Note that in cryptocurrency, there is no bank to call when your crypto "coins" are gone. Then it's gone harder than anything else that ever went, ever:
- you can't explain to your family or friends what happened
- law enforcement will hardly consider it a crime and in any case can't do anything about it
- the community will berate you for not watching out better for yourself and somehow call your loss "a good thing"
- if it's anything like Ethereum's DAO hack the fraud will not even be considered any wrongdoing at all
- everyone in the game has already made their money by pre-mining or getting in early and nobody has your interest in mind
I would not use the word "fraud" here, regardless of which side of the Eth fork you sit on.
Either way, this confirms my point - Your cryptomoney is GONE and no one would even acknowledge ANY wrongdoing whatsoever. Hilariously you losing money is absolutely part of the pseudo-libertarian crypto worldview and not worrying anybody. But at the same time crypto currencies should replace real money?
"DAO-Hacker just executed code as intended". "Of course you lose your money if a) your PC is hacked (easy) b) the wallet software is in beta (always is) c) your coins are not in a cold wallet (complicated) d) you are using the 3rd party providers/exchanges (which are hyped by the community) e) your password is weak etc. etc."
I'm having a laugh but then again I haven't lost any money in this.
If you want that service, buy it. Transfer your crypto-backed currency with a "trusted" party who will rollback certain transactions. Do this with a well-capitalized service in a country you can sue them in.
But as we've seen with Paypal (and now Upwork), etc, that can be just as disastrous. They're un-sueable because of their size, and have draconian and arbitrary policies. Many people have had money confiscated or indefinitely frozen because of this misplaced trust.
If you really want to get paranoid, you can buy something like a Trezor[0] or other hardware wallet. I'm pretty sure it would cost more than my net worth for someone to figure out how to compromise it, given the lengths[1] they've gone to to secure it. There's no equivalent option for credit cards.
[0] http://bitcointrezor.com [1] http://doc.satoshilabs.com/trezor-faq/software.html
That's actually a great observation that might fit into security advice on this issue somehow. Keep track of which banks freak out about which things. Get cards from more diverse-thinking ones. Reduce odds of unnecessary freezes or rejections. Now how to do the assessment itself...
>In the first case, it's a service they are providing you
I like knowing that I have some money that I control myself, not through some service I have to worry about locking me out at inopportune times, though I admit it's mostly an ideological position than an economic one.