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> They have every incentive possible to treat their customers right, and issue refunds on valid issues.

There are plenty of fly-by-night operations that will smash and grab as many transactions as they can and not care about their reputations because they'll just set up under another alias.

Further, if your account/wallet gets compromised there is also no irreversibility. Whereas with the 'regular' banking system transactions can usually get reversed.

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So, just don't do business with those obvious fly-by-night companies who have no established reputation or brand?

From a company's point of view almost every individual consumer looks like a potential fly-by-nighter, so companies are forced to accept that risk, and we all share the costs of that. It could be useful to offer an alternative to this paradigm.

> So, just don't do business with those obvious fly-by-night companies who have no established reputation or brand?

You're telling people to "just" be rational. Or to not be susceptible to slick marketing gimmicks, or to not be bamboozled by a fast-talking salesman.

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