Comment by TacticalCoder
4 months ago
> From what I can tell I would need to have my crypto seed laser etched into titanium, and then treat that talisman as if it was made of pure platinum as far as securing and tracking it.
Not sufficient. You'd also need someone you trust 100% to have another seed protected as if it was the gold of Fort Knox. And then you'd only only use "multisig" to sign transfers.
And that other person needs to live on another continent.
And you both need a backup plan in case you die if you plan to leave these 0.1 Bitcoin to your heirs.
This makes the $5 wrench attack impossible to succeed. As to whether the attacker is willing to add gratuitous (because it's impossible it'd succeed) torture/killing to its list of crime is something else though.
> I will say, the BTC appreciation is a big attraction of course, but long term I don’t see how it becomes widely adopted...
I think mid-term to long-term people simply buy a Bitcoin ETF or stocks from a company holding shitloads of Bitcoins like MicroStrategy. Just like I buy SLV (paper silver) or the ZKB silver ETF (physical replication, in vaults in Switzerland).
Keeping your own Bitcoins is not unlike keeping physical gold coins. It's doable but risky. Multisig really helps a lot but buying a Bitcoin ETF is simply easier. Open bank or broker website, click click. Done.
I'm not saying Satoshi's dream or the Bitcoin maximalists' dream is good old Wall Street manipulating Bitcoin's price using paper Bitcoin (silver ETFs were in big trouble in 2021) but what I'm saying is I think that's how it's going to end.
>I think mid-term to long-term people simply buy a Bitcoin ETF or stocks from a company holding shitloads of Bitcoins like MicroStrategy. Just like I buy SLV (paper silver) or the ZKB silver ETF (physical replication, in vaults in Switzerland).
But what's the inherent value of BTC if it doesn't do the things it claims? What value does Michael Saylor owning a bunch of bitcoin, of which I have a pretend share, even have?
This is the paradox of Bitcoin. It's a really cool technology that's really hard for normies to use.
I feel that crypto offers a different risk profile than say the gold ETF. There certainly is significant risk and expense to storing and securing the physical gold backing the ETF. I think it also needed to be audited as matching expected reserves occasionally?
But crypto has similar it and physical security costs at a minimum, though physical storage will be cheaper. Auditing maybe similar costs, I’m not quite sure how you confirm ownership of an address or pile of BTC without transactions?
The big risk is that these big holding companies of bitcoin become targets of state-scale cybercrime hacking armies. Can you imagine an adversary deploying constant attack on every facet of you IT infrastructure, from accessing the private keys presumably stored in hot wallets to support active trading to the interface where they may try interfere with client functions to all sorts of ends from theft to market manipulation.
I partially agree, although I can see more companies offering these kinds of services in the future. Block already has a system with Bitkey, custody companies like Casa and Unchained are providing services as signers, and AnchorWatch is stepping in as both a custody and insurance provider at the institutional level. Despite the government's best efforts to limit participation from existing banks[1], other services are jumping through the arduous hoops of regulation to fill in the void.
[1] https://www.swanbitcoin.com/politics/biden-s-sab121-veto-sta...
> Just like I buy SLV (paper silver) or the ZKB silver ETF (physical replication, in vaults in Switzerland)
I'd suggest that holding precious metals without actually having physical metal under your exclusive control is essentially as flawed as holding crypto without exclusively holding the private key.