Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin offers no such protections? And the Transactions are Irreversible as well.

These includes the following like:
Protection from counterfeit bank notes BTC
Protection from financial surveillance BTC
Protection from identity theft BTC

 What are you opinions?

yes, you are correct, bitcoin has no true form of consumer protection. The insurance industry has responded very slowly to the crypto space, furthermore any third party insurance policy you find for crypto is very likely a scam. That being said, you will find others that argue bitcoin is in fact the paragon of consumer protection in that only you alone are in control of your funds (you are the bank) unlike traditional fiat. In the end, however, if you fall prey to a scam or make an erroneous transaction and lose your funds, there is virtually no way of recuperating them as there is no point of authority to turn to. 

Is it not that block chain technology itself is a protection in itself? Have you gone through how block chain works?

Uh yeah, it's a public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions.
Which allows us participants to safely keep the path of digital currency transactions without the recordkeeping,
though the record’s authenticity can be verified by the entire community using the blockchain instead of a single centralized authority.

Interesting answer to that question. And I fully agree with you. I will add from myself that bitcoin is quite unstable so but quite valuable so it's up to you to invest in it or not.

Im not sure if I am reading this post right. BTC offers protection for all three of the points you have raised.

Protection from counterfeit bank notes BTC
Bitcoin cannot be counterfeited.

Protection from financial surveillance BTC
BTC addresses are pseudonymous. Since the transactions don't have to be filtered through a third party and your identity is not associated with them, you are protected.

Protection from identity theft BTC
If you hold your private key in a very secure location, then identity theft is not an issue. Treat your private key like a social security number.

As far as the irreversible transactions go, there can be consumer protection put in place. Satoshi said third party escrows would likely be the solution or even smart contracts could be used.

Protection against consumer tracking - This might be one of the best reasons why you should be using Bitcoin. Your

consumer spending habits should not be anyone's else's business. Financial privacy does not stop, when you hide your wealth

from other people... it extends to what you are buying with that wealth. Why do governments need to know how many times

you spend your money on junk food? {They track all your consumer spending, when you use traditional payment methods.}

If you use Bitcoin correctly, you can hide your consumer behaviour from those people who are invading your privacy.  ;)

Currency of any government is like promissory note; where the Government promises to pay the holder the amount equal to that currency note in case of currency failure.  But bitcoin has no such promise by any one.  You buy it today for $10k and tomorrow if it drops down to #5k your interests are not protected.
Though it is not fault of bitcoin but it is because instead of using it as currency we made it the instrument of investment where with the greed of man to earn high returns people played different roles to satisfy their greed.

Bitcoin is a crypto currency generated algorithm which did not input consumer protection in it use,that is why new alternative currency have risen to solve such issues. If you need consumer protection ,other coins can help fulfill that

You are quite right but it has something which make it popular and the user of its increasing day by day.

Looking it from another point of view, it can also be that there is consider protection but instead of consirmer protection, as could say end user protection because there is no greater protection that the one you provide for yourself and that is what bitcoin offers but because we are used to a body providing such protection and major players in the indiutry too believes that because of the absence of central body to ensure that, they are free to do anything they want but we they can just do what is right, control in your hands is the best prorection.

Right now bitcoin is the best digital crypto currency in the world. Investors are happy for bitcoins performance. That’s why peoples are investing on this project. I think customer believes bitcoin is the best option for them.

But isn't it impossible to achieve perfect anonymity with Bitcoin? I mean every transaction you make is essentially logged in the blockchain forever.
When you buy your coins from an exchange, that's when the trail starts. Unless you're doing anonymous OTC trades, it's not that hard to track down someone's Bitcoin spending habits, at least not for governments.

Heck, it's even possible for regular technically adept people to track someone's spending habits with Bitcoin. You'd just have to tie a Bitcoin address to a person, lots of people re-use and share their addresses.

Then we're not even talking about deep blockchain analysis, which can de-anonymize transactions made through a Bitcoin mixer.

