[michaelt]

You can still do automated transactions from your hot wallet - human intervention is only required for transactions that exceed the size of the hot wallet.

And merchants who don't make enough profit to pay $20-$30 an hour to put a human in the loop can have a payment processing company do it.

Don't get me wrong, if you think bitcoin websites have done a superb job at securing their hot wallets [1,2], you're welcome to keep all your money in a hot wallet where it can be 100% cleaned out without a human lifting a finger. Good luck with that.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0 [2] http://fc13.ifca.ai/proc/1-2.pdf