You can't steal my Bitcoin if I don't deposit them with a custodian. This is like blaming gold itself if the owners of a gold bank run off with the gold.
Many people have lost their BTC and other coins to hacks, phishes, hardware failures, software failures and so on. So in the sense of the people from the general public, yes, I can steal your Bitcoin.
> This is like blaming gold itself if the owners of a gold bank run off with the gold.
You can keep it under the mattress and expose yourself to one kind of failure mode. You can also keep it with the bank with the clear expectation that the owners will not run off with the gold and also expect the state to go after the owners if they do. Which is not happening here.
Let's fix that phrase:
- yes, I can steal your Bitcoin keys
And then go further and transfer the bitcoins
Other than that, no, you CANNOT steal "my" bitcoins
Cryptographically verified exchange is a different kind of exchange, and it has its own benefits and drawbacks. one of the benefits of this kind of exchange is that mere custody of the currency in question does not relate to ownership.
Does that make gold worse or better than bitcoin? No, it just makes them different.
Crypto has certain vulnerabilities that gold doesn’t. But it also has lots of benefits.
But I don’t know of any situations where gold banks let them drive trucks of $40M in gold before they stopped customers. It’s just harder to move.
It can lift it several stories up, into the building, where the bank can unload it safely without risk of robbery.
Also, of course, you can't actually steal bitcoin, you can merely steal the keys. That is an actual distinction because possession of the article itself is meaningless without the other half of the cryptographic operation it takes to move it.
bitcoin is harder to insure because guaranteeing the safety of keys remains a challenge.
If I steal your keys, I steal your Bitcoin. And it’s easier to steal the private keys to $40M in Bitcoin than it is to steal $40M in gold (700 kg).
What I meant with my poor analogy is that if a bank is planning on blocking customers from withdrawing funds, it’s much harder to ship out the gold to their friends than to ship out Bitcoin. It’s pretty trivial to allow Bitcoin withdrawals. It’s just logistically hard to coordinate the transport of 700kg of gold out of the bank and to somewhere else.
arguably, if we are making value statements, there are a set of similar trade-offs for physical protection of keys vs. primary material. 700kg is harder to move: that's a security feature. keys are small: that's a security feature, because they are a small O(1) surface area to protect regardless of how much value they maintain control over at any given moment.
these are simply tradeoffs. it is only "easier" to steal keys if they are left unprotected.
here's the enormous truck you would need to carry $40m in gold, apparently: https://www.tkingauto.com/mini-truck/rear-single-tire-truck/...
At the end of the day, any power you think you may have is an illusion. It all comes down to who has the monopoly on violence.