[bduerst]

Insurance (and chargebacks) is one of those things you don't care about until you need it.

When someone stole my debit card number (probably through a compromised reader) and began using it fraudulently, my bank contact me, shut down the card, and eventually gave me my money back. How many people at Mt. Gox were insured?

You can make contrived hypotheticals about the "benefits" of not having these services, but they get harder to explain away when you do need them.

[yc1010]

Bitcoin != Mt Gox

The people using Mt Gox knew it was not an insured service and for most part ignored all warning signs for a long time that it was basically a scam.

They CHOSE to trust a shady service with a ridiculous name for the storage of their bitcoins when they could have stored them locally in a quite a secure manner. They CHOSE to send bitcoins and fiat to service that had warning lights flashing above it for months and months on end. The people who lost money in Mt Gox knew exactly what they were getting into and got burned for it.

Their stupidity is not the fault of bitcoin protocol/platform yet you and many others equate bitcoin to MtGox unfortunately.

BTW > http://blog.ycombinator.com/coinbase-yc-s12-is-becoming-the-... There are services being build around bitcoin including Ycombinator funded ones that build on bitcoin and start to offer things such as insurance and good professional trading tools and api's etc etc on top.

Bitcoin is a technology which gives users more options and choice (including choice to spend their money on scams such as MtGox if they so wish)

[bduerst]

Mt. Gox used bitcoin, just as my bank uses USD and has FDIC insurance. Stop splitting hairs.

Any number of the fraudulant/hacked bitcoin exchanges or marketplaces could be used in place of Mt. Gox as an example of when you need insurance: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0

You can't claim that no insurance/chargebacks is a competitive benefit and then say the ensuing consequences aren't a problem because of "expectations". People on a daily basis do not expect accidents or fraud, but when it does happen it is needed.

[yc1010]

You got it backwards it is the person I replied to earlier who claims that credit cards are superior because they have the "chargeback" feature.

Most of the worlds commerce is done in cash, Bitcoin is very much like electronic cash and it does this very very well. Like any other well designed protocol it does not attempt to do more than it was designed to do.

Things like insurance and chargebacks etc etc will be provided (already are!) by startups in the bitcoin space, and thats great.

In my opinion the credit card "chargeback" process is not a feature it gives too much control to the consumer while shafting them merchant (which in turns leads to higher prices for the consumer) all while making money for the credit card duopoly. If anything it makes fraud (against the merchant) more possible and likely this once again results in the consumers being indirectly harmed when merchants have to price in credit card fraud and chargebacks into their prices.

[bduerst]

The spotted insurance being provided for bitcoin is through private for-profit organizations, which unlike FDIC, has margins that come at a cost to the consumer.

There are "chargeback" solutions, which involve multi-sig escrow, but are not unique to bitcoin and thus not competitive.

This is why bitcoin can't be competitive - because consumers make the decision on what type of payment method to use and opt for the method that empowers them in case of fraud and accidents. Bitcoin isn't competitive by design, and no amount of proselytizing will change that.

[yc1010]

You see a problem I see opportunities for banks to have regular (insured) current account linked to bitcoin payment system giving the consumer the option to pay using bitcoin direct from their current account if they so wish.

Imagine a consumer instead of withdrawing €50 at an ATM with their debit card and then going for a drink in the pub. Instead settling their tab at the pub (or paying by waving their phone) using their phone with a bitcoin app

[etchalon]

And they couldn't do this with a credit card and Google Wallet/Apple Pay/Softcard, because?