Quote:
Originally Posted by SR71
There could be something like bitcoin, with two important differences. First, the transaction and accounting means would be secure, to keep your bitcoin alternative alternative currency from getting ganked.
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- Bitcoin does have secure transaction and accounting means... The stolen coins have surely been securely transacted and accounted by now. The transaction is safe, the coins weren't.
- There's an entire forest of ways to prevent people from safely and securely transacting coins that aren't theirs -- which mgtox didn't use. Because:
- Security is inconvenient. Locking coins in a crypto purse means you have to open the purse to use it. This often means the computer has to stop for a password or iris-check or what have you. Passing passwords securely to the web means shelling out money to buy an SSL certificate from some company with a snooty name. Some of these things can be worked around, but do you want to? Storing the password you need to get into someone's wallet is just as bad as not bothering with the password at all.
There's usually convenient
and proper ways to manage crypto, but because of the way cryptographic keys work, they are counter-intuitive to most, either avoided or worked-around. I had a surprisingly hard time convincing someone that a fully-encrypted hard drive would need its unencrypted password put on it to boot if you didn't want to type in the encryption password every time you turned it on. And when they finally understood, they shrugged, nodded, and told me "Okay -- so put the password in it" as if that didn't turn this otherwise-formidable security into a rube goldberg machine, as if it wouldn't boot as readily for a mugger as him.
So the problem is that, much like boobs and fire, crypto makes people stupid.