[lordnacho]

But if you don't have the keys to move your money, it becomes a lot less useful as money. It's still like gold though, something that you have a sort of vault that you rarely visit.

If you got drugged and someone took your phone to do a bank transfer, I would imagine there would be some hope of reversing the transfer, with a whole lot of painful steps. With crypto it's pretty futile if they manage to move it.

Also the $5 wrench attack can evolve, right? Just because you have your keys in different places doesn't mean you can be coerced into getting them together.

[PretzelPirate]

It’s pretty easy to make it hard to move your crypto while you maintain access to all keys involved. It becomes even easier if you use a blockchain that supports smart contracts.

Something as simple as using a contract to delay any coin transfers with one or more keys that can stop the transfer is trivial to implement.

Even simple multi-sig is pretty good assuming you don’t rely on two keys both stored in your phone.

For everyday payments, you can use a mobile phone wallet without these protections and worst case you lose a small amount of money if someone takes your phone. It’s just like getting your real wallet stolen and losing cash.

[gruez]

Seems like even bitcoin supports it, even though it's not typically thought of as a "smart contract" platform.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Timelock

[statoshi]

Indeed; I wrote an article last year about time locking. https://blog.keys.casa/bitcoin-multisig-time-locking-challen...

[londons_explore]

Give the keys to other people with sealed envelopes.

Tell them to give them back to you if you ask in person only.

Suddenly its much harder for the attacker...

[break_the_bank]

I suppose you can have a spend wallet and a net worth wallet.

[devoutsalsa]

Makes sense to me. I keep maybe $1200 USD in the account tied to my debit card, and anything above that in an account w/o a debit card.

[Cthulhu_]

Yup, same, it's pretty common sense to only have about what you need for a month in your checking account. That's something the banks themselves promote as well, since it's in their best interest to limit damage as well, since they will put the money back if you've been defrauded.

[echelon]

This is all too complicated for all but a handful of people.

Crypto just doesn't work. It's far more harm than good. Every time a weakness is unveiled, we get hand waving from those most invested.

It's bad for the environment, bad for crime, bad for laymen, undemocratic (vote with money), no knobs to adjust monetary/fiscal policy, and it poses as an alternative to government institutions that serve society with things like roads and health care.

Why are we propping up the crypto whales to enable this trash fire?

[throwaaskjdfh]

Moreover I don't see how free a society would be if cryptocurrencies became widely accepted and early adopters began to pass cryptocurrency inheritances from one generation to another. The descendants of the early adopters would be a new type of landed gentry, with a mathematical moat. It doesn't seem like a reasonable way to organize society.

[at_a_remove]

"We"?

Other people have other problems they're trying to solve and you don't care about those problems, so you do not understand "why crypto." If you want to understand "why crypto," be concerned with other problems. You've already decided what is important, and that blinds you to understanding the motivations of others.

[statoshi]

> It's bad for the environment

Not any more so than other forms of energy consumption. If anything, Bitcoin incentivizes the use of clean renewable energy. https://niccarter.info/topics/

> bad for crime

Hard to even parse what that means given how much crime is committed via dollars. https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-for-crimin...

> bad for laymen

Meaningless drivel.

> undemocratic (vote with money)

Bitcoin is both undemocratic AND is not a "vote with money" type of system. Governance is unrelated to who holds it. https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information/governance.html

> no knobs to adjust monetary/fiscal policy

That's a feature.

> it poses as an alternative to government institutions that serve society with things like roads and health care.

Also a feature. https://www.coincenter.org/a-human-rights-activists-response...

[Nursie]

> If anything, Bitcoin incentivizes the use of clean renewable energy.

By that measure anything that has a huge energy demand incentivises the use of clean energy. In a world where we're really trying to restrict energy use because we haven't yet got the green capacity we need, that's not a good argument.

[statoshi]

Anything that can be owned can be stolen.

It's a question of how difficult you make to steal and thus how much riskier you make it for someone to attempt an attack.

[BelenusMordred]

Secret sharing is a trivially easy solution to this problem.