Age of Enlightenment applied to currencies

[Cherothald]

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin expect users to handle their electronic wallet carefully, whereas losing fiat money from a classic bank account means that the bank or an insurance most probably recovers the lost money (if it isn't your fault). Guarding your own Bitcoin wallet means that you are responsible for it yourself. There's no central authority that could help you recover stolen Bitcoins for instance. What would the police do, anyway, if they had no trace of the criminal? To sum up, if you lose your Bitcoins, they're lost. That's the use of decentralization.

Bitcoins can be compared to the Age of Enlightenment, when people gradually started to believe in reason to reform the society. The advancement of this currency therefore is a natural process as it brings people to a position where they act independently from other institutions such as banks. People now have to make provision against Bitcoin thieves theirselves. We ultimately reached the point of being responsible ourselves. There's no central bank anymore. There's no regulation by professionals anymore. There's just us. A bunch of disoriented humans who always panic when the exchange rate of their beloved currency drops by just some percents. If only that finally doesn't turn out to have been a huge mistake...

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[BitcoinPorn]

With no central bank and only able to look to each other, we come a network/community looking out for each other by the very nature of "this is the only way this can work, either we are all in, or we aren't"

Proof is Gox situation, where this crazy untraceable anonymous money can be found out if everyone pools their efforts to ensure one person doesn't fuck it up.

God I wish I had money to invest, back in Gox too, I swear he will come through with some of the newest/toughest security.  TradeHill will no doubt have a foot in the history of exchanges, but things will be compared to with Gox.

Or not, who knows.

[Cherothald]

Bitcoin really is based on confidence. You have to trust each other and the currency. However, the stock market crash showed us that everyone would be selling their Bitcoins if the exchange rate ever drops drastically. Price dropped to $0.10 in the end, which does make me feel uncomfortable. Just imagine this would happen again and this time the seller would be legit. I guess we'd all have to fear such a situation.

MtGox was secured. I'm sure the creator will secure it even better now but there's still no guarantee that it is a 100% secure now.