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Comment by hanswesterbeek | Hacker News Reader

After this, you still say "Bitcoin may be the next gold standard"?

My observation is simply that the future is unknown, and therefore a greedy actor would benefit greatly from stealing >5% of a currency. The most straightforward way to do this is to set up a popular exchange and orchestrate a disaster which is secretly a theft. Since there's no way to prove it, and since bitcoin wallets can lay dormant for decades, there's at least some incentive to do this. Should jailtime be on the table for gross negligence? I'm just interested in everyone's thoughts on the matter.

Personally, this fiasco hasn't affected in the slightest my beliefs about the protocol. Hell, if anything it might've been a small point in favour of decentralization.

That sounds like the reasoning of the gun-lobby. When bad things happen to do with guns, they tell us we need more guns.

I would've preferred to let the banks fail in 2008, short-term economic consequences be damned. That experiment is now playing out in the unregulated crypto-economy. (I've got my popcorn.)

You think gold being stolen reduces its value? If not, why do you think it would happen here?

Gold is a physical asset. People understand physical security.

Gold can't be lost due to a hard drive crash, and it cannot be stolen over a network. More importantly, I believe a majority of people (myself among the number) do not understand bitcoins were stolen from mtgox.

Dollars (and Euros) stopped being a gold-based currency a long time ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

Besides, "understanding" is very slippery verb in this context, what do you understand about gold? You know where it all is? You know who is in charge of protecting it and who is the owner? You know its location? You know who is digging for it? You know where are they digging? I don't clearly see what "understanding" you have about it.

There's a disconnect between what I think of as Gold investment and what you're talking about... Perhaps you're referring to Gold stocks, or notes or something?

What I'm talking about: In India, my family buys a small amount of Gold every 3 months or so. Gold coins, each a few grams in weight. I know exactly where they are -- I have a safe deposit locker at my bank, and some of them have been converted into jewelry for my wife.

Cool! Somebody like you was at work 160 years ago in California - recently 6 cans of gold were discovered buried under an ancient oak tree after a rain.

Buried treasure: the ONLY way to save ^_^ .

Didn't work for that person; they died without ever recovering it. Some random couple got rich. Lesson: take more walks in the woods?

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