No, that's not how it works at all. Apple is neither in the authorization nor the transaction clearing/settlement flow.
> How do you pay Apple without giving them a secret?
Credit cards being effectively unrestricted bearer tokens isn't nearly the only way to do payments. For example you could send a signed message to your bank instructing them to pay Apple (in a world in which you'd be paying them; again, Apple Pay is not that).
I think Apple has some special relationship with banks, so it's not this simple. But yeah, one way or another you're trusting Apple Pay, which presumably is more trustworthy than a gas station sale terminal.
And if you were signing your own payments, you'd still have to trust your computing device and the bank.
With crypto, you would not have to trust your computing device nor your bank.
You would send $100 to your computing device every now and then. And use that for day to day spendings. If the device turns out to be malicious, you lost only the $100 and stay away from the brand that made the device.
But you're sending that $100 from another computing device, and if you're not trusting a bank-like entity to hold the cryptocurrency for you, you're responsible for securing all your money on that device without locking yourself out.
On the other hand, having some money outside a bank is nice. I've had them freeze my assets before just cuz they felt like it, until I spent a whole day telling them to fix it.
Having a couple hardware wallets in different places + a paper backup split in a couple pieces gives you enough redundancy not to worry about this. Source: my own experience of close to 10 years now.
Unfortunately I will never be willing to entrust my financial safety solely to an algorithm.
An algorithm cannot be reasoned with, it cannot understand that your house burned down and destroyed your ID. It cannot accept liability for it's actions.
If I lose my bank card I go to a branch, verify my ID, and get a replacement. The bank is liable if they allow somebody other then me access to my accounts, regardless of how convincing the fraudster might have been.
Exactly. I've held large amounts of Bitcoin for years but always been too intimidated by hardware wallets or the fancier security schemes. It takes time to learn and try that stuff to the point of 100% trusting it, and I'd rather be called obtuse than overconfident like this guy: https://www.reddit.com/r/TREZOR/comments/s9lgyy/5eth_bounty_...
My solution in the end hinged on a paper recovery phrase, stored in... a bank.
How do you pay Apple without giving them a secret?