Stripe: Bitcoin

"The insurance covers losses due to breaches in physical or cyber security, accidental loss, and employee theft. It doesn’t cover bitcoin lost or stolen as a result of an individual user’s negligence to maintain secure control over their login credentials."

http://blog.coinbase.com/post/95927658922/coinbase-is-insure...

The only major fork that was adopted was because it was a critical bug that split half the network, and the entire network was shutdown in early 2013. This caused even more volatility as people sold. Honest question: Are they shutting down the network to force every enhancement, every change to policy? That's not a feature for a cryptocurrency, or even a currency.

This is just one of the real technical limitations, and even so, bitcoin is more than just a technology. As a decentralized network, the decision making power is distributed across it's many parts, which includes the users who employ it. Your insistence that we only discuss the technical limitations of bitcoin belies textbook confirmation bias.

Your credibility comes into question with your stubbornness in ignoring how currencies and payment processors work, and your No-True-Scotsman fallacy approach to twisting hypotheticals support bitcoin.

It's clear you have confirmation bias even now, and yes, ad hominem is appropriate when you yourself have demonstrated that you are fallacious.

I know what a Central Bank is and how they are supposed to work. Check this out: Who owns the Federal Reserve? [1]

>As the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the Congress of the United States. It is considered an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.

[1] http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm

> how often do you want to pay for something that you don't care whether you'll actually get?

It is not that I don't care, but I estimate the probability the merchant is fraudulent is low enough that I don't feel the need to absolutely have the protection of the chargeback mechanism. I think this is true for the majority of the cases: MOST merchants are honest, MOST disputes can be resolved without chargebacks.

> Your bank covers you if they are though.

But it can be a real pain in the butt. I had to have a credit card replaced because the number and billing info of the previous one was stolen. I had to wait days to receive the new credit card. I had to re-set up all the bills I had set up to be automatically paid with the previous card to now be paid by the new card, etc.

> What's the specific advantage that would make people want to give bitcoin?

Bitcoin enthusiasts like to spread the technology, so they give bitcoins away to friends and family. But that's not my main point. My main point is that as Bitcoin is used more and more, it ends up in the hands of more and more people. This gives it organic growth: it gets more accepted, it is more transacted, it gains more value, etc.

> Most reputable card issuers will cover you for longer than the contract says. And even if not, 60 days of cover is still much better than the 0 days you get with bitcoin.

Still, some fraud scenarios are completely eliminated with Bitcoin. I pay a fraudulent restaurant with a CC that gets skimmed, I get to deal with the hassles of having to have the card replaced, potentially having my credit score damaged, etc. I pay a fraudulent restaurant with bitcoins, I know the restaurant can do nothing to steal the bitcoins remaining in my wallet.

Or I pay Dell with bitcoins instead of a credit card, and I don't have to care if their systems get hacked and my CC number stolen.

> Again, you're contractually liable but in practice reputable banks cover you at least the first time. Whereas if your bitcoin private keys are stolen, the money is gone and you'll never get it back.

Private keys can be very well protected and almost impossible to steal if you use a hardware wallet. And Bitcoin completely eliminates other fraud risks (see my examples above). So overall the tradeoffs of Bitcoin are worthwhile.

> Who's offering FDIC-protected bitcoin accounts?

Every day, millions of Americans use financial instruments that are not FDIC insured, yet that doesn't prevent the success of such instruments:

https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/covered/notinsured.html

Mixing large amounts is pretty damn hard, there's not enough volume to hide large transactions. Trading massive amounts of BTC to an altcoin would be even harder, concealing the movements of that altcoin would be pretty much impossible.

In the end the process of money laundering ends up being significantly more complicated than with "real money".

Don't go and compare Tor to BTC, just don't. They share nothing from a technical PoV.

> "The insurance covers..."

This statement is correct. But do we need insurance on negligence? No. The cash you carry in your pocket is not covered by insurance yet it doesn't prevent it from being reasonably useful/successful. I make the comparison to let you understand Bitcoin doesn't need insurance against negligence to be reasonably useful/successful.

> the entire network was shutdown in early 2013.

No it was not. The correct forked path of the block chain never stopped running during this incident. That's how a fork is always resolved: one path dies, the other continues to live undisturbed.

> Are they shutting down the network to force every enhancement,

No. There is a process to introduce changes without disrupting the network at all: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Softfork This is how P2SH was added with zero disruption to the network.

> Your insistence that we only discuss the technical

You misunderstood me. It is of course OK to discuss other aspects: social, financial, etc. I was merely pointing out you should drop the personal attacks, as they make you look childish and as they degrade the quality of your comments.

> your stubbornness in ignoring how currencies and payment processors work...

Once again I don't want to ignore this. So far I have replied to all your arguments with logical counter-arguments. Let's keep the discussion civil.