[bergeoisie]

I would much rather spend 10 minutes on the phone with my credit card company once every couple years contesting fraudulent transactions than have the potential for all of my money to be stolen if I make one security fuck up ever.

The number of "I had all my bitcoins stolen, here is the list of 25 security precautions I've taken, where did I fuck up" articles is terrifying. I'm willing to sacrifice the 1% savings or whatever it is I'd theoretically get from bitcoin for that peace of mind.

[mrb]

You completely ignored my 2nd paragraph. NONE of the theft victims you read about used hardware wallets.

[lttlrck]

They'll be replaced by people that forgot their PIN and lost the paper backup.

[mrb]

Cash works, so hardware wallets will work.

See, people are used to, and are already pretty good at securing valuables such as cash (in a safe, at home, or on themselves). A paper backup presents to additional complexity to store securely. And Bitcoin offers extra advantages: losing your paper backup does not affect you ability to use the wallet, and you can have multiple backups, etc. So a hardware wallet is at least better than or equal to cash in terms of security.

[NSEDhom]

If you refuse to take any responsibility in life, Bitcoin is not for you.

[Nursie]

So.... it's not for most people then?

Because we've evolved a hell of a lot of ways for people to offload responsibility over the last hundred or so years, particularly where money is involved.

In general I think it's a pretty good thing.

[sp332]

Why take responsibility when a credit card company will do it for you? That's a MAJOR selling point of credit cards.

[aianus]

Because there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Sure, the bank/CC company will take responsibility for fraudulent charges. In return, they:

1. Randomly cancel your cards and mail you new ones to limit their risk. (No explanation other than 'security')

2. Refuse to let you use your cards to deposit on gambling sites (which are legal in Canada). They also charge extra fees for 'cash-like' transactions on things like forex sites.

3. Reject large purchases that are 'out of the ordinary' making you look like a jackass. This one happened to my dad while he was booking flights.

4. Skim 2-3% or more of each transaction.

5. Maintain onerous requirements for merchants. Square has helped a lot with this in the first world but in the rest of the world they don't even bother taking electronic payments because it's such a hassle to get approved, lease the machines, maintain a security deposit, etc.

Sometimes it makes more sense to just take the risk of getting scammed than deal with all of the above.

[sp332]

So what happened when credit cards went toe-to-toe with bitcoin? Bitcoin got its ass handed to it. http://pando.com/2013/08/27/an-expensive-lesson-against-sell... Ebay had to ban bitcoin sales because sellers were getting ripped off so often by credit card owners.

[kalleboo]

This is exactly why Credit Cards are so popular, and Bitcoin will never ever take off.

[ufmace]

Of course they don't - there's no such thing as a hardware wallet yet. It's irrelevant to the discussion to say that a theft might not have happened if the victim had been using a fictional technology.