I get that is part of bitcoin, not the protocol failing, personal irresponsibility etc etc.<p>But I’m seeing less and less a justification for the deliberate lack of security in the bitcoin world. So a hack like this happens. Regardless of how it happened or who’s to blame, why continue to tolerate bitcoin? What is it giving you that’s worth the enormous mountain of precaution that you need to take to secure yourself?
All questions of its own merits aside, how is Bitcoin still worth anything at all after so many hacks? Isn't a large part of value the security to know that you'll actually be able to realize it?
They were even thinking about requesting blockchain rollback (that possibly means making fork and paying to miners to follow that fork instead). If that would pass, that would really doom bitcoin as is.
Hacks like that could be avoided if people would use decentralized exchanges and other DeFi dApps. The goal of the whole blockchain movement is to have no single point of failure. Luckily there is a whole suite of so-called decentralized blockchain applications coming out and building the next level of infrastructure for finance. This is a great newsletter to stay up to date on the latest decentralized applications: <a href="http://tokenvalley.substack.com" rel="nofollow">http://tokenvalley.substack.com</a>
Explain to me as if I was your 50 years old parent: "What is that Bitcoin money and why I should use it if that 'exchange' thingy can loose it and they won't recover it back? I know my current bank will recover all my money if they get robbed."<p>Take for granted that I (your 50 years old parent) have near zero knowledge about technology and I just won't use my own wallet and what not.
It looks like the market is still able to tolerate such large hack
<a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en" rel="nofollow">https://www.coingecko.com/en</a> price of all cryptocurrencies appear normal<p>Who remember how big of a blow it was during mtgox incident. People forget...
> "Cyber-insurance is a common necessity today as identify theft, malware and cyber-attacks are frequently being performed against high-value blockchain and crypto-currency companies."<p>Except they're not banks, and not intended to store your funds long-term.
Cue a dozen bitcoin apologists explaining how "bitcoin <i>the protocol</i> is actually extremely secure, it just so happens that every third person involved with implementing bitcoin-the-actual-token is either a crook or incompetent or an incompetent crook."
The interesting thing about bitcoin exchanges is that the exchange effectively has a position in the market too, unlike traditional exchanges like the NYSE. They have to buy bitcoin from other exchanges, and if they get hacked they can lose it permanently.<p>Edit because I’m throttled and can’t reply anymore: the “buying from other exchanges” is really not the lynchpin of my argument. The point is that these exchanges hold inventory and are vulnerable to bank runs and theft makes them much less stable than traditional exchanges.