[passwordreset]

> what is that actually useful for?

Ownership. It's the difference between "I own 20 quatloos because the Bank of Endor says so" vs. "I own 20 quatloos". It supports actual ownership instead of representative or proxy ownership.

In the same way that you can have $20 in the bank or $20 in your wallet. When it's in your wallet, it's actually yours and you own it. When it's in your bank account, then you don't actually own it, you must trust that your bank will do the right thing and give it back to you when you ask for it. That level of trust has been wavering for decades.

Remember that Bitcoin was started as a rebellion against the "second bailout for banks".

[csa]

I was hoping someone would give this answer.

OK... so what exactly is "ownership"?

A buddy of mine mined ~160 BTC (currently about USD $8.1m) back when it was fairly worthless. He left it on a hard drive on one of his many machines. BTC became worth something. He look for said machine and HD. Couldn't find it. That BTC is effectively gone forever. So... who owns it?

There are a not small amount of stories like the one above for various levels of non-trivial amounts of money (tens of billions). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/business/tens-of-billions...

Situations like this point to a desire for many/most people to want some sort of custodianship so that they don't accidentally lose something that might be worth millions one day... or even hundreds or thousands one day. At that point, one is looking at banks and banking systems, so we're back at square one.

If one is looking at an alternative to banks, we sometimes/often get stuff like Mt. Gox and Bitfinex -- a situation in which a group of people who want to be independent of the banking system learn the lessons of the value of the banking system the hard way.

So I guess where I am at is that I appreciate a desire to rebel against banks -- they wield way too much power. That said, I don't think that it's particularly prudent (or maybe even possible) to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this matter. The banks definitely do some fairly nefarious stuff, but they also do a metric shitload of very pedestrian-but-useful stuff extremely well on a daily basis. Until a coin can replace that pedestrian-but-useful system with equal grace, I doubt that a coin will be able to replace our current system. Furthermore, somehow if it does, it will be because the current system integrates coins into the current system rather than coins usurping the current system.

So again... what is distributed consensus and verifiable transactions with no central trusted authority actually useful for?

[passwordreset]

>so what exactly is "ownership"?

Really? Ignoring the philosophic debate, ownership in terms of BTC deals with the capacity to modify the ledger using an agreed-upon protocol -- but you already know this, and I don't know why you're asking that question. What do _you_ think ownership means in terms of BTC? Do you think you can implement a public system for ownership of digital assets without a distributed consensus system? Or Verifiable transactions? Maybe you can, and if you do I'd love to see it. Good Luck.

>So... who owns it?

The person who has the key.

[Karunamon]

How is the thrust of this story any different from someone losing paper cash? How many millions/billions have been lost from physical currency becoming inaccessible?

[csa]

The issue at hand is the potential value of “distributed consensus and verifiable transactions with no central trusted authority”.

My point is that most people seem to prefer having a central trusted authority, specifically for custodianship.

That’s why most people put money that is significant to them somewhere in the banking system rather than a shoebox or a tin can somewhere. They want that money to be be traceable, accessible, and recoverable.

There are exceptions, of course, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule, IMO.

[Karunamon]

I can't help but think that the "accessibility" is doing most of the work here. Handling cash is a pain in the ass. Giving a merchant a series of 23 numbers over the computer is comparatively easier.