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Comment by bigfishrunning | Hacker News Reader

I would expect that, just like other cryptocurrency, "cloud wallets" will manage the tokens themselves for most people, who will gladly give up decentralization for the tiniest bit of convenience

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Which is still better than the status quo where only licensed banks can hold digital money for you. I'm fine with everyone having the choice of custodian as long as I can implement a wallet from the open specifications myself.

Licensed banks aren't getting pillaged by cyber criminals though, I'm tech literate and mindful of my security and yet my 3 bitcoins were stolen from Mt Gox. People buy hardware ledgers to create a higher sense of security then those get hacked. The money in my bank so far has never been touched without me having to think about it at all.

Presumably you would keep most of your money in a licensed bank and only a small fraction as cash: either in a digital wallet on your phone or a leather wallet in your pocket.

Being able to complete small purchases P2P offline without needing the whole MC/Visa/Square/Stripe stack would be fantastic.

Fantastic, yes. Unfortunately the 3 needed/wanted properties offline, anonymous, and secure cannot be achieved simultaneously. MC/Visa work offline and secure, but not anonymous. Taler is anonymous (payer) and secure, but not offline. At least the payer needs to be online to prevent double-spending.

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