By bitcoin fraud do you mean frauds that are 'settled' in bitcoin or counterfeiting?
The protocol stops counterfeiting, the miners stop individuals from failing to fulfill a payment (i.e. stops double spends) and theft is governed by whatever jurisdiction the crime happens in.
The US government does not prosecute thefts of USD in other countries.
Bitcoin might turn out to be one of the markets where free market dynamics work well.
Whose job is it? Anyone who has a stake in trusting and maintaining bitcoin's value. So the rich are incentivized to safeguard the poor in some sense here.
Well so far it has none of the taxpayer-subsidized funding as the US currency and banks have--which are very expensive to fund. The 2008 crisis was estimated to cost around $9,000-35,000 per US citizen, even by the Fed itself! For just that one incident...
Think about what bailing out means. It was a transfer of wealth from taxpayers and money-balance holders to Wall St banks, the US gov't and a few select private corporations.
Now I don't mean to be patronizing, but it is useful for us to ask ourselves, "how were we convinced that this was desirable?"
I guess I think about it differently. Fiat means "by decree", or by force. Fiat currencies have historically been associated with a military. Bitcoin doesn't share that property.
Honest question: why does gold have intrinsic value?
My understanding is that it's scarcity is the prime driver of its value, at least in monetary terms, and bitcoin shares that quality. Of course gold does have physical qualities that are useful, but so do many other metals that are not used as stores of value.
I am aware of that of course, but gold jewelry itself generally has very little intrinsic value (it's only valuable because people agree it is, just like bitcoin), and most elements (such as silicon) in electric components are much cheaper than gold.
The prime driver of gold's value is clearly its historical role as a commodity and its scarcity, neither of which are related to any kind of intrinsic qualities.
My point is that the two things gold has going for it (scarcity and the fact that people believe it is a good place to store value) can now be said about bitcoin as well from what I can see.
Full disclosure: I do not own any cryptocoins. Too volatile for my tastes.
many other metals are used as stores of value, but gold is probably the most iconic. From a historical standpoint, It's easy to identify, it's easy to break up into smaller units or consolidate into larger ones, easy to form into coins. It has a global distribution, it's relatively inert so you don't need to worry about degradation.
scarcity is only one factor to consider - demand and fungibility are also important factors among others.
> It's easy to identify, it's easy to break up into smaller units or consolidate into larger ones, easy to form into coins. It has a global distribution,it's relatively inert so you don't need to worry about degradation
Everything in that sentence also applies to bitcoin. Probably the one difference I can see is that if someone loses their private key, the bitcoins associated with that key become useless. Gold does not have that problem.
EDIT: Okay, another huge con with bitcoins is that people don't understand them. Most people at least think they understand why gold is valuable. The confusion a "cryptocurrency" creates is a notable negative.
Currency is a medium to exchange value(Work or outcome of work). Value can be created/destroyed from/to something(Generally work), currency is just a 'medium' to trade the value.
Currency itself has to be created out of thin air.
It absolutely matters, because fiat currency, by definition, has the full power of the state (i.e. legal authority, taxing authority, police/military authority) backing it. The same is not true of Bitcoin.