Im verry confused on what you are trying to say. what protection are you talking about? bitcoin has no protection because as the op said above ,  'bitcoin transactions are not ireversible' which means if you got scammed there is no chance that your coins will be recovered. Not unlike to other known payments like paypal that transactions can still be reverese because they have a chargeback policy  to protect their users from scammer and other fraud activitites

You can simply achieve anonymity by not mentioning to others that you are using a particular address. That way, others would not be able to tie a bitcoin address to you and will prevent someone tracking your spending habits with bitcoin to do so. If it is not enough to prevent the government, at the very least it will make tracking your spending habits a gruesome task for them.
Have you read this post before commenting on what he is talking about, if not then please do read it, I believe this post already mentioned how to avoid getting scammed when using bitcoin as a means to pay:

and that means the transactions ARE irreversible!
you see it can go both ways. you can go check out how many people are getting scammed every day using Paypal (which has reversible transactions). bitcoin is offering a strong merchant protection and the customer which is a random anonymous person who visits the stationary an known place aka a business and makes a payment that he can not scam  that business with.

I also believe the same way, is bitcoin had some strict and powerful consumer protectionth then it would be very helpful for all of the treaders who are investing in cryptos. built-in consumer protection will help us from scams and other stuffs like that.

This is why many people like to use BTC!
The blockchain solves people's most basic credit problems. Bitcoin can not be falsified. Strict mathematical rules dictate the precise kernel of Bitcoin!
Bitcoin is even more powerful than the US dollar.

The far majority of the people buy their coins from exchanges, so while you may think that no one is tracking you, the exchange certainly is, and very likely whatever agency as well. As soon as you buy coins from an exchange, consider your privacy to be compromised. You need to get rid of these coins if you care about privacy, and mixers offer that service. 100% anonymity doesn't exist, but getting rid of your tainted coins makes things very difficult for others to track you.

Satoshi never said third party escrows are whatever form of solutions, because they aren't. He creates an electronic peer to peer cash system and then he recommends centralized escrows? Does that make sense to you? ::)

the problem with topics like this is that people starting them are only hypothesizing and never have any actual world experience themselves. they never use bitcoin and they have probably never made any payments in their short lives since they are too young for that stuff!!!

for instance you say Consumer Protection, but lets give an example. you go to Steam and want to purchase a game. if you use Paypal for example you can do a charge back and scam Steam easily. but if you use bitcoin you can never scam them. and at the same time Valve is a trusted company that is not going to scam you either. so it is a win-win scenario. you don't need an escrow either like what the other user said.

We've learned to rely on others for protection, that's why the lack of it seems strange at first, but once you understand how it all works you start seeing that consumer protection is not necessary. What would you rather have? A system that allows you to buy into every single scam without thinking and then file a complaint that may or may not result in the return of your investment, or a system that makes you the only person responsible and teaches you to learn from your mistakes? At least in the second case you know from the start that if you give the money to the wrong person it's gone forever. In first case you may depend on the complaints being successful and end up wasting your time and money to get the initial investment back.

Yeah, there are no such customer protection in bitcoin. But I hope that it will be solved soon. As bitcoin is being more popular day by day and I hope this obstacles will be solved with in a short period.

Yes I am agreed with you and I do believe this is all about the process of blockchain. In the blockchain technology all information are passed by the distributed leger system. So it will happen and cannot resist.

I think consumer protection doesn't apply to bitcoin as a peer-to-peer digital/crypto currency
but consumer protection should be applied on its business or service level

there's no physical bank notes or identity involved in bitcoin, it's digital and pseudonymous
financial surveillance is irrelevant when you have no specific entity or person to be tied to financial transactions

Yes you are absolutely correct and that is point which everybody should remember while making any transactions. Once a transaction is broadcasted and identified in the network then there is no way we can revert it. Its like an arrow left from a bow. It is quiet obvious that there is no authority because being decentralized, we own the control over our money and thus we are responsible for any transactions we do while in fiat the banks own the control over our money and thus the insurance companies gets benefitted from the services they provide us.

 BTC is the best crypto currency in the world based on this in market there is various type of scam and fraud but in case of btc its less because the authority always take proper step to stop this problem. So this idea is depend on you that you will invest or not but investing on btc is the best decision.

Nope. You are responsible for your funds, for your private keys and other security.

Cryptocurrency - be your own bank.

First of all bitcoin is not a fiat currency and it does not need any financial surveillance because that's the whole point of being decentralized and that's why i use it. Second of all bitcoin will not have any counterfeit notes because it verify it's transaction through a peer to peer network. And third no bitcoin user will be victimized by identity theft that's the whole point of being anonymous and secured.

