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Comment by minimax | Hacker News Reader

Not sure that really helps. They are worried about their security because they don't want to get robbed. If I can break in and hold a gun to your head until you irreversibly transfer me all your bitcoins then you have basically the same security problem.

If your response is that they should keep all their bitcoins in a safe place then maybe we can think about what sorts of safe places you can keep items worth tens of thousands of dollars and then I think you basically end up back at banks.

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The store owner owns the private keys. The stores themselves only get access to the pubkeys. Or they use a service that holds all the keys for them.

Unlike with physical cash, you can easily put any arbitrary amount of physical separation between the place the transaction occurs and the place the money is "stored".

I think in your scenario the store owner is still at risk of being physically coerced into transferring his bitcoins to an assailant, no?

Which isn't really a significant risk if the store owner doesn't hang around. I mean, someone could also hold me at gunpoint and take me to the bank, which isn't a great idea. If I wanted to emulate that, I could put my wallet in a safe deposit box.

Then they kidnap your family so you go to the bank yourself and withdraw the bitcoins.

I think you're failing a bit in criminal imagination, which is probably not a bad thing altogether.

How is that any worse security than keeping money in a bank account?

That's my point. Bitcoin doesn't solve any sort of problem that isn't already solved via traditional fiat currencies.

They could do the same thing if I had USD in the bank.

s/bitcoins/online banking username and password/

How does one pull money out of an online banking account using only the credentials?

By logging in and initiating a transfer?

You could store the BTC on an address that requires multiple signatures.

Safety Deposit boxes and banks are not necessarily the same entity.

If you can have two identities (say, one shell Mary-Jane seller, and one profit-making landlord) then the bank would easily accept the landlord’s account. I doubt such structure are allowed, or would pass Federal scrutiny according to Colorado banks, otherwise, the problem would be solved already.

The other possibility is that this solution is obvious, but lobbying for bank accounts is part of making Mary-Jane a more acceptable trade.

A recent Planet Money podcast talked about this problem and the pot store owner in Colorado they interviewed had done more or less that. His store was owned by shell company that had a bank account, but he was unwilling to go into too much details on the exact legal setup. I got the feeling it was a bit of legal grey area and that the bank was happy with it only as long as they could honestly claim ignorance.

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