The real purpose of Bitcoin is to speculate on the roller coaster. Everything else is basically woo that's needed to fuel it. The "future of money" where people by their coffee with a super-secure private wallet is a lie.
> Everything else is basically woo that's needed to fuel the speculative roller coaster.
For some people sure, but not all, and I would even go as far as to say not the main intention of the original product.
It certainly wasn't the "main intention of the original product," but Bitcoin failed at that. A big part of that failure was the peculiar ideology that got baked in through many of its design decisions.
what makes you say that? I use bitcoin to conduct private transactions regularly and its pretty darn solid for that purpose. Doing such a transaction over the internet, before bitcoin, required you to use permissioned rails.
Just because it can be used like that doesn't mean it actually succeeded. The vast majority of Bitcoin is held as a speculative investment, and the deflationary aspects are a strong disincentive to regular circulation.
A monetary system that only works if a small number of people use it is...not useful.
AFAICT, the main intention of the original product was to undermine fiat currency, and by proxy, the institutions that are built on and support it, primarily governments and central banks but extending beyond that to broader societal institutions that use taxes and monetary policy as their tools.
I'm not so sure it's done with that yet.
The financial FOMO that fuels that goal just seems like a means to that end, and the climate damage from it's energy consumption seems like an (unintended?) second order effect whose problematic nature needs to be rationalized post hoc.
If someone is buying crypto to hold it for years, then wallets and hardware keys and 12-word passphrases make the most sense.
If you're not sure if you'll hold a coin for long, or are speculating, or have less than $5k on the exchange, it might not be worth the hassle (for the indeterminate 'you') to create and manage your own wallets.
Most might, but Coinbase does not. Outgoing transfers are free—they even cover the network fee. For incoming transfers the sender pays the network fee but there is no additional charge.
It's a bit of a hassle to shift funds around, and not having your funds instantly available on the exchange limits your ability to take advantage of short-term opportunities, but in general I would still recommend self-custody over leaving "large" amounts of crypto on an exchange for very long. That's less due to the risk of bankruptcy and more due to the risk of the exchange getting hacked—practically speaking we have more real-world examples of the latter case, discounting bankruptcy directly resulting from a previous hack.
Makes sense that a lot of people just want an easy way to manage their crypto. If you’re not ideologically dedicated to decentralization, why not do the easy thing?
To me Coinbase feels more like bank. Once I deposit money I no longer worry about the physical security of that money. Clearly that isn't the case given it's not FDIC insured, but the fact that it's a multi-billion dollar publicly-traded corporation instills some confidence.
And that is the danger. It feels like a bank, and lots of other people also feel it is like a bank, so you figure you are safe.
But it is not a bank. It does not offer the regulator protection of a bank. Feelings don't change that. A good UI does not change that. Only regulation change that.
I bought a hardware wallet years ago and then decided not to use it. If Coinbase goes down crypto as a whole will probably be brought under with it, so I’d rather have someone else manage it for me.
Yes she'll figure that out easily!
These can be reissued: https://www.usa.gov/replace-vital-documents
Crypto on the other hand is just like "you're screwed, go scour the landfill for your hard drive".
Also, isn't the promise of crypto/defi that it's supposed to NOT be like those archaic systems (SSN, birth certs, etc.)?!
But honestly, most HN uses password managers -- if crypto became primary currency, that would make hacking someplace like Bitwarden or Coinbase enormous world shattering honeypots -- like Nation state targets.