I agree 100%. Luckily I withdrew all my coins from mybitcoin a few weeks ago when their down time was getting very annoying and I sensed something wrong.
People ultiately need to take full responsibility for their own money. That's just the price of freedom.
Topic: ONLINE WALLETS, theft may be a good thing - page 2. (Read 2226 times)
it's better this mybitcoin thing happened now rather than later, I didn't really know how popular online wallets were to be honest, Finding out it could be as much as 100k btc gone was a surprise to me.
But the upside to this is, of all the ideas sprouting up around bitcoin this online wallet crap needed a reality checking kick to the balls most of all, because it would have kept growing, imagine in the future an online wallet company got so big and trusted that it had a substantial percent of all coins in existence(yes people WOULD do that, deepbit..) then *poof* its gone! theft/government or fricken tsunami, cause doesn't matter, your coins are gone because you all gave up control and created this centralised point of failure for yourselves, a company being trustworthy isn't even the point as things can be lost due to a variety of problems however well intentioned. it's an unnecessary risk
it's a costly lesson for those who just lost coins but a good lesson none the less.
since I started mining last year I have always secured and encrypted my own wallets (+backups), and try to minimise the amount my coins are exposed you can't stop it 100% or you couldn't spend them, just like cash you need to hand over the bills at one point, the few times I had to sell some coins (a small amount on britcoin) it went well, but I was still a little nervous during the process, and I was in an out quickly, no holding funds or coins online for more time than needed, because the truth is, if something goes wrong and I lose my coins it's my own fault for trusting them with them. because that's the point of bitcoin, people taking control of there own money,
With that mentality(which a quite a few us us have) the idea of permanently using one of these online wallet things always sounded insane, bitcoin's main features are being decentralised and having direct control of your money(we all know that) so the question is, if enough people use things like an online wallet and make a certain company big and "trusted" and create a potential centralised point of failure whilst simultaneously giving up the control of there coins, why are they using bitcoins at all?, why not banks or paypal or credit and debit cards? just trust them with your money, they're even regulated..
It's people not securing there own coins that has created most of the bad press, making things seem much worse then they are, causing public loss of confidence, Some casual news headline(inaccurate) readers still think bitcoin itself was hacked and is now worthless because people can make their own "counterfeit" coins,(yes I read that on another non bitcoin forum) bitcoin is working perfectly, the protocol is fine and running exactly as intended, these online wallets and insecure websites you just hand your wallets and coins over to and then they get "lost" is a separate issue.
Imagine a real wallet full of cash criticised the same way as bitcoin, "So i gave him my wallet, bulging out the sides with cash it was, and then, you're not going to believe this, HE RAN OFF WITH IT!, so insecure! these wallets will never catch on, definitely not secure enough to put cash in AVOID!" just ignore the actions of the wallet's owner and blame the wallet. that's the news cycle were in, they ruin it for the rest of us. sorry turned into a rant there
But the upside to this is, of all the ideas sprouting up around bitcoin this online wallet crap needed a reality checking kick to the balls most of all, because it would have kept growing, imagine in the future an online wallet company got so big and trusted that it had a substantial percent of all coins in existence(yes people WOULD do that, deepbit..) then *poof* its gone! theft/government or fricken tsunami, cause doesn't matter, your coins are gone because you all gave up control and created this centralised point of failure for yourselves, a company being trustworthy isn't even the point as things can be lost due to a variety of problems however well intentioned. it's an unnecessary risk
it's a costly lesson for those who just lost coins but a good lesson none the less.
since I started mining last year I have always secured and encrypted my own wallets (+backups), and try to minimise the amount my coins are exposed you can't stop it 100% or you couldn't spend them, just like cash you need to hand over the bills at one point, the few times I had to sell some coins (a small amount on britcoin) it went well, but I was still a little nervous during the process, and I was in an out quickly, no holding funds or coins online for more time than needed, because the truth is, if something goes wrong and I lose my coins it's my own fault for trusting them with them. because that's the point of bitcoin, people taking control of there own money,
With that mentality(which a quite a few us us have) the idea of permanently using one of these online wallet things always sounded insane, bitcoin's main features are being decentralised and having direct control of your money(we all know that) so the question is, if enough people use things like an online wallet and make a certain company big and "trusted" and create a potential centralised point of failure whilst simultaneously giving up the control of there coins, why are they using bitcoins at all?, why not banks or paypal or credit and debit cards? just trust them with your money, they're even regulated..
It's people not securing there own coins that has created most of the bad press, making things seem much worse then they are, causing public loss of confidence, Some casual news headline(inaccurate) readers still think bitcoin itself was hacked and is now worthless because people can make their own "counterfeit" coins,(yes I read that on another non bitcoin forum) bitcoin is working perfectly, the protocol is fine and running exactly as intended, these online wallets and insecure websites you just hand your wallets and coins over to and then they get "lost" is a separate issue.
Imagine a real wallet full of cash criticised the same way as bitcoin, "So i gave him my wallet, bulging out the sides with cash it was, and then, you're not going to believe this, HE RAN OFF WITH IT!, so insecure! these wallets will never catch on, definitely not secure enough to put cash in AVOID!" just ignore the actions of the wallet's owner and blame the wallet. that's the news cycle were in, they ruin it for the rest of us. sorry turned into a rant there
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