[Cryptography] Bitcoin theft and the future of cryptocurrencies

[Will Vacher]

Its about working out where the boundaries between centralisation and
decentralisation ought to be.
"decentralise everything" is as naive as "centralise everything" is imperfect.
One could imagine banks remaining useful as, among other things, cold
storage options. For example safety deposit boxes, tied to stringent
biometrics, perhaps.
The debate over which cryptocurrency is going to "win" is in my
opinion the wrong debate, its largely irrelevant already; the future
will allow people to exchange any kind of value with any other kind of
value and it will not matter where they have chosen to store the value
(at least, not to the system that ends up being adopted globally).
The main mitigation against the risk of theft will be education and
awareness, but it is also possible that gateways between fiat and "any
value exchange" will allow for human errors.


Best Regards,
Will Vacher


On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 10:45 AM, John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
> In article <CAH9pdwftbj2Rwk8ih=3TGs0uj_ssU-oi_DsU-E1kaEpP2yLLTA at mail.gmail.com> you write:
>>The real question is if people (as in the average joe, not just from the
>>crypto community) would trade the anonymity of bitcoin and other coins for
>>one that's less private but more scam and theft-proof.
>
> If you compare the number of transactions done with cash these days to
> the number done with plastic, the answer should be pretty obvious.
>
> This article in today's NY Times looks at NY doormen and other
> employees who have traditionally gotten a lot of income from cash
> tips, but nobody has cash any more:
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/style/seasonal-tips-cash-free-payments.html
>
> R's,
> John
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