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Comment by siwatanejo | Hacker News Reader

Every time I see these stories I'm glad I keep all my bitcoin in my own self-custodial wallet. Not your keys not your bitcoin.

You keep fiat currency in a bank? HFSP

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The dude who's been hunting for his hard drive with his wallet keys on a dumpster yard would like to speak a word with you. Or those who had their disks seized by the government and the coins auctioned off. Or those where someone placed malware on their PCs or phones and exfiltrated keys.

Your bank account can sure ve seized by the government and even not auctioned off.

That's far less likely in most Western countries. Whether or not bitcoin is safer than a bank depends on where you live. But in the West it definitely isn't.

If you live in the third world, sure.

Tell that to all those Russian oligarchs that got their assets frozen

To be fair to the parent commenter, they specifically said "the West", which is exactly the opposite of Russia.

That said, I do think freedom to transact is an essential human right yet to be enshrined.

The freezing happened in the west

The Western world is who froze their assets :/

>That said, I do think freedom to transact is an essential human right yet to be enshrined.

You literally cannot create a "freedom to transact" without violating other people's freedom of association. You have no right to other people's anything.

Can you explain more? I don't get how transacting affects third parties.

I agreed until the Canadian trucker protestors had their bank accounts frozen.

how would bitcoin have helped them?, presumably their wallets if made public to request donations would also have been flagged at all exchanges so no way to cash out.

You can also be put in jail for contempt until you cough up your bitcoins

If those in power want something, they tend to get it

Knowledge is power. If they do not know about it they can't ask for it

Wuhu good that I'm not a shitty person and the risk of loosing a wallet is 100x more realistic than your scenario

probably never had an offsite backup

I alwasy find it amusing that people on HN hate governments, big corps and banks so much... but when it comes to real money they trust these institutions full-heartedly (and downvote any alternative).

It turns out that way more than one person is on HN and they don’t always agree on every topic.

Yes, and I believe upvoting/downvoting reflects how HN people collectively think to some extent. I might be wrong and the upvoting/downvoting can be all artificial, of course.

Enough to eat for a couple of years. I keep my fiat currency in property.

Only property? Don't keep all eggs in the same basket. I keep my net worth in both property and bitcoin.

I can't live inside bitcoins.

That seems like a poor use of capital.

What would you do with it?

Invest.

I might be wrong, but I believe when people say "in property" it means they do invest. In real estate.

Oh, I interpreted "in my property" as like, "under my mattress", not literally invested in the property. My bad.

That makes sense now :)

That's not what "fiat currency" means.

I know. I said exactly what I meant to say.

You keep stacks of 100 dollar bills inside your physical property?

Hahaha cute.

Love your self management. Just have the balls later when you loose access :-)

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