And here: https://twitter.com/mudgen/status/1338967176968069127
I want mistakes to be fixable, by going to court if necessary, rather than money just being lost forever because I mistyped a character and "computer says no".
For example there could be, as part of the contract, much like there are exceptional provisions in real world contract, a M-of-N sig allowing the funds to be reverted back to the sender if enough (M) people agree that it's the correct thing to do.
This particular contract didn't seem to have any such provisions, which made it very unsafe.
Current smart contracts aren't very sophisticated yet, this is still the stone age for programmable money.
Things will improve, but in the meantime ... be safe out there.
Diversification.
I DO keep all my money in Western financial institutions, but that's laziness, not out of some misguided perception of stability. If I were optimizing, I'd have some in US institutions, some abroad, some in land, some in blockchain, some in gold, etc.
The US has had a nice 250-year run. Past performance doesn't always predict future performance, and more importantly, if I live 100 years, that means the US has been around for 2.5 of my lifetimes. I think that's a good indicator of the level of stability. There's perhaps a 1-in-2 chance of some major event within my lifetime, consider things like the American Revolution, Civil War, or Great Depression to be major events.
Not all of those would wipe out my assets, but I'd say about a 1:5 chance of my assets being neutered or neutralized within my life.
We tend to plan for the common, minor stuff (typo, guy loses $50k), and overlook big, rare events (like the current, entirely predictable pandemic).