> I really hope the various bitcoin related incidents don't poison the well for online currencies in general.
It shouldn't do significantly. In the public's mind the well is some distance off, many not even knowing it exists, so there is plenty of time to get security better sorted before the average man on the street has his money invested.
Also, everyone knows that cash and other forms of investment are far from safe anyway. Hopefully people will eventually see online currency as being no less safe than other forms, and if the security is done right they'll see it as more safe (as it could be).
But this seems to me to be a general security issue with decentralised anything, not a bitcoin specific problem. If you remove central control, and take as full control yourself as possible, then you remove responsibility from other people and that is something you need to seriously think about. Providers like Linode will not be taking responsibility for financial loss in these cases and paying for hefty insurance policies to underwrite the possibility of said loss: they'll just add clauses to their contract disavowing themselves of responsibility if such clauses don't already exist.
One way to protect yourself is to spread the money around multiple places, then one hacked provider doesn't put all your resource at risk. Again this isn't bitcoin specific: if you have more then 50K to invest over here (in the UK) then you split it between multiple organisations as only 50K per registered organisation is guaranteed protected by national safety nets provided by government.
Back onto "poising the well" this could of course work the other way around: if the virtual currency is worth the effort of stealing then it might be seen as more valuable in the eyes of the public - much like a sign you have a good product is that knock-off copies start appearing.
It shouldn't do significantly. In the public's mind the well is some distance off, many not even knowing it exists, so there is plenty of time to get security better sorted before the average man on the street has his money invested.
Also, everyone knows that cash and other forms of investment are far from safe anyway. Hopefully people will eventually see online currency as being no less safe than other forms, and if the security is done right they'll see it as more safe (as it could be).
But this seems to me to be a general security issue with decentralised anything, not a bitcoin specific problem. If you remove central control, and take as full control yourself as possible, then you remove responsibility from other people and that is something you need to seriously think about. Providers like Linode will not be taking responsibility for financial loss in these cases and paying for hefty insurance policies to underwrite the possibility of said loss: they'll just add clauses to their contract disavowing themselves of responsibility if such clauses don't already exist.
One way to protect yourself is to spread the money around multiple places, then one hacked provider doesn't put all your resource at risk. Again this isn't bitcoin specific: if you have more then 50K to invest over here (in the UK) then you split it between multiple organisations as only 50K per registered organisation is guaranteed protected by national safety nets provided by government.
Back onto "poising the well" this could of course work the other way around: if the virtual currency is worth the effort of stealing then it might be seen as more valuable in the eyes of the public - much like a sign you have a good product is that knock-off copies start appearing.