Another huge problem with Bitcoin and the problems users have staying safe

[ransomer]

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.

[pedrog]

Hope that happens soon, I want to be rich!

[redsn0w]

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.

One word... fork.

[harrymmmm]

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.

I must have missed the previous 'huge problem' that made this 'another huge problem'. Care to elucidate?

The scenario you described is one that will only be approached slowly. On the ramp up, security will also be ramped up. Gox taught us that, even tho it shouldn't even have needed to be learnt.

So I imagine such a centralized wallet solution would have multisig security on it at least. 2FA etc. Probably insurance as well.

So ... no problem. FUD again.

Where are all you guys coming from?

[notbatman]

Sounds like the OP is claiming the 1% who control the fiat are not criminals.

Like the saying goes "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". -- Carl Sagan paraphrasing Marcello Truzzi.

[Jorge320]

Circumstance not likely, with mass adoption comes greater strides in security and ease of use.  Will there be times that this stumbles?  For sure, but wallets will evolve to meet the expectations of the market.

[oblivi]

The big vaults storing other people's private keys that take their work seriously are using massive resources to keep your shit safe, for example look at Xapo, they store your stuff in some sort of bunker. The attacker would need to not only get inside the armored core, but crack the SHA256 passwords of every encrypted wallet. How insane is that? not gonna happen.

[gentlemand]

If mass acceptance happens, there'll probably have to be some type of Bitcoin banks. There already are such things in the forms of Coinbase and Xapo etc.

They're already insured in case they're hacked at their end. You can bet your arse that to get such insurance they had to prove absolutely bulletproof security measures.

[mookid]

We need less web-based wallets, the common folk need to understand that private keys should always be stored on a secure location,

[investspot]

Hope that happens soon, I want to be rich!

Each bitcoiner wants to be rich. 

[Jace]

then a criminal could be in possession of half the wealth in the world.....

Sounds surreal and could not happen in a FIAT system.

Are you kidding us? In the current fiat system, most of the money in the world IS in possession of a small group of criminals.

[BIT-Sharon]

Banks and international communications companies are interested in using blockchain. Some new founded company is developing and use blockchain to exchange traditional currencies in the hope of seeing the simple and efficient financial transaction. The rising of Blockchain brings a basic issue that if the human autonomy should be replaced of technology.

[Kprawn]

Well, We had a situation like that with MtGox before, and it did not ruin Bitcoin.... It did do a lot of harm though.  

There are loads of online wallet service providers out there now, and it can be positive and negative for us. Positive in the sense that it protects from one single point of failure,

if everyone use one service and it fails. Negative in that it creates several opportunities for loads of smaller security failures, where all sites are not on the same standard as the

strongest sites out there. My advice would be to only store small amounts of Bitcoins on these online wallet service providers and the rest in cold storage or paper wallets.  

[Possum577]

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.

One word... fork.

RedSn0w, give us more than one word. Explain yourself.

To the OP, great question...Could something be done on the blockchain to provide added security? It makes the idea of cold storage a lot more valuable, imperative. There's no one great answer, yet...unless RedSn0w can explain how the fork is going to save us.

[Brad Harrison]

Hope that happens soon, I want to be rich!

I only got into bitcoin for that one reason only

[Elwar]

Imagine someone steals trillion of dollars per year from people and they use it to go out and bomb and shoot people and kidnap and imprison millions of other people.

Scary thought.

[Kazimir]

Imagine someone steals trillion of dollars per year from people and they use it to go out and bomb and shoot people and kidnap and imprison millions of other people.

Scary thought.

Haha, yeah, just imagine! How disturbing would that be. The mass public would undoubtedly start rioting and screaming and running away from such a corrupt financial scheme, and urge to fall back on alternative, more open, transparent monetary systems.

Oh, wait...

[redsn0w]

Imagine someone steals trillion of dollars per year from people and they use it to go out and bomb and shoot people and kidnap and imprison millions of other people.

Scary thought.

Haha, yeah, just imagine! How disturbing would that be. The mass public would undoubtedly start rioting and screaming and running away from such a corrupt financial scheme, and urge to fall back on alternative, more open, transparent monetary systems.

Oh, wait...

But this is how the current system works... so it is up the people (better citizen) to change the things with a real revolution.


PS: Maybe I'm dreaming.

[Hazir]

Op, I guess you have little idea how much money is stolen each year from Banks and financial institution due to hackers attacks. I guess this info is not exactly on the first page of every newspaper because it is not convenient to scare people. Security of the most powerful financial institution and even Pentagon are being breached on daily basis. Compared to this, bitcoin structure and security looks amazing.

[S4VV4S]

Imagine someone steals trillion of dollars per year from people and they use it to go out and bomb and shoot people and kidnap and imprison millions of other people.

Scary thought.

Indeed it is a scary thought....
I don't even wanna think about it....

Hell, imagine if a few of these so called bankers found a way to make hundreds of billions of dollars by putting the taxpayer in debt.
And when the whole think blows out, they bail out and get to keep all that money.
Now isn't that a scary thought?

Anyone seen Inside Job, the documentary, by the way?
It's pretty good.
Explains a lot.