I spent five years fruitlessly trying to improve the current banking system (actually, the current money transfer system) so I am more intimately aware of its shortcomings than most people. Considering how many things are wrong with it, it's astonishing to me that it works at all. And yet, most of the time, it does.

There are two things that make the current banking system robust: first, because anonymity is limited, most of the actors in the system are honest. Trying to pull a fast one is risky, and that prevents most people from trying. And second, there are humans in the loop that you can appeal to when things go wrong. Most of the time this keeps the system humming along despite the fact that under the hood it's all held together with spit and baling wire.

Bitcoin is the exact opposite. Because it provides greater anonymity than the traditional banking system, it attracts dishonest actors. For example, bitcoin has made ransomware more economically viable than it was before. And second, if something goes wrong with a bitcoin transaction, you are totally hosed. Your bitcoin payment is only as safe as your ability to reliably bind a bitcoin address to an intended recipient. If you get it wrong, there's no recourse. If you accidentally send some bitcoin to the wrong address, you are hosed. If you lose your private key, you are hosed. Period, end of story.

If I have to choose between bitcoin and traditional banking I'll take the latter simply because it's generally more robust and forgiving of everyday human foibles. But I'll continue to wish for (and work towards) a system that gives us the best of both worlds.