venaoy_

Are you not replying to my main point (most merchants are honest therefore chargebacks are rarely needed) because you agree with it?

> That may be a problem with the current implementation, but it doesn't have to be

I agree. But I highlighted this to show you that credit cards have kinks, as currently implemented, yet are reasonably successful/useful. Therefore for the same reason Bitcoin doesn't have to be perfect to be reasonably successful/useful.

> The only reason this isn't a problem for Bitcoin is that you can't set up bill payments in Bitcoin at all.

Yes it is possible. Some hosted wallets let you set up recurring payments. This is awesome because unlike credit cards, you don't have to give the merchant authorization to debit your money, but you give this authorization only to the wallet hoster. This gives the merchant zero chances to screw you up (eg. continuing to debit your card when you want it to stop, or setting up a recurring payment disclosed in the fine print when you think you are authorizing a one-time payment.)

> It works for a restaurant but that's a very special case

This scenario covers literally ALL in-person transactions. Hardly a "very special case".

> But the kind of person who gets their credit card PIN stolen (which is what we were comparing to) isn't going to have a well-protected private key.

No we were comparing typical users. A security conscious credit card user can STILL get his number stolen and money stolen (eg. a merchant gets hacked). Whereas a security conscious Bitcoin user using a hardware wallet is virtually impervious to being attacked (only highly sophisticated hacks like stealing the hardware wallet and decaping the secure chip to steal the private keys without knowing the PIN).

Some users are so bad with security and detecting scams that they will always get their money stolen (regardless if they use credit cards or bitcoins).

No, Coinbase is insured even if only a "fraction" of their site is hacked. I am not sure why you would claim the insurance only covers a hack of the "entire site", but not a "fraction". See, my point is that there is nothing inherent to Bitcoin that prevents it from being insured. Insurance companies do insure dangerous businesses all the time. It's their job. I am certainly not going to claim that the level of insurance is equal to the average financial company. It will take years. But it's getting there. It's improving over time.

> why bitcoin can't get a census to upgrade

You say it can't be done but it has been done. Multiple times. You should read and learn from Bitcoin history. Bugs and limitations have caused the block chain to fork multiple times. Yet every single time the Bitcoin users have been able to reach a consensus about which software upgrade / software fix to follow: March 2013 fork due to BDB vs LevelDB, August 2010 due to an integer overflow, etc. It is very clear that when everybody will see their transactions never confirming because all blocks top out at the 1MB limit that everybody will want to upgrade the limit. People won't be stupid, sit there and do nothing, and watch Bitcoin die.

> Considering you haven't even made a single bitcoin transaction, and didn't even know about the limits until today, you're not really qualified to comment on it.

Huh? I never sold coins but I have made a few dozens transactions, since 2010. And I know very well the 1MB block limit.

Anyway when you start using personal attacks (accusing my competence) instead of using technical arguments, it is clear you are running out of logical arguments in this debate...

Coinbase's bitcoins are insured. And Coinbase's dollars are FDIC-insured.

There is nothing inherent to Bitcoin that prevents an exchange from being operated responsibly and covered/insured just as well as traditional financial institutions.

> Block size can't be increased because bitcoin is decentralized.

It is not trivial, but it can be increased. What you don't understand is that all the merchants all the institutions all the individuals utilizing Bitcoins rely on its proper operation to benefit from it. If they more or less all agree that raising the block size is the obvious way to scale up, then they will agree to raise it.

> Bitcoin can not support more than a couple million users.

False. If the block size is increased, it can scale: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

I invested $0 in Bitcoin. But a coworker gave me 500 BTC for free in 2010 (I never sold any).

Just one, plus this temporary account. I am not at home and I don't have access to my password safe containing my HN password.

It was not a ponzi, but MtGox became insolvent through fraud: Mark Karpeles simulated fake transactions with fake coins and fake dollars using his willy bot.

(I can't log into my venaoy HN account at the moment)

> Spinning a lack of reversible transactions as being a "Benefit" is disingenuous

I argue, through my examples, that reversibility is often not as important as you may think. Another data point: I am a typical American consumer and in 20 years doing probably 5,000+ credit card transactions I have never had to issue a single chargeback at all. So I know for a fact that I would be willing to use Bitcoin for its advantages. Hell, credit card fees which are passed to customers by inflating prices by ~2% probably indirectly cost me north of $20,000 over my 20 years of use. I could have saved $20,000 and I would have been totally fine with the lack of reversibility of Bitcoin. Even if I end up being scammed one day by a non-reversible $1000 Bitcoin transaction, I would still be $19,000 financially ahead with Bitcoin.

> I'm glad you found my story cute, but fail to see how pointing out imperfections in credit card insurance policies is supporting bitcoin, because bitcoin doesn't fill those imperfections

I point out imperfections to show you that even an imperfect system such as credit cards manage to be reasonably successful. So Bitcoin is not perfect either but, similarly, this should not prevent it from being reasonably successful.

> getting my account hacked on a bitcoin exchange

Bitcoin hardware wallets have a huge potential to significantly increase security for consumers.

> The entire world's supply of bitcoin is limited to 2.7 transactions a second

Why do you present this as being a sort of fatal flaw? It's not. A block size increase will solve this. It was not done yet because it's not a problem yet: the average block size is currently still far below the 1MB limit.

> I'm not even going to go into why you would compare Mt. Gox to Madoff. Madoff is an uninsured investor and in prison, Mt. Gox is an exchange and the thieves are where?

I compare the two because both cases are a result of fraud and both cases were/are being investigated by authorities. (MtGox was not robbed, Mark Karpeles committed fraud -- see the willy report -- as a result Karpeles is currently under investigation by the Japanese authorities). You seem to be under the impression the government and authorities are ignoring Bitcoin fraud. They are not. In the US for example the S.E.C. recently prosecuted a Bitcoin ponzi scheme operator: http://www.sec.gov/News/PressRelease/Detail/PressRelease/137...