Topic: "Bitcoin is dangerous, avoid it" - Gavin Andresen (Read 3525 times)

+1

 Doesnt take a genius to work out what he meant. He is referring the hands on side of buying, selling and storing not the underlying technology or principles.

Unfrtunately it will make for bad PR

You misquoted what's written in the article, pops. You confused what Gavin said with what the journalist said. The only question: did you make this error on purpose or were you just being intellectually sloppy?

Hm. I'm a 60-ish year old grandma... (fairly tech-savvy, though  )
And yes I got duped a couple of times, which is why my garden shed is now wired for hardware mining.

I'm also a gemstone faceter, lapidarist and trader, and once I get my website and payment gateway up, you bet i will be accepting BTC. It's an international clientele and bitcoin seems to be the most seamless way to conduct business. That's why I "would want to use it in the first place."

The sooner bitcoin grows up the faster it will spread.

Prevention is better than cure. If noobs come to bitcoin at this stage and get a hit, it'll only affect bitcoin's reputation. At this point of time, bitcoin is good only on strong hands.

Honesty isn't necessarily the worst policy.  I have conflicting feelings on this.

If you disagree with Gavin, wait ten years, you will at that point in time look back on Bitcoin and you will agree with Gavin. Like Magic.

Your money is safe as long as it's not more than $250,000 or as long as the government itself is solvent (see Cyprus) or as long as they don't introduce the idea of negative interest on high deposit (you need to move your money elsewhere or you'll be losing it) or ridiculous taxes on interests etc.

But yes, I do enjoy the fact that fiat in my bank are somewhat insured (even if it comes at cost). I also do enjoy the fact that I can withdraw some cash and carry it in my pocket completely uninsured, that I can move my funds to a less secured place, that I can convert it to gold and keep it under my bed if I ever wanted to.

Same as I enjoy being able to use bitcoin as an alternative currency, whether I choose to keep it in my control (with associated risk) or deposit with 3-rd party (even with some sort of insurance, such as Circle). And if I ever feel uncomfortable - I don't have to use it at all, as it's completely voluntary.

It's good to have various options in life to choose from. No?

ps. Still don't know how was that relevant to my post, but...oh well.

I just quoted what's written in the article, son.
That's what readers actually read.

It makes me more confident in the long term success of bitcoin when its detractors find it necessary to misrepresent reality (like misquoting Gavin).

Why do trolls skew the truth? Because they have to.

So grammy's just fine keeping her life's savings in an online wallet or on her netbook?  Safe as money in the bank you say?

If I'm being too oblique: Sure, nothing is 100% safe--neither keeping money in a bank nor giving it to strungout Freddy who lives behind the dumpster.  I'd feel better if grammy chose the bank tho.

The FDIC insures deposits on member banks up to $250,000. So basically, as long as the US government is still around, your money is safe.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, introduces all kinds of new ways to wipe your balance out in ways that you never even expected were possible before! Hardware failures, hacks, social engineering, natural disasters, fires, physical thefts. And in none of those cases are your balances insured by the single most powerful entity in the world. They're not insured by anyone. When they're gone... they're gone!

But what do they call that in bitcoinland...? Oh right, "a valuable lesson learned about computer security."

Or everything is "dangerous". The most dangerous thing is not to do or try anything and not fight for justice and better efficiency.

To have what insured? How's that related to "Nothing is 100% safe and will never be" (including insured deposits)?

Which is why it's a good thing to have FDIC insured, regulated banks, no?

They're talking about 'reasonably safe' not 'completely safe'. Nothing is 100% safe and will never be.

Bitcoin is 100% safe if you keep it in cold storage with a paper wallet and you are the only owner of the private keys.

AKA: bitcoin is safe as long as you don't have to use it and move it around. Then shit hits the fan.

Whether you know what a firewall is and the job it performs or not, holding bitcoins is a risk, and even most people on these forums really have no idea what they're doing when it comes to computer security. For example, just yesterday a gentleman posted a thread with a sensationalist prediction and a malware link in the speculation section of this forum. There was almost a full page of comments about the prediction before anyone (cough *me* cough) bothered to check the link's reputation and notify the mods. I can't even guess how many people naively clicked the link before it was removed two hours later

There are plenty of people who think they understand security well because they don't download executables online. Like my cousin who didn't even run AV software on his PC because he's "not dumb enough to download random shit off the Internet". Then, when I checked his netstat output, we found call outs to a known malicious Russian IP.   I'd wager there are plenty of armchair "security experts" here who think they know what they're doing, until the day their wallet balance shows zero and they run to reddit to make an appeal to the hacker to return their coins.

But it's all a moot point anyway. As Mr. Trollin pointed out, why would anyone want to use bitcoin in the first place? Especially given all the security exploits involved with storing them?

It does not?
So it is completly safe on an online computer? There is no risk for keylogger? Really? Damn nice! Glad I can use SuperSecureBitcoin!123 as my password as well.

Bitcoin can be stored safely, but not in online wallets or wallets on online computers.
It is way easier to steal bitcoins on a online computer than hacking an ebanking account, because all banks use at least 2 factor auth. Some even are using tokens.

Why don't you guys try to answer the "hard" question?

he didn't say this recently,this is an OLD story ffs