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Comment by strangattractor | Hacker News Reader

They are simply having to duplicate all the things Visa provides its customers.

BTC is inherently deflationary in the sense that once new coins cease to be mined the total number of BTC will decrease over time due to lose, theft and death. I know that I lost my wallet with the only BTC I owned 10 years ago. I can name several other people that have done the same. I would think this one property makes it undesirable for use as a currency.

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> I know that I lost my wallet with the only BTC I owned 10 years ago. I can name several other people that have done the same. I would think this one property makes it undesirable for use as a currency.

How is this any different from losing your wallet with physical currency?

Because crypto wallets are more akin to bank accounts than wallets.

In many cases if you lose your physical wallet, someone else will find it and the cash will stay in circulation, but even if not, as physical currency is much more inflationary it's no big deal.

The second point is that most people keep a lot less money in a physical wallet, usually no more than say a few hundred dollars. Whereas a bitcoin wallet will often contain thousands or more so is more akin to a bank account.

Most of the lost coins will all be recovered by quantum computers. There is no way to update or fix the wallets they are stored in.

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