> Of course it might be possible that the computer of the person who sold the Bitcoin was cracked. But that's not the fault of Bitcoin.
Just like it's not the fault of the dollar if someone mugs you at gunpoint. Except robbing someone typically requires you to take physical risks and (threaten to) use violence. I'll be very curious to see any effective way of tracking down bitcoin thieves.
If you have to be a security expert to own more than a few dollars worth of bitcoins, the project has effectively failed already.
You don't necessarily have to be a security expert to use Bitcoins, just if you want to run the client by yourself.
If you don't have the required knowledge just pay a little bit to a "Bitcoin bank" that handles the task for you. In the real world you also don't carry your money with you all the time, but store it on a bank.
Banking eradicates many of the supposed gains of decentralized money - not all, but most. I just dig a quick Google for "benefits of Bitcoin" and it seems most people agree on the following:
- Anonymity/trackability. Gone if you are with a bank. Sure, possible to sidestep by going through the song-and-dance that is withdraw-send-deposit. We can do this IRL also, but there's a reason people do not.
- Taxability. Welp, if your BTCs are in a bank, the IRS can easily get you.
- Abusive/coercisve government action (e.g., freezing). Well, yeah, if you're with a bank that can happen too.
- Lack of fees. If banks become standard (and if BTC takes off, yes, they will become standard) then kiss goodbye to this benefit - the same way cash right now has no transaction fee, but bank transactions do.
In fact, the only major sell of Bitcoin that remains:
- Inability for government to arbitrarily expand the supply of money.
Still a win, but suddenly Bitcoins have lost a lot of charm, especially for the everyman for whom the above 4 points are much more salient than that last one.
If you have to be a security expert to own more than a few dollars worth of bitcoins, the project has effectively failed already.
Why?
It's true that key management and security are not as good as they could be in the official client, but that doesn't mean the project has failed, merely that the client needs to be improved.
Improving the wallet security is priority #1 of the dev team at the moment.
Note that no one of the developers expected it to get this big this fast. Six months ago, no one would even bother stealing bitcoins as they were not more than a toy curiousity. Now very serious amounts of money are represented.
Just like it's not the fault of the dollar if someone mugs you at gunpoint. Except robbing someone typically requires you to take physical risks and (threaten to) use violence. I'll be very curious to see any effective way of tracking down bitcoin thieves.
If you have to be a security expert to own more than a few dollars worth of bitcoins, the project has effectively failed already.