Deep security issues? Like what?
"Be your own bank" implies "be your own security division", which very few people are qualified to do.
You implied there were deep fundamental flaws in BTC security, but your response shows nothing of the sort. Your 'deep flaw' is 'you have to protect your private keys'. You are describing a UX flaw, and I would agree with that. Objectively, you have exposed no 'deep security issues'.
That means that any security breach is catastrophic. Whereas the routine security breaches of credit and debit cards, and online banking systems, are not catastrophic.
Physical cash is of course not subject to instant theft from anywhere in the world - the theif has to be in the same place as the cash. Whereas it's basically not safe to use bitcoin on any computer connected to the internet - to do so is equivalent to leaving it in the street - rendering it hilariously unsuited to ecommerce.
Not to mention that the most convenient ways of actually getting money in and out of the bitcoin system, the exchanges, tend to have frequent security breaches and exit scams of their own.
(I should just point out that in this discussion generally the anti-bitcoin side uses 'bitcoin' to refer to 'the totality of systems needed to do normal useful things with bitcoin', while the pro-bitcoin side limits it to only the protocol and possibly the reference client implementation.)
This is simply incorrect. I fail to understand why so many people believe bitcoin transactions are untraceable, we are talking about a public ledger.
I understand the gap between how supporters and non-supporters discuss bitcoin. It's just that if you give all your USD to a scammer, we don't say there is a fundamental flaw with the USD.
However, even with this difficulty, it's still easier than tracing cash payments to a particular entity. If I pay someone in cash, under the table, good luck proving the cash was ever mine. I would wager the government would prefer criminals conduct their business in bitcoin.
If you don't like cryptocurrencies, thats fine, don't use them. I'm just asking that you do not misrepresent them with half truths in some fruitless attempt to show they are flawed when compared to cash.
Bitcoin's non-physical nature (as compared to paper and coin currencies), I think, makes it more of a metaphor to a bank account or debit/credit card than a currency. This likely is a UX flaw, as you state, but it's a pretty big flaw.
And credit cards, in most jurisdictions, have lots of protections against theft and fraud, as well as consumer protections like chargebacks and transactions are reversible, of course.
Bitcoins are a form of digital cash.
You store Bitcoins in a wallet. If you lose your Bitcoin wallet you lose your bitcoins. In a similar sense, if you lose your wallet containing notes/coins, you lose your notes/coins. The security risk is the same.
Because of this, it's better to compare Bitcoin to other forms of "digital/virtual representations of currency", like debit cards and credit cards. And that's where Bitcoin's mass-adoption-type use-cases tend to fall apart.
Exactly. This is why, where there are trusted and easy to access alternatives, people generally don't possess and carry around large amounts of cash.