Yes you are right. Bitcoin has no such consumer protection or insurance which will provide you with any indemnity. So you will have to bear your own risk. I think as we are earning much from this bearing the risk is okay :p.

Yeah right! Bitcoin does't have that much protection for their customers as they work with public ledger. So, some customers feel insecured to work with it. I hope bitcoin is going to work on it very soon and develop its security issues.

Actually the idea is not totally true. Bitcoin has enough protection to save the investors. It has strong technological foundation to protect the interest of the investors. As far about the matters regarding insurance policy, it is related to consumers not to the bitcoin. No coin is insured by any company in this market.

Right, Bitcoin does not have any customer protection that can compensate you if you have any damage. So you have to bear yourself in all kinds of risks. Because there is no investment in the world where there is no risk. So to earn, we must accept the risk itself.

you know why there are still many countries that have not legalized bitcoin to be a legitimate transaction tool in their country because this is one of the weaknesses in the absence of the protection you mention so that there will be some criminal acts that can trigger the users or other people who intend evil.

No other currency in history offer consumers as much protection as bitcoin.

Protection from counterfeit notes =
Producing a counterfeit bitcoin can be done if you can create the largest computer network in history. It will cost billions to make and only MAY work. This is why there has never been a counterfeit bitcoin.

Protection from financial surveillance =
If you know what you are doing then there is absolutely no way anyone can tell your wallet from any other wallet. Of course all transactions are recorder in the blockchain, but nobody knows who owns those coins or who they just paid. Unless you add that functionality on top of the protocol.

Protection from identity theft =
Last year I replaced my bank card three times due to data breaches. Guess how many times I had my identity compromised with bitcoin? Yep, zero in eight years of use.  No currecny offers the protection bitcoin offers against identity theft. Why? Because unlike ALL other payment systems bitcoin does not tie your identity to your money. Thieves don't care about your stupid identity, they want your money and getting your identity is the key. With bitcoin I can, (AND HAVE), posted the password to my Overstock.com account.  You could get in and see what I bought, but there is no credit card on file and no path to my wallet.

Government offices that have to protect the interests of consumers are actually doing everything possible and impossible to promote their own and nteresa. And they are contrary to the real interests of consumers. Bitcoin protects itself.It prevents the possibility of confiscation.Bitcoin is not subject to inflation, Protected from loss of personal data and tangible assets.Of course there are risks but there is no protection from them from the government.

Yes Bitcoin has no built-in consumer protection cause if it had it means someone or some group had to control it and that would have made Bitcoin centralized which is against the whole reason why Bitcoin was created. Also the transactions are irreversible, I guess this is the price everyone should be ready to pay for decentralization.

Perhaps the OP is referring to refunds on bad transactions. For this to happen someone would have to leave it in escrow for a long time e.g. the 30 day money back guarantee period before transferring funds on to the seller

Well, what do you mean?

There are no 'counterfeit' bitcoins. Every bitcoin that you can publicly see on the bitcoin blockchain is going to be real and legit. The legitimacy of your coins can be easily verified once you hit a number of confirmations on your receiving transaction.

There is no identity theft possible with bitcoin. You don't need any KYC in order to get a bitcoin address. Identity theft ironically is actually the major concern for credit card companies and banks.

The only "protection" that is lacking from bitcoin are chargebacks, which does more good than harm in most cases. Bitcoin is perfectly fine as it is, as a decentralised network.

It's true that bitcoin does not have protection, but I think bitcoin is very safe, but it should be if there is protection it will be very good.

Safety of your account is at your hand because bitcoin build a security that youre the one who can open it unless you share it from others. I think the transaction is traceable nowadays in blockchain just monitor where your bitcoin goes to but still it is impossible to recover if youve been hack.

It works both ways. Some prefer it that way. Protection is the responsibility of the owner. But that is the problem with attracting non-techie people. They want protection, so do I. Bitcoin will not become mainstream without government regulations.

As we call it a decentralized cryptocurrency, we must understand the responsibility and duties associated with the freedom of using it. There is no centralised authority to control or reverse the transactions on behalf of you so anyone must have the conscious sense while making any transaction are dealing with other aspects of it. Even if it looks unfamiliar at this stage, it is the future of our lifestyle since most of the sectors (even non-financial sectors) will adopt blockchain technology to optimise their processes. We must change our habits if we want to have the better environment.