[kneel]

Literally the first thing that happens when you create a wallet in breadwallet is you are given a seed phrase with instructions. Many wallets use this technique (BIP38)

If you ever lose your phone you can recover your wallet with this phrase.

[acdha]

That's a partial answer to only one question which, if a quick google search is correct, ignores all but the easiest problem: BIP38 appears to offer a way to backup a primary key using a printout and a memorized passphrase. That doesn't answer what happens if they lose one of those two things, much less what happens if someone malicious gets either the primary or the backup.

Remember that I didn't say your favorite toy sucks, only that not everyone else has your level of appreciation for it. Most people aren't going to put serious amounts of money into something which they don't trust and the status quo works fairly well for the average person: increasingly few people carry significant amounts of cash, most people use bank accounts and credit cards, etc. which means that the maximum cost is usually either capped or otherwise (e.g. you lose your ATM card but the recovery cost is only the time it takes to go to the bank with photo ID).

Bitcoin can do interesting things but getting non-aficionados to use it will depend on getting to a comparable degree of confidence, especially since most people don't share the [over-]confidence that the typical Bitcoin advocate has regarding their personal info-sec footing.

[kneel]

>That's a partial answer to only one question which, if a quick google search is correct, ignores all but the easiest problem: BIP38 appears to offer a way to backup a primary key using a printout and a memorized passphrase. That doesn't answer what happens if they lose one of those two things, much less what happens if someone malicious gets either the primary or the backup.

Bitcoin's slogan is 'be your own bank' which means you're ultimately responsible for your own security. If you're hacked, you're hacked. This is no different from modern day identity theft.

>Remember that I didn't say your favorite toy sucks, only that not everyone else has your level of appreciation for it. Most people aren't going to put serious amounts of money into something which they don't trust and the status quo works fairly well for the average person: increasingly few people carry significant amounts of cash, most people use bank accounts and credit cards, etc. which means that the maximum cost is usually either capped or otherwise (e.g. you lose your ATM card but the recovery cost is only the time it takes to go to the bank with photo ID).

Bitcoin isn't ready for the average user, much like computers in the 80s weren't ready for the average user. That isn't stopping developers who can see the writing on the wall.

I think there is a very good argument to be made that traditional currencies are not as safe as they once were as the federal reserve continues it's historically unprecedented experiments.

[acdha]

“be your own bank” is at least honest but it's very different from what most proponents say.

> This is no different from modern day identity theft.

Identity theft is a nuisance caused by large companies trying to dodge responsibility for negligence onto the public. The failure mode is that your credit rating is damaged, not that all of your money ends up irrecoverably belonging to some guy in Russia – and you have legal means to solve these problems.

> Bitcoin isn't ready for the average user, much like computers in the 80s weren't ready for the average user.

Fewer people could afford them but 80s PCs were incredibly useful – things like VisiCalc and WordStar transformed offices, the gaming industry had grown enough to support multiple dedicated studios, etc. People were willing to pay large amounts of money to own a PC precisely because it had real tangible value. Other than paying off ransomware, what can an adopter do with BitCoin which is significantly harder / impossible now? (Or, for many of the distributed ledger proposals, couldn't do faster using existing PKI?)

[kneel]

>Identity theft is a nuisance caused by large companies trying to dodge responsibility for negligence onto the public.

That's one way of looking at it.

>The failure mode is that your credit rating is damaged, not that all of your money ends up irrecoverably belonging to some guy in Russia – and you have legal means to solve these problems.

That's great and all but your identity is still stolen and your credit can never be fully trusted. In the case of Bitcoin the law clearly hasn't caught up with the tech, it will eventually as gov realizes they're not getting their taxes.

>Fewer people could afford them but 80s PCs were incredibly useful – things like VisiCalc and WordStar transformed offices, the gaming industry had grown enough to support multiple dedicated studios, etc. People were willing to pay large amounts of money to own a PC precisely because it had real tangible value.

Lots of people decried PCs as fads, the internet was a fad, smartphones were a fad. Believe it or not credit cards were declared a fad at one point.

>Other than paying off ransomware, what can an adopter do with BitCoin which is significantly harder / impossible now?

Send money to anyone on earth with an internet connection, for anything you want, fast with low fees.

[vacri]

> Bitcoin's slogan is 'be your own bank' which means you're ultimately responsible for your own security.

And this gets back to my original point. Security is hard enough that it's common for seasoned security professionals to not follow best practices. Regular members of the public don't have a chance if they have to assume all the responsibility of their own security - this is why they outsource that to banks right now. Hence: in order to manage your own security properly with bitcoin, you have to understand the underpinnings of it. How can a person be ultimately responsible for their own security if they aren't aware of even the most basic of security issues in tech?

[kneel]

>How can a person be ultimately responsible for their own security if they aren't aware of even the most basic of security issues in tech?

Phone based AES hardware with fingerprint security, coupled with QR code scanning payments. Literally point and pay with biometric data.

Or should we use pieces of plastic/paper?

[vacri]

Well, biometric data has already been proven to be worth less than a password - because once it's compromised, that's it for life. You can't change your fingerprints.

But yes, pieces of plastic/paper don't require the user to have an expensive-yet-easily-lost doo-dad that is also hard to replace. Have your phone stolen? Now you have to wait not only until the banks do their bit, but also until the phone shops reopen so you can start buying things again. Not to mention that if you forget to charge your "money", you can no longer use your "money". It's also not an option for those in poverty, or for the plenty of people who don't have a phone, let alone a smartphone. "Dollars" come in a lot of forms that you can use at any point in life and in any state except perhaps severe mental illness. High-tech electronic-only money certainly does not.