[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...