Comment by FatalLogic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FatalLogic | Hacker News Reader

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I think you can't. You're right about 3 and 6, which are the same basic issue of needing to trust the vendor, their hardware suppliers, their employees, and the delivery chain to you. (You can be more secure, but you can't be totally secure)

Or, for example, what if all your communications and actions are being monitored continuously by state-level actors with cameras and hidden bugs, recording every keystroke? Or what if we are living in a simulation, and the malicious operators can extract data from your brain, or just alter reality at will?

But I think you can provide a "practical" level of trustless. That means that, if your adversary was powerful enough to steal your Bitcoins, then they'd be so powerful that they could destroy you in many other ways. So it's a moot point.

A practical solution to your question could be to take all the precautions you've said above, and then simply gradually increase the amounts you are transacting, using a variety of methods, and see if anything gets stolen.

Call it a bribe or a bug bounty or a tax. It's quite effective, because organizations are comprised of individuals, who are subject to human temptations. At least two federal agents independently stole funds from the Silk Road marketplace while investigating it, and they were imprisoned later

I don't think the bug bounty approach helps.

Say an attacker compromised a certain batch of Ledger wallets.

They might very well wait for a few years before they reap coins of the wallets. Because as soon as they do it for the first time, there will be an uproar and people will analyze whats up and transfer their funds to other wallets.

Think about that situation from the attacker's POV. They have invested extensive resources, but they still haven't got anything.

What if they're not the only one who compromised the insecure wallets? If they could do it, then probably someone else also could, and that other hacker could empty all the wallets first.

Meanwhile, users like you will be occasionally moving their Bitcoins around, sometimes to wallets that the attacker cannot access.

If an attacker just wants to make money, they're unlikely to wait for years to exploit an old vulnerability.

In the real world, most security vulnerabilities get exploited quickly, because they are very likely to lose value as time passes. You can find numerous real examples of this attitude, such as weak brain wallet keys which are exploited in seconds, instead of waiting and hoping that more money will accumulate in the address before someone else steals it

And, like I suggested already, a practical best case solution for the paranoid is diversifying your assets and security methods, so you can identify vulnerability sources early and be unlikely to lose everything

Edit : Bottom line though is that you cannot use Bitcoin in totally trustless way, I think. Nothing in security or in real life is totally trustless. So do your best to employ reasonable precautions and mitigations and then get on with your life

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