Re: Nor a good solution
I addressed most of those issues in my original post. I'll cover them again here and fill in some gaps.
"1. While the blockchain is secure, wallets are not. And in reality, you are at far higher risk of having bitcoins stolen than having your bank balance stolen."
True in some cases, false in others. Against your standard street criminal, the cryptography on mobile devices is a lot more of an impediment than typical antitheft systems on credit cards. Money can be stolen from online we-buy-the-crypto-for-you systems, but I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about the systems where you have your own wallet stored on your own devices.
"2. How is this more secure than Apple Pay, or a banking app on my phone?"
It isn't particularly, but that isn't supported in very many places because Apple, the bank, and the payment location all have to work together on the thing, subject to local laws, etc. In most cases, I'd rather use this, but it is worthwhile to consider that cryptocurrency processing is less centralized. If it had a value (see point 4 and the original post), payments would be more straightforward with a similar level of security, and it would be supportable in most locations. And you wouldn't have to have a specific device, accounts with any company, or credit system.
"3. You need to elaborate why using a bank to make payments is a bad thing, and using bitcoin mining companies to do it is better."
Wrong. I didn't say that. I said that banks have downsides. They include the problems of skimming (this happens more frequently in some places, and even if you can get your money back, it's not ideal to have it stolen in the first place). Crypto can deal with some of those in theory, and you would be doing it with your own wallet rather than an untrustworthy speculation system.
"4. Bitcoin performs a lot worse as a predictable store of value than almost all government issued currencies out there. To keep the value of a currency stable, you do need a central bank to control the supply, and bitcoin makes this impossible."
I specifically noted this. I said it doesn't work with the current use of cryptocurrency. However, supply is limited by the maths, and a central bank (Venezuela's, for example) can't devalue it on a whim. It isn't so necessary for us, but people who live in countries with less stable currencies might see this as a major benefit assuming we eventually create a cryptocurrency that gets used as a currency. I'm talking about the theory. The theory isn't working right now because people think that ridiculous volatility is a good investment system, but it has useful elements.
Once again, I don't trust cryptocurrency. I don't have any. I don't see it as necessary, and it doesn't hold value at this point. But it is unfair to deny that it does fix some problems that do exist, even if they aren't problems for us.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
