[kkielhofner]

> A record amount of BTC not moved on chain for the long term has reached all time highs, "wash trading" or not, that can't be faked, it's being held as it's primary value proposition, a store of value.

How much of this is due to people losing access to their wallets and the BTC being lost forever?

The number of BTC lost forever was already pretty high from what I remember. My suspicion is post-FTX there was a surge in self custody and many of these people likely lost access to their wallets from any number of the issues self-custody can bring. Or they just can’t figure out how to get it out.

Self-custody is completely impractical for 99.999% of the people walking around. The UX is horrible and the entire process overall has the most foot guns anyone will ever see.

It’s also worth pointing out that the “primary purpose” as a store of value now claimed today is only a result of bitcoin failing at the other claimed “purposes” over the years.

This one is especially entertaining to hear from crypto/BTC advocates as the title of the BTC paper is “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.

[southernplaces7]

>Self-custody is completely impractical for 99.999% of the people walking around. The UX is horrible and the entire process overall has the most foot guns anyone will ever see.

As usual on this site, the assumption that 99% of people are complete drooling idiots for anything remotely tech-related runs firm. Believe it or not, a surprisingly large percentage of the population can rather quickly learn to manage relatively non-complex things like holding their own crypto and so forth without having to be specialized devops or top-tier tech workers.

Not everyone outside a certain bubble is blindly stupid just because they do other things with their lives.

[kkielhofner]

I'm not saying anyone is stupid.

What I am saying is that everyone forgets things and makes mistakes. Have you ever had to do a password reset? I know I have. Have you ever messed up a backup or deleted something accidentally? I know I have. HNers are in many cases lifelong technology professionals and all of this and more still applies to us. Just like how even the best and most brilliant physicians in the world still carry malpractice insurance. People mess things up all of the time. This is basic and fundamental being human stuff.

Extrapolate this to large numbers and the general population with varying levels of technical proficiency. Bank of America has over 60 million customers. How many times a day do you think they click a password reset link? How many times a day do you think someone calls customer service because they can't get in their banking app or account online? How many times do you think someone ends up walking in a branch to get it figured out? How many times a day do you think someone does an "oops" transferring funds, etc?

The answer is almost certainly a staggering number of people, every single day. Even 100k is just 0.16% of those 60 million customers so I would put that on the low side. Banks like Bank of America don't operate call centers, branches, etc because they're running a jobs program and like to waste money on unnecessary payroll. They have these resources because they're necessary. In the real world people forget things, lose stuff, mess things up, and occasionally need help.

The crypto self-custody mantra combined with irreversible transactions essentially depends on never make a mistake, never forget, and never lose anything. Combine that with the poor UI and UX I mentioned and it's a recipe for disaster.

It fundamentally goes against everything we universally know about human beings.

Until crypto FINALLY realizes it needs to bend to the real world and not the other way around it will continue to have some of the poorest adoption numbers of any technology from the past 100 years.

[setgree]

I think rather than looking to theoretically arguments about this, we can just note how many putatively sophisticated actors have messed this up at some point and how costly it’s been for them. Mark Cuban, Prime Trust (we think) , and a whole lot of BAYC early adopters have all lost real money due to either forgetting, misplacing, or trusting the wrong party with their credentials. Each time, there’s been no recourse. My bank, by contrast, has mechanisms for returning money when things go wrong.