Imagine a wallet (hot or not) becomes the market leader and more than half the existing bitcoins are stored there.

Then imagine it's security is breached.

If this happens at a time when bitcoin has been mass accepted and it is a dominant currency to store wealth in world-wide - then a criminal could be in possession of half the wealth in the world.....

Sounds surreal and could not happen in a FIAT system.

Selling them has and will take a while - what will happen to the price when they finish selling them?

Some argue that banks could just use the blockchain technology to lower their costs related to transacting and recording - and make money on lending, advice etc etc. Thus no need for bitcoin - banks might use an agnostic blockchain that uses dollars etc.

Others say "but wait" - the the downside is still that bitcoin makes banks obsolete and, more importantly, that the supply is limited and cannot be increased like FIAT.

Well.... really those downsides of banks slotting FIAT through a blockchain constrution - are they real consumer downsides, or are they merely downsides from an ideological or political angle? It seems to me it might be the latter-- and if that is the case then they might be irrelevant 'downsides' for most of the world.

After recent rumours of security loopholes in Electrum, another hardware solution is facing problems:

http://www.coindesk.com/hardware-vulnerability-could-compromise-bitcoin-private-keys/

Keeping bitcoins safe is really problematic.

Arguably the Internet was the final drop that won the US (sorry UK, Australia etc, but let's be honest ) the language war. Before the internet French, German and Spanish had a certain hope for being the global language. Today those hopes are completely gone, and English has won a decisive victory.

I'm just now watching a video with Vorhees where he says that rough financial rules might mean that the US will lose the currency war?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv0ETVEZil0

About min 24.

What do you think? Will the US win again, some other country, or wide dispersion?

Or have we taken a step backwards to stuffing our mattresses with paper notes, and hiding USB sticks in the attic?

So - in your opinion what are the most secure on-line wallets, and are any of them actually secure enough to use (for the average grand mother, baker, postman, computer uninterested person, 89 year old etc)?

A guy said that he buy Bitcoin every monday for his cigarette money

That made me wonder what coinbase charges for selling for $5?

Is buying in so small lots really feasible?

And my private for that matter...

..

Under request payment... It shows me one: "This is one of your addresses". Where are there other addresses?

Where is this?

Is it what they call the identifier?

Now Bitcoin is far from perfect as a currency but when I tell people about Bitcoin I sense three things that might hold people back from really embrasing bitcoins:

1. Not wide enough adaptation, and even when bitcoins can be used it might be too technical (this of course is far from always the case anymore).

2. The security issues - hacking, Mt Gox etc. People feel uncertain in their own capability to keep their bitcoins safe, and they are troubled more when they are told about the no recourse of bitcoins that are stolen...

But let's say that some people think they could handle the security issue.. and they are optimistic that in the future with higher adoption rate it will have higher utility... then the next issue seems to really be a troublesome issue..:

3. So the blockchain idea is great? You are convinced it could be a very important development? Does that assure the success of Bitcoin? No... because there are many altcoins.. Sure, Bitcoin is the original.. first, but others on the other hand are able to pick and chose the best features of Bitcoin. Just like Motorola and Myspace might have been first movers... but Samsung/Apple and Facebook just came along and did it better..

While the two first issues are commonly discussed, I haven't really seen to many discuss how the other altcoins are holding bitcoins back. What do you think? Can and should anything be done to avoid a muddled situation where all the altcoins (including bitcoin) mess it up for each other?

 

The bitcoin concept (what it is, whether it is useful etc.) is still quite complex. I think we can agree that it takes some minimum level of intelligence and perseverance to figure these things out.

It could be argued that with FIAT currencies the poor had a hard time getting rich and as such there was a demographic divide with limited social mobility. For example, someone really smart might be born into a situation with tough chances of being financially successful.

If Bitcoin succeeds it seems the intelligent and the early adopters has a huge advantage already. As such, the 'injustice' is still there it has mere shifted demography. Where it might take intelligence to make FIAT money, it does not really take much intelligence to be interested in it, understand it, or use it.

It seems that Bitcoin heavily and negatively biases the groups with less than average mental capacity.

Sure low intelligence was never a benefit, but at the current state of bitcoin affairs which less intelligent person would ever consider Bitcoin an option? It seems the troubles of this group of people are even worse than using FIAT?

Does it matter? Do we care that Btc favors the geeks and nerds like us? That it's success basically could redistribute wealth in the world (to some degree) even more sharply along a low vs high intelligence dimension?