Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by simias 4477 days ago
Both of those points can be seen as good arguments against bitcoin by many. Myself for instance, I don't consider facilitating tax evasion and impossibility to regulate by democratically elected governments a point in favour of bitcoin.

That being said to get back on the technical merits of bitcoin, I agree with the OP that I can't imagine every individual handling their own bitcoin wallet and risk losing everything if it gets compromised (and waiting for transactions to be validated etc...).

So even if the currency is successful we'll end up with bitcoin banks managing the risk for us and visa-like credit cards for day to day transactions. And then I fail to see any advantage over what we have now (besides making a few early adopters extremely rich, of course).
2 comments
VMG 4477 days ago
> Myself for instance, I don't consider facilitating tax evasion and impossibility to regulate by democratically elected governments a point in favour of bitcoin.

That makes Bitcoin immoral from your perspective, without saying anything about the feasibility.

You even restrict the morality argument yourself by saying it is good that a democratically elected government should have the ability to control financial transactions, which I completely disagree with, but even you will admit that there are a lot of unethical governments out there that hurt their population by controlling financial transactions and inflating the money supply.

link
simias 4477 days ago
I never said my view was the correct one, I just said I had a different opinion on the matter.

The parent is the one who said that it made it "all worthwhile". That sounded like a general truth to me, I felt the need to point out that it was still up for debate.

And my 2nd point was about the feasibility, I still have to hear from the bitcoin crowd what's the solution for day-to-day use of the currency that does not involve a bank-but-we-don't-call-it-a-bank-seriously-it's-not-a-bank.

link
VMG 4476 days ago
> And my 2nd point was about the feasibility, I still have to hear from the bitcoin crowd what's the solution for day-to-day use of the currency that does not involve a bank-but-we-don't-call-it-a-bank-seriously-it's-not-a-bank.

Bitcoin was designed to be a peer-to-peer payment system where the owner of the private key is the owner of the funds. Unfortunately, building secure hardware and software is very difficult, that's why many people choose to not keep their private key on their device but let a service deal with the security, which is often a bad idea. One secure hardware is cheaply available on the market[1] and two-factor-authentication becomes more widespread, this becomes less of an issue.

http://www.bitcointrezor.com/

link
dllthomas 4476 days ago
"I never said my view was the correct one, I just said I had a different opinion on the matter."

I get what you're saying, but presumably the fact that you hold an opinion indicates that you think it's the correct one.

link
genwin 4476 days ago
> Myself for instance, I don't consider facilitating tax evasion and impossibility to regulate by democratically elected governments a point in favour of bitcoin.

If we had a strong democracy I'd support your viewpoint here. But in our 2-party oligopoly gov't, the general voters' interests are typically secondary to the wealthy's. Bitcoin helps even the score.

link
dllthomas 4476 days ago
Tax evasion helps the wealthy a whole heck of a lot more than it helps the impoverished, so I'm not sure it helps to even the score on that count. Avoiding regulation can go either way - reducing barriers to entry by circumventing regulatory capture is a plus (though the wealthy will be in a better position to enter), reducing the pricing in of externalities is a minus (and the wealthy will be best able to exploit this).
link