[n4r9]

My best guess at why the average person is hesitant to use bitcoin as a primary currency is: where do I go when it goes wrong? If the system holding my money is hacked, or I get scammed in some way, where is my legal recourse? Legal recourse is typically something provided by a state. But state regulation nullifies a lot of what bitcoin advocates claim is the advantage of cryptocurrency. I'm not up to scratch on the details in El Salvador, so curious to know whether they have solved this issue.

[wikfwikf]

That's not the whole story. When Bitcoin started it was used more as a currency than it is now. Firstly by evangelists who tried to establish a BTC economy, and secondly in the illicit economy.

Bitcoin miners and devs took the project in a specific direction a few years later, optimizing it for use as digital gold, while making it much harder and more expensive to use as a currency.

[SkipperCat]

100% agree. The early days of Silk Road showed the true value of Bitcoin. It was a great untraceable currency. Perfect for buying drugs (no moral judgement, just saying what happened). Then, around 2016, CNBC “discovered” crypto and so much investor money and mania jumped in. Now it’s just a value store for dreamers. The fact that the word HODL exists kinda proves that point.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Not just dreamers, it’s an identity. Someone else on this topic is calling themselves a “hodler”. Not just an investor. But a “hodler”, a “True Believer” I suppose.

Your investment is there to make you money, not to provide you with an identity.

[cool_dude85]

Personally, I like for my untraceable currency not to have a permanent, public ledger showing every transaction I make.

[ridgered4]

Yes, my understanding of bitcoin is that it is not untraceable at all since the transactions can be followed back to their source, but it was widely perceived as such by dark markets for a number of years. I guess maybe if you mined it yourself (no longer really feasible for an individual?) or somehow purchased it with cash it might be.

[pessimizer]

> That's not the whole story. When Bitcoin started it was used more as a currency than it is now.

I still reflexively think of bitcoin primarily as the way you buy abstract board games from Spanish libertarians, because of https://nestorgames.com/

[upsidesinclude]

See my other comment.

El S. is in a pretty strange place because they don't have their own currency. They have no control over their economy in that regard, so adopting a separate currency which frees them from singular dollar dependence is quite useful.

Nullifies what claims exactly?

[n4r9]

> Nullifies what claims exactly?

Bitcoin seems to be intended as a decentralised payment system that bypasses any third party institutions. My gut feeling is that: in order for a state to provide legal recourse, bitcoin addresses need to be linked to a centralised personal/business identity that can be tracked down and sued or prosecuted if necessary. For Bitcoin to feel safe for the normal person, it would have to introduce centralisation and third parties. My gut may be wrong, of course.

[upsidesinclude]

You might be right.

The important thing is that the person must accept the responsibility of owning all aspects of their wealth.

No one can remove it from you, but you can make the mistake of giving it away. Then you bear the responsibility for losing it.

That's not a very big trade off for some people.

[n4r9]

Yeah, I think most people find consumer protection regulations very reassuring. It's natural that they're reluctant to transition to a system that does not (and arguably cannot) have any.

[spiralx]

Ironically the Chivo wallet is a centralised system that only touches the wider BTC network when transactions are made to a non-Chivo address.

[n4r9]

Thank you for the info, I didn't know about Chivo. This may well be the government's attempt to address the issue of legal recourse. Interesting though that it still was barely used, at least partly because of security issues:

> Though around half of the Salvadorans surveyed have downloaded Chivo to date, with 40% of those downloads happening in September 2021, around 61% of those have abandoned it after withdrawing the $30 dollar sign-up incentive, the National Bureau of Economic Research found. Only 1.6% of all remittances were received in bitcoins via digital wallets in February 2022, according to El Salvador’s Central Bank.

> Chivo download numbers have been negligible in 2022, suggesting that the push has run out of steam. Some of those who have stuck with the application are using it for transactions unrelated to Bitcoin. The median active user does not send or receive a single Bitcoin payment a month nor make any Chivo ATM withdrawals, the survey found.

https://restofworld.org/2022/el-salvador-chivo-bitcoin-walle...

[eimrine]

> If the system holding my money is hacked

We the hodlers believe that Bitcoin can be hacked only by hacking cryptografic hash-functions, which will lead to collapse all the banks, all passwords on all websites, maybe some data structures like hash-maps.

> or I get scammed in some way, where is my legal recourse?

How will you get scammed if you have a backup which you promise to yourself to not even introduce to computer with online? Also nobody recommends you to hold all your wealth in crypto. Some metals work not bad also, my favorite example is copper.

> But state regulation nullifies a lot of what bitcoin advocates claim is the advantage of cryptocurrency.

Let me guess, you have not read / have to reread the bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf whitepaper?

[n4r9]

I'm not talking about the hash function being hacked, I'm talking about websites like Coinbase that provide wallet and exchange services being hacked. Banks of course are also vulnerable to social engineering etc but there is more regulation and consumer protection for when that happens.

And by "scammed" I mean someone providing a fraudulent or faulty service or product. In the UK we have "Section 75" which protects consumers who pay via credit card or paypal: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-w... . Is such protection possible with bitcoin?

[eimrine]

> I'm not talking about the hash function being hacked, I'm talking about websites like Coinbase that provide wallet and exchange services being hacked.

What part of Bitcoin whitepaper tells you have to rely on third-parties? I'm not a trader, I'm a hodler, I even do not have a Coinbase account.

Of course if third-parties get lost you lose everything you have believed they will guard for you.

upd after reading responses

Sorry guys I forgot that average person needs to be an idiot. My bad, usually I consider an opposite.

[thraxil]

Remember that the comment started with "My best guess at why the average person is hesitant to use bitcoin".

The "average person" needs something roughly equivalent to a current bank or credit card in terms of simplicity. Currently, that basically means using third-parties like Coinbase, not reading the Bitcoin whitepaper, managing their own hardware wallets and encryption keys, thinking through backups and disaster recovery scenarios, and being dilligent about maintaining opsec.

[andybak]

When I held crypto, I used a 3rd party.

Why?

Because they are more trustworthy than my own ability to not screw up. I lose/break things all the time. I didn't want a fragile token or backup costing me 5 figures.

[thraxil]

> upd after reading responses > Sorry guys I forgot that average person needs to be an idiot. My bad, usually I consider an opposite.

Right. Wanting simplicity and low risk around basic daily purchases and transactions means that someone's an idiot. You seem like a lovely person. Thanks for representing the crypto/BTC community so well.

[UncleMeat]

"Don't worry, you can manage your wallet completely yourself without any 3rd parties" is in absolutely stark opposition to "adoption will grow and grow." If the only people that use BTC are hobbyists who are willing to go through the trouble to find a way to safely manage their own wallet then BTC will never see widespread use.

[gjulianm]

I mean, if being secure requires an average person having an airgapped computer holding the wallet keys, it's not going to see much adoption. Also you can't really use it as a currency if you do that.

[redox99]

> having an airgapped computer holding the wallet keys

That's basically a hardware wallet (not 100% "airgapped" but the same idea). And yes you obviously you can use it as a currency that way.

Still I agree that crypto is too complex for the average person and I wouldn't trust my mom to not lose it or get scammed.

[saberience]

This borderline snarky and condescending comment isn't helpful and isn't what is encouraged on HackerNews.