Comment by atweiden | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atweiden | Hacker News Reader

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> Significant issues with the dominant one (Bitcoin) make it difficult to implement securely, hard for non-technical users to properly understand or trust (there is no benevolent dictatorial regulator, as per their established national currencies/financial service providers), they require connectivity or blockchain storage which is unvailable in much of the world's devices, and so on and so forth.

Download and install Electrum [1]. Open Electrum. Write down the 12 words. Done.

There's your 100% non-technical Bitcoin wallet in three easy steps.

Just takes pen and paper. Or, memorize it instead. Instant, secure brainwallet. No electricity, no Internet, no hardware and no software.

Starts in seconds and syncs across Windows, Mac, Linux and Android devices.

[1]: http://electrum.org

My only issue with something like this, since no one is "in charge" of an account people will fail to remember their wallet or password. If they put large amounts of money and by chance they cannot access their wallet for whatever reasons who is going to give them their money back or is that money gone forever? Doesn't that also mean eventually we will loose track of a fair number of bitcoins?

That money is gone forever. It is your money, you are responsible for it.

No one will be able to "give your money back", because you didn't give your money to anyone.

If you fear you might lose your password, back it up. Store it in a safe. Send it to someone you trust. Tatoo it on your forearm (although this is not really secretive)

Heck, if you _really_ want to be sure to have someone who could give the money back to you, just give it to someone you trust. Family, friends... or a Bitcoin bank. But if you do that, we're back to square one.

Would a banker be able to replace your lost or stolen cash?

If you're worried you might lose your Electrum wallet, write down the 12 words on several sheets of paper. Inscribe them in metal. Put them in a document, and put the document in TrueCrypt. Upload it to Dropbox. It's as easy as managing your digital music collection.

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