An excellent example of demagogy. The author mixes some criticisms which are referring to real flaws (but mostly solvable) with others that are simply rubbish.
An example:
When that trust turns out to be misplaced, there is no recourse. If your bitcoin exchange gets hacked, you lose all of your money [1]. If your bitcoin wallet gets hacked, you lose all of your money. [2] If you forget your login credentials, you lose all of your money. [3] If there’s a bug in the code of your smart contract, you lose all of your money. [4] If someone successfully hacks the blockchain security, you lose all of your money[5].
- Point 1 hasn't anything to do with Bitcoin, not even with blockchains.
- Point 2 and 3 are problems you will encounter also when operating with other financial (and non-financial) systems. While there may be ways to recover lost money if e.g. your credit card data are stolen, in many cases you won't be able to do that. But people involved in Bitcoin already know that they must protect their keys (and better distribute larger holdings to several key-pairs), so they are more likely to care for that than credit card users. Thus, I guess the "loss rate" at Bitcoin (money lost per user) may be even lower than with traditional credit card systems.
- Point 4 is a real flaw, and that's also the point why Bitcoin doesn't allow turing-complete smart contracts.
- Point 5 is a bit complex: if the "blockchain security" is "hacked" (imagine the well-known bug in 2018 was exploited by miners) then it's true that there is human action needed - in this case, a hard fork. However, if there are enough users to control the process, then it becomes really secure.
Where Schneier is right is that blockchains are social systems and code isn't "everything", but Bitcoin's institutions are pretty bulletproof and if they malfunction - e.g. if a malicious wallet development team implements a backdoor - there are many ways to correct them.
And what the author omits is the utility Bitcoin provides e.g. to the unbanked, people living in countries with untrustworthy (e.g. Venezuela) or very selective/expensive financial systems, and to those using remittances frequently. Lightning isn't even mentioned ...