[drewrobb]

Having transaction data hidden from governments isn't the essential feature of decentralization in the original promise of cryptocurrencies. The essential feature is preventing a single party from tampering with transactions or account balances. This is still true for bitcoin and many others.

[raesene9]

We have that with existing currencies in most countries. My bank will implement a journal and double-entry bookkeeping system, along with internal fraud controls to reduce the risk of a single staff member defrauding me.

There are then external controls (banking ombudsman, the police, the judiciary) if the bank decides to take my money from me.

Also in the country I live in (the UK) there is a government guarantee, that even if my bank fails entirely, up to £75000 I'll get my money back.

For all practical purposes, my bank is very unlikely to try and take my money from me like that.

whilst cryptocurrencies might in isolation provide that immutability, in practice we have seen several cases where trusted parties involved in the cryptocurrency ecosystem have taken currency from participants in their marketplaces.

I'd be willing to wager that the risks of me losing money to a traditional fiat fraud are far lower than my risks of making use of cryptocurrencies in practice given the current state of regulation of the exchanges that are used.

[actsasbuffoon]

> The essential feature is preventing a single party from tampering with transactions or account balances.

Are there examples of this actually happening? I'd think that would be pretty damaging to any bank that engaged in such behavior.

[uudhodhd]

There are countless examples.

The US government seized all gold.

The Greek government froze accounts, Cyprus engaged in a 'bail in', governments constantly freeze accounts of 'bad' actors, payment processors will decide without cause to stop servicing clients because they are in adult content or because they are WikiLeaks.

There so many examples, it goes on and on ad nauseum.

[raesene9]

if we're citing examples of why "trusted third parties" caused losses to a currencies' users, what about all the crypto currency exchanges that have been robbed/gone bust etc?

There's always that class of risk unless you do things properly without a trusted third party.

Unfortunately in the crypto currency space, most of that benefit appears to have been sacrificed in pursuit of the ability to trade faster to make money...