The hard part of bitcoin is keeping all the devices you use it on perfectly uncompromised and backed up.
2. Use a deterministic wallet app so there is no need to back up anything whatsoever (all your addresses and keys are generated from a password): Greenaddress, Breadwallet, Mycelium.
Then all you need is one strong unique password, and you have a decently solid Bitcoin wallet. If someone specifically hacks you with a 0day to compromise your mobile device, you have a lot more things to worry about than losing your bitcoins.
from https://www.javelinstrategy.com/uploads/web_brochure/1405.R_...
Seems like a good deal to me?
Over the course of a year, $18 billion were lost to CC fraud. Meanwhile, CC transactions totaled about $6 trillion [0] (that was 2010, the most recent I could come up with, but it's been increasing every year for a long time so I'll be generous and use it). That's .3% - clearly affordable on the 2-3% merchants typically pay.
Meanwhile, Mt. Gox defrauded users out of about 650,000 bitcoins [1]. This was a single instance of fraud, remember - I'm trying to be generous. Eyeballing this chart [2], I'm going to give bitcoin a clearly-exaggerated 200,000 BTC in daily transactions, or 73 million BTC in a year. This comes out to .9%, or about 3 times higher than CC fraud.
But remember what I said earlier - CC companies essentially insure you against loss by paying out the fraud themselves and then forcing merchants to raise prices a bit to make up for it. In bitcoin, a given person can easily lose thousands, tens of thousands, millions of dollars, all at once. No recompense. So not only is the rate 3 times higher, the outcome is _way_ worse per dollar lost fraudulently.
[0] http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-card-data/credit-card-... [1] https://coinreport.net/99-of-mt-gox-bitcoin-losses-likely-fr... [2] https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume
Yes, I noticed you failed to address the 13.1 million people a year who have their lives ruined because they had their identity stolen.
Theories are great for people who can afford to lose tens of thousands of dollars. Until the actual rate goes down, recommending bitcoin to average consumers on the basis of "this is supposed to work" is stupid.
> Yes, I noticed you failed to address the 13.1 million people a year who have their lives ruined because they had their identity stolen.
No, I didn't. Here, I'll quote myself:
> CC companies essentially insure you against loss by paying out the fraud themselves and then forcing merchants to raise prices a bit to make up for it.
Almost no one is having their lives ruined. You call your credit card company's fraud department (actually, these days they often catch it first and call you). You spend 20 minutes getting your card canceled and showing them which purchases were fraudulent. You wait three days for a new credit card to show up.
Hardly life-ruining.
Most credit card issuers don't let you charge back transactions older than 60 days. It is always fun to discover this fact after a merchant invents believable excuses to stall your order for 60+ days... ("Warehouse stock depleted, wait 4-6 weeks. We shipped it! Sorry we shipped the wrong item!")
Merchants can dispute chargebacks, and in fact do win 40% of them. See page 12 of http://bit.ly/10iW5wJ A lot of this is friendly fraud but still...
CC issuers will typically hold you liable and refuse chargebacks if the PIN code was used (the hacker guessed it, stole it, or cloned it). Check your CC fine print, for example: "If your Password or PIN is used in such a transaction, you will be liable for the full debt" from http://www.scotiabank.com/ca/common/pdf/borrowing/revolving_...
This is the problem with bitcoin: Everything its advocates claim is a desirable feature is actually a huge bug for normal people.
CCs and Bitcoin solve different issues with fraud and theft. I argue that the protection offered by CCs is overrated. For example plenty of people everyday are happy to use a system that does not offer these protections: cash. I don't see you running around warning people to not use cash because it offers no protection.
People are happy to use cash because in almost all cash transactions they are able to verify the receipt of the product or service immediately or have a known location within reach to access the seller incase it doesn't happen.
>I don't see you running around warning people to not use cash because it offers no protection.
But this is something that is warned against. People/organisations warn against mailing cash for this exact reason all the time.
But paying a very trustworthy merchant by mailing cash would probably be fine in terms of risk of theft: mailing a $100 bill is no different than mailing a $100 item, yet people ship millions of $100+ items every day through the postal system and few get stolen.
It's just stupid to mail cash because faster ways of sending money exist.
Are you joking? The entire shipping industry offers tracking services, delivery confirmations, etc.
I get that you're a huge fan of bitcoin but your instance to dismiss the possibility that companies can make mistakes in processing orders or managing orders or shipping is really weird. Even after I've showed you examples of it happening. Even in large 'trustworthy' companies.
I've said it repeatedly during our discussions. Not all problems that require a chargeback are fraud. Just let that sink in for a bit then go back and read our last conversation with that statement in mind and look at the points where you repeatedly accuse me to saying a company was willfully fraudulent immediately after I said the above.
I think from this point I'm just going to stop responding as honestly I don't feel like wasting time in another back and forth over whether or not companies are able to make mistakes.
If the customer mails an empty envelope, the merchant won't ship, so where is the problem?
If postal workers steal the cash but reseal the envelope... well these incidents do happen but are very rare. It can't be the major reason why "people don't mail cash". People mail valuable items all the time.
If a trustworthy merchant genuinely lose the envelope after delivery... well these incidents are also very rare. It can't be the major reason why "people don't mail cash".
If a fraudulent merchant "lose" the cash after delivery... as I said this is why we warn to not mail cash to untrustworthy merchants.
Again, "lack of tracking" is not why people don't mail cash even to trustworthy merchants. People don't do it because faster and more convenient ways of sending money exist.
> your instance to dismiss the possibility that companies can make mistakes
I DON'T DISMISS MISTAKES. I acknowledge they do happen. But they are rare and therefore don't matter as much as you insist they do. You gave me 3 examples of Tiger Direct refund problems, and yet that's only 3 out of thousands(?) of error-free orders. And these 3 all were eventually solved in the customer's favor, so none of them required a chargeback (had it been possible).
> Not all problems that require a chargeback are fraud.
That's not my point. My point is all of these problems (whatever they are: mistakes, frauds, etc) are rare to begin with. How many times to I have to explain it? You even confirmed it with your own life experience: you personnally issued only 2 chargebacks, ever.
Chargebacks are RARELY needed, period.