[abigail95]

It's a different kind of cash (like banknotes). It has different security tradeoffs because the owner is the custodian and you aren't paying a chain of intermediaries.

It's not a feature of cash that it can be stolen, every object can be stolen. The distinctive attribute is transactions are public and immutable.

A car can be driven by its owner anywhere they like. If someone described a car to you as a suicide box you can crash and die in - you might say yes, the fact that cars can be driven freely by their owners means you might drive into someone else. But that's a consequence of the feature, not the feature itself.

[methodical]

The difference of course between all of the rubbish that crypto/Bitcoin is (since they are, at the end of the day, in the same boat), is that by entrusting central parties to handle financial transactions in our traditional financial systems we have methods by which we can reverse transactions, whereas in any blockchain system there is no real authority, by design, so any stolen assets are lost forever. There aren't security "tradeoffs", because there is not a way in which any blockchain based currency is any more secure than current finances, outside of the fact that no bank or government entity could take your digital beanie babies because they don't have the token, which isn't an issue in traditional banks either unless you're a criminal for the most part. And in order to get this "advantage" of blockchain, you have to completely remove its ability to be used as a currency since for any amount of crypto or Bitcoin to be useful in the real world it almost always has to be converted back into fiat, once again centralizing it. The whole concept is extremely flawed, hasn't really gained any ground outside of FOMO'ers, and will likely die out again soon, thankfully.

[asterix_pano]

- you can use an escrow account to reverse the transaction if needed - having full ownership of your money and it being censorship resistant (depending on the crypto) is certainly a plus if you don't fully trust your government. - the conversion to fiat is depending on adoption: the more adoption there is, the less necessary that would be. - you can decide to wire your money 24/7, internationally, instantly and with no fees (with the right crypto)

Overall you get more control of your money. If you think of money as just another kind of information, it's normal to expect it to evolve in the digital age we are living in.