| The Target, Sony hackings were indeed unfortunate, but they are exceptions rather than the norm. No, they're just the high-profile. Credit card hacks are happening constantly. A quick Google search shows crafts store Michaels (3 million CCs), White Lodging Services and Creathe Group (5 million CCs), all just announced since March. Last year, Adobe lost more than 100 million CCs. There was $11 billion in CC fraud just in 2012! And they can also be likened to the many exchanges and wallets that have been hacked in the bitcoin world. Exchanges are not comparable, the only people who need to keep money there are traders. As for wallets, that's true, but the difference is that there's only a single place with the data, instead of dozens or even hundreds of retailers each with a copy of a single CC. You'll probably never have a single wallet service with dozens of millions of accounts, such as Target, Sony and Adobe had. Except in the latter case, consumers could not get their money back. Anyone who thinks that comes for free is naive. You're paying, alright. Just indirectly. --- This doesn't mean Bitcoins are the answer. For example, here in Portugal, we have had sane push-based payment mechanisms for years, and requiring credit cards is thankfully rare. But I've never seen such a service work internationally. |
If someone broke the security on a wallet hosting service they could clear out every customer completely instantly with no recourse.
>You're paying, alright. Just indirectly.
And so are bitcoin users that shop in most stores that also accept credit cards. It's priced in for everyone.