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Comment by bluepnume | Hacker News Reader

You don't like it because it's possible to lose? Are all of your other physical possessions immune from being lost?

There's a reason people keep their financial assets in a bank or other such institution, rather than cash under the mattress.

IF they live in a place where this is perceived as safe.

How many Canadians are now rethinking that decision after the government banned people from using their own money if they supported a cause the rulers found objectionable? It's not everyone, certainly, but it's also not no one.

Banks are safe until they aren't. If you're lucky enough to live somewhere they are, for now, great! Enjoy that while it lasts.

But recognize that it isn't true everywhere, and it isn't necessarily true always even where it's true presently. Just because it's a reasonable thing for you to do right now, that doesn't make it a reasonable thing for all or even most people to do now, much less indefinitely.

In which case: do you think it's impossible for a bank to vault Bitcoin with the same level of security as traditional money?

Bitcoin is not a physical possession.

My money right now is (mostly) not a physical possession either. It exists as a non-blockchain ledger entry in bank's computer system, and cannot be lost as easily as crypto currency, even if I make a mistake like forgetting my password.

Dont worry it will be slowly lost to inflation anyway without you doing anything about it

Which is why people are encouraged not to keep their wealth in money. We can get bogged down in endless discussions about the theory of money, but my view is that money is not meant to be an appreciating asset. It is meant to be an easily fungible currency that discourages hoarding so that it's always put to work.

"Dont" [sic] worry, it's invested, not stagnant.

You have the luxury of living in a high-trust society with a stable banking system. Even if you assume that current stable banking systems will remain that way in perpetuity, half the world's population does not live under these conditions. Their risk calculations will be different from yours. That alone is enough to sustain the value of cryptocurrencies.

Yes, I do. I was addressing the issue of losing physical possessions though, not the sociological aspects of how bitcoin might theoretically scale to solve the monetary problems of half the world.

Bitcoin, just like traditional money, can exist as a non-blockchain ledger entry in bank's computer system. This is how most exchanges and custodial wallets work.

The difference is, you can also self-custody your Bitcoin. Obviously what's in your custody is just a private key; but for all intents and purposes that is self-custody. You are the sole person in control of those coins.

So Bitcoin gives you the choice of how you want to store it. Traditional money does not give you that choice. At a certain point there are physical and practical limits to how much cash you can self-custody (not to mention transport or transfer from one place or person to another).

Self storage of non crypto assets beyond a certain threshold often end up taking the form of other assets like real estate. Purely from a net worth standpoint it's usually not optimal to have cash (physical or banked) on hand above a certain point.

But I take your meaning and it's a valid point: crypto self storage scales better than traditional cash. If scaling of that sort was an issue for me and self-storage a critical feature I wanted then crypto would fill the need. For the moment I'd still avoid using it for that purpose: I don't consider any coin truly stable at the moment, and if a new one came along tomorrow that appeared to have a rock solid foundation then I'd still want to see a few years of history before trusting it's stability. USDC might come close, but can you have self-custody of it, or trade it outside of the Coinbase ecosystem?

You can certainly self-custody USDC -- but unlike Bitcoin, even if you self-custody you still have to trust that the USD backing the coin actually exists somewhere.

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