The Times 03/Jan/ 2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
> Storing value in an encrypted wallet on your computer is inconvenient to say the least
It's possible to store Bitcoin on sheets of paper, or entirely in your brain, safely and securely.
I get the distinct feeling you've never used Bitcoin before. Please, sign up for an account at Coinbase and buy $1000+ of BTC or otherwise put yourself in the shoes of someone who wants to buy a serious amount of coin before making these sorts of statements.
Bitcoin isn't about being a PayPal competitor. It's money outside the State, always has been, always will be. Unless of course it is corrupted from the inside out, probably by whitewashed companies who are too afraid to embrace a great thing in spite of what regulators would like them to do.
The process for making a secure paper wallet is far from convenient and brain wallets are about the worst possible way to store bitcoin and are far from safe and secure. If you're going to get some please do not use a brain wallet.
I think a lot of people would argue that sticking with their current system (banks, fiat currency, etc) is, in fact, much easier than that.
Seriously, the interface provided by Citibank is pretty freaking great. I work, I swipe my credit card places. As long as I do the former more than the latter, I don't need to touch anything else. Also every few months I accumulate enough points to buy something on Amazon for $50-$100 for free.
Bitcoin could be even better if I got paid in Bitcoin and could pay people in Bitcoin, but I can't.
Electrum is great and if you write down the words thats fine. If you try to memorize them without a backup there are a lot of events that can happen in your life that will lead to the total loss of your coins.
If it can still be used by die-hards like you to protect themselves from the State, all the better, but that part of it is never going to be of much interest to most people.
Yes, and it's the truth. What can bitcoin do that no other currency can? It can operate entirely outside of the existing banking system. That's the X factor of bitcoin, and NY regulators hate it for this reason.
The black market actually has _very_ wide appeal. It's worth north of 40% of GDP in certain developing nations. It's worth billions of dollars in America, and Bitcoin has that market cornered online. This _is not_ a bad thing. It is something worth celebrating.
I might add, the vast majority of Americans can't imagine a world in which the US Dollar isn't world reserve currency. Bitcoin was devised as a better currency system than the US Dollar ever could be, and that's why it's so special. Bitcoin doesn't try to be legal, it doesn't try to be whitewashed and savory, Bitcoin just _is_. And what it is, is a vastly superior form of money than fiat currency.
- every single wallet provider, including makers of open source wallets like Bitcoin-QT, in addition to Bitcoin exchanges and banks, are legally considered "Virtual Currency Businesses"
- each customer of a "Virtual Currency Business" must have a verified physical address and government issued photo ID on file in order to use Bitcoin
- each "Virtual Currency Business" must file suspicious activity reports on all transactions valued at over $3000 USD, meaning open source software like Bitcoin-QT must know each of its users at all times
- each "Virtual Currency Business" must retain records for no less than 10 years
- each "Virtual Currency Business" must maintain collateral in the form of USD including collateral for total Bitcoin balances
- each would-be creator of a cryptocurrency must register with the State before releasing 1 SLOC
The reason it's easy to transfer Bitcoin across long distances is that the system works without intermediaries. Regulation, as outlined by NY, involves polluting the Bitcoin protocol with precisely the same intermediaries that make the traditional banking system so awful.
> It will be a good thing when governments figure out how to regulate it
In other words, you believe it's a good idea to castrate Bitcoin and make it no different than PayPal, SWIFT, ACH, etc.
No, i think that quote makes it clear that bitcoin was released in staunch opposition to centralized currency, where some authority (central bank) can issue new units of currency at will and devalue the currency for everyone.
But everything else surrounding bitcoin, I don't find it useful at all. I just want/need something like bitcoin, but connected to my €-denominated bank account. I don't want or need an alternative "digital currency" and I find the mere idea of one stupid, I just want to make exchanges with current currencies (which are already "digital", something that for some reason is missed all the time, maybe because it's much easier to get attention on the internet using buzzwords).
Because bitcoin wants to be a currency, and a decentralized one at that, it needs to do the cool, but weird shit that the blockchain is. All the cryptography behind it, i find it a massively complex waste of time that only gets justified because of the absurd fetish of decentralization. The world just needs to safely and easily exchange money through internet, nothing else. An overengineered solution that tries to workaround the current financial system for no good reason is not a great solution for that need IMO.
I'm hoping that at some point someone (banks, credit card companies, paypal) will end up doing what bitcoin doesn't wants to do.
You should be aware that anything dependent on a small set of entities can fail spectacularly. You never know if they get hacked, bankrupt, sued, raided, etc ...