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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

These guys could benefit from BitCoin, if it were ubiquitous. Too bad...

They did utilize bitcoin. I purchased my VIP account with them via bitcoin.

My point was more that Bitcoin isn't widespread enough to compete with traditional payment processors yet, which would have saved these guys.

I would guess that also Bitcoin is nowhere stable enough to be taken seriously. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bitcoin_exchange.png

The page up at Newzbin2.es (or at least the Google cached version for those of us in the UK) which shut recently mention that BitCoin is too complicated for most people. I never used it so can't say...

I agree with the premise that Bitcoin is too hard to use for all but the most technically minded people.

The fundamentals may be, but the implementation doesn't have to. One could easily just make do with "send" and "receive" functionality. Blockchain has a very nice android app.

My first experience was buying some coins through Mt. Gox, and immediately having my email leaked. It's something that seems to happen with alarming regularity in the Bitcoin world, people dropping 0-days left right and centre to get their hands virtual stashes.

I suspect I probably got burnt trying bitcoin, but I would still warn anyone against using Blockchain for anything more than a toy.

The alternative is to run your own client, and download close to 3GB of data at a snails pace. Neither are at all attractive at the moment.

Hmm, from what I saw, Blockchain keeps everything encrypted at all times, so it looks pretty secure. I imagine that buying Bitcoins might be more problematic, though, true.

Inject into their code and wait until the big players log in and reveal their keys to the trusted site. Game over. The encryption only protects against an opportunistic database grab.

How is this any different from someone keylogging your bank passwords?

Well it's different, but the end result is the same.

Banks are massive and have pretty much everything insured. If they mess up, it's on them. Not so much with bitcoin, if they mess up their users lose out.

Additionally demonstrated by Mt. Gox, most bitcoin services are run by complete novices. Basic SQL injection on a website dealing with currency is unforgivable.

The problem isn't in the payment part, it's with obtaining bitcoins from dollars.

Oh, yes, definitely. Once a healthy amount of Bitcoin starts circulating, though, that won't be as big a problem.

Yeah, it would be really exciting to see a resurgence in this area spurred by Bitcoin. It may still happen.

Is there a bitcoin only indexer out there?

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