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You would assume. But, empirically, users don't - even users who should know better. Users don't. If your model doesn't take that into account, your model is broken.

The Bitcoin model is broken. It very intentionally got rid of all the institutions that regulate and control finance, and in doing so, it got rid of everything that protects regular people from the wolves. The regular people aren't up to the task of protecting themselves, and they regularly show it. The model is broken.



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So to be clear - i agree that bitcoin is a shitshow, haven for fraudsters and generally sucks.

But to the specific point, there is no model that fully takes this into account. There is no model that puts risk to zero. There will always be adversaries that can attack you if the payoff is large enough. There will always be people with increased risk exposure who have to take special precautions because the effort/reward calculus makes sense for malicious people to attack them.

The reason bitcoin sucks is not because its model includes such situations; it sucks because the bar for someone to be the type of person who has to care about such things in bitcoin is so much lower than in traditional banking.


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