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Comment by canoebuilder | Hacker News Reader

Just in case lordnacho's meaning here isn't clear to anyone.

testing a bit with short keys.

He's put some bitcoin into wallets with keys/passwords that don't meet very high security standards.

I've already lost a tiny amount of BTC

He's then lost that bitcoin because there are programs running running around the clock to programatically empty any wallets with passwords that don't meet very high standards of security.

Thus,

Can you imagine what the world would be like if every time you left your wallet for 10 seconds, it vanished?

But this is the "trustless" world you signed up for right?

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A more accurate analogy would be that your money vanished from a public locker with combination 0-0-0.

Nobody complains about the shortage of address space provided by 256 bits. This guy was experimenting, and being lazy during his experiments, so at the very least he should have known what to expect after the first loss.

It still violates the optimistic premise of blockchain advocates that it helps us move to a world where trust is baked into the systems.

If you live under the assumption that you're perpetually under attack unless you rigorously protect yourself, it's not really the example of trust we're promising to non-technically adept folks.

> A more accurate analogy would be that your money vanished from a public locker with combination 0-0-0.

And it's a pleasant world where every time you do that, you get robbed.

> Nobody complains about the shortage of address space provided by 256 bits. This guy was experimenting, and being lazy during his experiments, so at the very least he should have known what to expect after the first loss.

This is totally beside the point.

There's a social cost to constantly having to watch what you do. If you're robbed any time you're on the street, you'll have to spend time learning self defence and you'll have to buy appropriate tools such as locks. You'll also have to teach your friends about this, and you'll need friends. And your attitude to strangers will change.

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