Since discovering bitcoin 6 months ago I have fallen in love with it even after a drop from 30 to 2, it's an Austrian economists dream. It just ticks all the boxes it's almost perfect accept one thing. The fact it might get hacked. If that happens it could become totally worthless. This is big fear of mine and of many others and it's well founded. Bitcoin being hacked is a big risk to anyone holding bitcoins. Now in the normal world of finance alot of big money firms are involved in risk management and hedging. If you held Italian bonds and got nervous about default you might buy insurance against default. (CDS)
There should be a way of insuring against the risk of the bitcoin system being hacked.
Why not with a simple "Will bitcoin be hacked this month" bet.
A site like betfair.com could arrange the bet and the free market would decide the price/odds/insurance premium. I was thinking about doing this myself but it would be much easier for someone like betfair.com to set it up.
Once this happens anyone can price in the risk of bitcoins systemic failure and this will increase its appeal greatly. (Although saying that, betting in america is still illegal)
I rang betfair.com this morning, they said it is possible but I would have to prove there is a deep/liquid market for it.
I thought this could be achieved if I created an online petition and we could get over a 1000 signatures.
Also it would need somebody to draft a technical definition of bitcoin failure so it would be perfectly clear what the definition of failure would be.
Your thoughts?
http://jonathanjamesharrison.blogspot.com/I'll bet 20 BTC that it won't be hacked in any given month.
However, I think a much bigger need is insurance against any particular system/server being hacked. Unlike Bitcoin itself being hacked (very unlikely), servers have and will be hacked into ... and eventually businesses will need insurance against that.
Sadly, it's still much too early for insurance against this - the economy needs to be a lot larger, with several Bitcoin-specialized security companies that can audit web servers against possible security leaks.
