
Bitcoin's Biggest Problem: It's a Den of Thieves - nicpottier
http://blog.nyaruka.com/bitcoins-biggest-problem-dens-of-thieves
======
keverets
The trust issue he encountered he mis-attributed to bitcoin when in fact the
issue was with paypal and credit cards. Bitcoin is like cash. There's no
"reversal" of charges. Once something has been paid for, it's public record
and there's no one-sided taking it back. This is a good thing.

The use of Paypal and credit cards destroy this trust by allowing a paying
party to reverse transactions so the payee gets nothing. It's empowering a
third party to arbitrarily negate charges.

Bitcoin is no more a "den of thieves" than a cash-based society, which most of
the world was until recently. I'd argue that Credit Cards and PayPal are much
more a den of thieves by abusing their trust to cause no end of issues for
people receiving payments.

~~~
nicpottier
You are absolutely right in that it is exactly like cash, and for transactions
that are exactly like cash I think Bitcoin is great. But how much commerce is
done online now? How big is Amazon.com? How many other online merchants exist?

If Bitcoin's ambitions are only to replace physical cash transactions, then
sure, it works. (and that's no small success!) But if we are talking any kind
of online transaction with delayed gratification, then trust is required, as
is a recourse when things go wrong.

~~~
userulluipeste
Bitcoin is something basic and should not be taken for more. What banks and
other services do nowadays is something far more complex, including leveraging
trust in a way or another. These kind of services can be built on top of
BitCoin. Their business models won't be equivalent in all aspects with what we
have now in the current system, but there is enough room and potential for
such services to exist/run covering needs. It will be just a better system
regarding the corruptible nature, because there won't be an central authority
with whom to strike deals under the table and get empowered to "be a necessary
evil".

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SeanDav
My main problems with Bitcoin:

1\. I don't deeply understand the maths behind it.

2\. I don't know how vulnerable the entire Bitcoin infrastructure is to
hacking, allowing someone to generate fake Bitcoins.

3\. There seems to be no way to securely store BC's.

4\. There is no governing body to resolve disputes or to enforce rules. (Yes I
realize that to some extent this is also a strength)

5\. It is the Wild West. There is no rule of law and the value of the Bitcoins
are purely subjective. Better be wearing your Titanium Super Pants when
"investing" in BC's.

~~~
ch0wn
> 3\. There seems to be no way to securely store BC's.

There is. You can print out the private key and lock it away in a safe.

~~~
weavejester
And ideally the private key would be generated from an permanently offline
machine.

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jusben1369
"This has some very neat advantages, the largest being that no one entity
controls Bitcoin, instead it is a community all agreeing to use a currency
with particular rules, with some clever algorithms keeping everybody honest.
No single government, much less corporation, can dictate what happens to
Bitcoins."

\- I'm not sure about the construct of your argument. It appears that this is
indeed the biggest disadvantage with Bitcoin, not an advantage. The very thing
holding back adoption of Bitcoin is this sense that there is no single entity
that can ensure the offering functions as hoped.

I wonder if Bitcoin isn't the Napster and somewhere out there is a Steve Jobs
ready to launch an iTunes version.....

~~~
nicpottier
Maybe advantage is the wrong word, maybe it is just what makes Bitcoin even
possible.

Centralized digital currencies (eGold?) have been around, but their problem is
twofold in that they are more vulnerable to single points of attack and more
importantly, can be shut down by governments.

I don't know if there have been any real efforts yet to crack down on Bitcoin
but it seems well positioned to survive such an attempt.

~~~
jusben1369
Yes, maybe it's "Bitcoin has some very unique characteristics that are either
it's biggest advantages or drawbacks, depending on your point of view" Full
disclosure. I work for a payments startup. We have a tug of war around
Bitcoin. We're fascinated by it's potential but also fear tying our brand too
closely to it as it seems to receive bad press around something every 90 days.

------
xntrk
I'm very interested in trading/investing in bitcoins but I don't have
confidence in any of the markets. Every few months there is another story
about an exchange getting hacked and people on the site losing their coins.

~~~
nicpottier
This seems to be largely solved now. There are numerous digital wallets that
do client side encryption, so even if they are hacked, your funds should be
safe.

Two that I looked at were <https://www.strongcoin.com> and
<https://www.blockchain.info>, the latter winning out after some test driving,
just because it is larger and has a nice Android client.

~~~
TylerE
Until they get hacked, and if history is any guide, they _will_ get hacked.

~~~
nicpottier
I suppose there is the possibility of a hacker changing their actual content
so that things AREN'T done client side, and therefore being able to decrypt
the keys. In that case any user who used their site with that malicious code
would be compromised.

That is a very real threat, I grant you that, but it is a hell of a lot better
than what the state of the art was a year ago when a hacker got everybody's
information once they got root.

------
mfringel
BitCoin isn't a payments infrastructure. Rather, it's a set of primitives over
which you can create one.

The same can be said of git w/r/t source code control systems.

------
andrewcooke
[sorry; digression]

what is it about current sites that completely breaks text selection? is it
something to do with web fonts? is it a bug in chrome (linux)?

for some strange reason i unconsciously select text on the screen as i read
it. i've noticed that recently on many sites - this one included - i either
fail to select anything, or select an area of the screen that is only vaguely
connected to the text layout.

i'm pretty sure this isn't click interception. is anyone else seeing this? i
guess i should poke around and see if i can find a bug report....

[edit: this seems to be the same thing - [http://css-
tricks.com/forums/discussion/14750/text-selection...](http://css-
tricks.com/forums/discussion/14750/text-selection-bug-at-chrome/p1)]

[edit2: i looked at chrome's bug list and there are hundreds of text selection
bugs. i can't work out if this particular one is known or not.]

~~~
bencoder
> for some strange reason i unconsciously select text on the screen as i read
> it.

I have the same condition, selectitis. Drives the people around me mad when
I'm clicking loads and I don't even notice. And websites that do things on
select like pop up a definition or search box are really irritating to me.

~~~
mike_esspe
It's called compulsive highlighter:

[https://www.google.com/search?oq=compulsive+highlighter&...](https://www.google.com/search?oq=compulsive+highlighter&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=compulsive+highlighter)

------
sunkencity
"At its roots, Bitcoin is based on some rather clever mathematics, ironically
the same primitives that keep our credit cards secure when buying things
online." What is he talking about? SSL? What about credit cards is encrypted?

~~~
nicpottier
Yep, SSL.

------
cmcewen
Trust is a big problem for any peer to peer situation. eBay, Airbnb, and
Paypal all had to figure out ways to jumpstart trust in their communities - if
Bitcoin can do the same, then the potential is huge.

~~~
sneak
> if Bitcoin can do the same

You assign agency where there is no entity.

------
executive
hackernews.org?

~~~
nicpottier
Jeez, what the hell is wrong with me? Not enough coffee apparently. Thanks.

------
bravoyankee
Truthfully, I have purchased about 4-5 things with bitcoins, both digital and
physical products, and got stiffed EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Yeah, go ahead and downvote me, but it's the truth.

~~~
VMG
Fool me once, shame on you..

Fool me five times?

~~~
bravoyankee
I was trying to unload my bitcoins and found various vendors to spend it on.
Not so weird.

