[ChuckMcM]

If you don't mind me being a bit pedantic ...

The primary difference is that a person in a far away land is unable able steal my actual currency without putting a lot of their own funds at risk. Which is to say they would have to fly out here, find my house and/or wallet, take out money, leave, and then fly home. Its the same reason cash is more secure than a debit card. Debit card readers can be hacked with skimmers, nothing to 'skim' with cash.

So the risks with BitCoin are that from far away people can steal it from where it is being kept. These are the same risks as having cash in a banking instituion, except the bank has regulations that it has to meet in terms of being able to guarantee that even if they lose my funds they will replace them. Without the equivalent of the FDIC for BitCoin is qualifies as "higher risk."

[gnerd]

A person in a far away land is unlikely to be able to steal funds you put in a physical BitCoin wallet generated offline that has never had any transaction outputs. Less likely than the cash analogy.

They can get my debit card number and steal money remotely though.