I'm a BitCoin skeptic with the best of them. But this is breathtaking.
That's one thing about bitcoins. There's no FDIC or SIPC watching your back. It's the wild west with train robberies and stage coach heists in all.
That's one thing about bitcoins. There's no FDIC or SIPC watching your back. It's the wild west with train robberies and stage coach heists in all.
Of course, I'd want all sorts of regulations on how you set this up; I might sell you some kind of extra-secure system for managing your balance, for example. At that point, the market would basically be putting a price on BitCoin security.
Obviously, my deposit insurance scheme could go broke, if I price it wrong. That's theoretically a risk with SIPC. It's not a risk with the FDIC, since that is ultimately backed by the government's ability to print an unlimited amount of money.
So it might make more sense to say that deposit insurance is a feature of unstable currencies: if anyone's dollar-denominated debt can be 100% guaranteed by the government, then the value of everyone's dollar-denominated assets will face an inflation tax to pay for this guarantee.
Plus, I'd bet that you could create an onion router-style arrangement with multiple off-shore banks in different jurisdictions.
There really should be additional checks. Having to sign your transfer requests and allow people to impose a voluntary delay on their transactions to allow time for cancellation would help significantly.
Gotta protect your data!!
Unless they install as a kernel extension, then you're screwed. But that requires a password.
This guy wasn't using a bank, he wasn't encrypting his wallet, so that is inevitable.