How do you pay Apple without giving them a secret?
> How do you pay Apple without giving them a secret?
Credit cards being effectively unrestricted bearer tokens isn't nearly the only way to do payments. For example you could send a signed message to your bank instructing them to pay Apple (in a world in which you'd be paying them; again, Apple Pay is not that).
And if you were signing your own payments, you'd still have to trust your computing device and the bank.
You would send $100 to your computing device every now and then. And use that for day to day spendings. If the device turns out to be malicious, you lost only the $100 and stay away from the brand that made the device.
A bank would not be involved at all.
On the other hand, having some money outside a bank is nice. I've had them freeze my assets before just cuz they felt like it, until I spent a whole day telling them to fix it.
An algorithm cannot be reasoned with, it cannot understand that your house burned down and destroyed your ID. It cannot accept liability for it's actions.
If I lose my bank card I go to a branch, verify my ID, and get a replacement. The bank is liable if they allow somebody other then me access to my accounts, regardless of how convincing the fraudster might have been.
Source, been using banks for 30 years now.
My solution in the end hinged on a paper recovery phrase, stored in... a bank.