone can track down the obfuscated thief.

[dragonwriter]

> If someone steals my Schwab account contents for Schwab's servers, I can call on the government for help

If someone steals your bitcoin from an exchange, you can call on the government for help, too. If the exchange itself is completely insolvent, that may not be effective recourse, and that risk is certainly greater for the kind of firms people have been dealing with in the bitcoin space, which often aren't held by their customers to the same standards that customers of similar services for commodities other than bitcoin would hold companies to.

That's my point: the lack of recourse isn't essential to bitcoin (yes, holding the keys is like holding cash, and not holding the keys is giving something up just like not holding cash is -- but we deal with other businesses with accounts denominated in national currencies without holding all the cash ourselves all the time, and have recourse available for losses.) The lack of accountability is because the firms people choose to do business with are, compared to the firms that people do other financial business with, shady fly-by-night operators.

[pdpi]

> so I'm not sure bitcoin is really fundamentally different than most commodities as a speculative investment

That's the point, though. You're looking at it as a speculative investment, and proceeding accordingly, which is good. The OP is admonishing people to not treat bitcoin like a standard bank account (which is all too easy to do), but rather in the same terms as you already do.

[maxerickson]

It isn't quite the same as FDIC, but there is SIPC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_Investor_Protection...

Not blanket protection, but enough to ask why such and such bitcoin exchange doesn't advertise their participation.