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Comment by uncomputation | Hacker News Reader

> Speed

Bitcoin can handle 7 transactions per second, on average. VISA can handle 1,700.

> Security

Your bank account is secured with a password. If compromised, you can prove your identity in person at a bank with government documents and obviously physical appearance. Bitcoin has one method of authentication, the signing key, and once you lose it, you have lost your account.

> Privacy

Every transaction you make as well as your balance is public on a blockchain. Your bank account is private only to you and the bank itself.

> Trust

This one is more subjective and I won’t really comment if I trust Chase or Coinbase more, but I will say this is somewhat ironic on a post about how Coinbase is selling IP data to ICE.

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> Bitcoin can handle 7 transactions per second

Look up Lightning. To be honest, saying this is a pretty reliable reverse-shibboleth that you have no idea what you're on about.

> Your bank account is secured with a password.

secp256k1 is a lot stronger than a shitty bank website.

> the signing key, and once you lose it, you have lost your account

Good thing we have invented backups. Even multisig if you wan to get fancy.

> Every transaction you make as well as your balance is public on a blockchain.

On a pseudonymous address that's difficult to impossible to correlate with an individual, and effectively impossible when using lightning.

> Your bank account is private only to you and the bank itself.

And the state comptroller, and the police, and the bank's advertising partners, and any number of federal agencies, and anyone who looks at frequent bank data leaks, and...

> This one is more subjective and I won’t really comment if I trust Chase or Coinbase more

Do I need to explain why it's not accurate to conflate coinbase with bitcoin, or was this just for rhetorical effect?

> Bitcoin can handle 7 transactions per second, on average. VISA can handle 1,700.

You're not comparing the same thing.

A Bitcoin transaction that makes its way into a block is settled within ~10 minutes and irreversible in ~60 minutes.

A VISA transaction is an IOU between the customer, VISA and the merchant. The merchant won't have settled funds for up to 90 days. VISA settles with the customer anywhere between a day or week, but these transactions are reversible for up to 90 days. VISA settles between bank accounts at best daily.

If we are comparing like for like, use of the Bitcoin Lightning network is far closer to the service offers of VISA, and the lightning network scales the Bitcoin network far beyond 7 tps.

>I won’t really comment if I trust Chase or Coinbase

Bitcoin gives you the option to trust nobody. You are able to interact with the Bitcoin ledger without trusting any intermediary, even if the majority of people will choose not to. This is not an option with the existing financial system.

>Speed

Bitcoin has Lightning network which is peer-to-peer and is quite fast.

>Security

It is up to you on how to generate your keys. You can use your passport number combined with whatever, you can split your secret between notaries (which would require your ID just like banks), etc.

> Privacy

Bitcoin has Lightning network which is offchain.

> Trust

Here you equate Coinbase with Bitcoin. I think it is wrong to do that, on the brink of logical fallacy.

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