Lets say you could pay $xx/month to have your bitcoins insurance, in case of theft or lost coins, or anything along those lines... would you do it?
Ask HN: Would you pay for a bitcoin insurance policy?
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Re: Ask HN: Would you pay for a bitcoin insurance policy?
#2Contemporary insurance schemes usually rely on the insurer having some means (or some chance) of possibly recovering the sum, either by siccing their lawyers on the thief/thief's bank or getting the police to step in.
With bitcoin there's really no viable way to do this as there's no easy way for a sub-NSA-level actor to trace BTC transactions.
So I'm at a loss as to how such a system could be made to work.
Re: Ask HN: Would you pay for a bitcoin insurance policy?
#3What would stop someone sending them to another address which they own, and then claiming they were stolen?
Re: Ask HN: Would you pay for a bitcoin insurance policy?
#4Contemporary insurance schemes usually rely on the insurer having some means (or some chance) of possibly recovering the sum, either by siccing their lawyers on the thief/thief's bank or getting the police to step in. With bitcoin there's really no viable way to do this as there's no easy way for a sub-NSA-level actor to trace BTC transactions. So I'm at a loss as to how such a system could be made to work.
I don't think this is true for many types of insurance. In many cases, insurance companies can "go after" a perpetrator, like in car accidents and credit card fraud situations, but what about home insurance that covers fire/flood/acts of God? What about life insurance or health insurance?
In these cases I am pretty sure the insurers make their living by shrewd actuarial rate-setting that tries to make their "average" policy profitable, and by having a large enough customer base that the "average" case is statistically likely.
The way to make BTC insurance work would be similar: calculate the costs to replace BTC, times the likelihood of needing to, and charge more than that.