It's safe if you keep your money in coinbase.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
You wait and see what happens when coinbase has 500 billion or a trillion dollars worth of hard currency on their platform, and the us dollar is three years into its slide. The temptation to raid that will be far too great.
Obviously, this makes no sense to a cryto enthusiast, because they care more about the stuff you talked about.
But the "average" zero knowledge person who freaks out about how Bitcoin is "unsafe" is usually talking about private key theft, or getting scammed by someone. These "unsafe" things aren't a problem on coinbase.
I come from a construction background (big stuff) and it hadn't occurred to me that people would not get my connotative understanding of 'safety'. For me, safety is about risk minimization. If you haven't considered actual risk when you investigate doing something that could hurt you, it isn't 'safe'.
So thanks for helping me recognize that.
https://www.moodys.com/sites/products/DefaultResearch/200710...
Of course, when you start defining "safe" in a probabilistic way, you end up very quickly estimating the degree of safety instead of binary safe/not safe.
Nice subtle joke(?) with that link to a Moody's March 2008 report on rating bonds given that rating agencies were probably the closest single thing you could point to as the fraud that caused the mortgage bubble and 2008 collapse. Yes, sometimes a feeling can be closer to the truth than a lot of complicated math done with wrong assumptions.
I agree that general public is utterly incapable of understanding basic concepts of probability. (See: Clinto had probability 52% of winning. Trump won -> Forecast was wrong. How stupid is that?) I just commented when you told you have not seen safe even defined in a probabilistic way.
> Yes, sometimes a feeling can be closer to the truth than a lot of complicated math done with wrong assumptions.
To me that is like a stopped clock is correct twice a day compared to a working clock that is just having wrong time all the time.
At least with the complicated math you are forced to spell out the assumptions and there is a chance you are able to recognize them before it is too late.
Threat models and risk balancing are important.
Per your other argument: a whole host of executive orders spanning 2 years, nearly 100 years ago, designed to work around the federal reserve ratio, doesn't hold much water.
Here is more information about the topic :https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet