> Value which cannot be stolen or debased.

Bitcoin's "intrinsic value" is really value unto itself for the most part, at this point in time. Maybe in the future it'll be used more as a currency, and we've seen that with Tesla, Bovada, etc., but I don't think most governments will allow such a threat to their currency without additional controls.

> Also, "blockchain" is just a data structure that has practically no use besides bitcoin.

I've always felt the other way around actually; I think blockchain will be used more widely and longer-term than Bitcoin. Blockchain as a technology has already been invested in and deployed by firms like IBM and JPMorgan.

Centralised blockchains are an oxymoron. Just use JPMorgans SQL database, it’s cheaper.

Sometimes you want to trust and verify.

Seems like there have been numerous stories about bitcoin being stolen?

Private keys can be stolen if you leave them lying around.

Nobody can steal your bitcoin if your private keys are well protected. And of course, the best protection is a brain wallet.

If a State attempts to implement an EO6102 equivalent for Bitcoin, they will be unable to enforce it.

Brain wallets are hilariously bad, if you make it up yourself; a randomly generated key is far superior and can still be memorized. Search up "brainflayer" for just one example of a brain wallet cracker.

> Nobody can steal your bitcoin if your private keys are well protected. And of course, the best protection is a brain wallet.

The end result of this is that a huge portion of humans cannot safely store their wealth in btc. I sure as hell don't trust myself to keep that much cash in a brain wallet.

"If your private keys are well protected" might as well mean "if you can do four backflips in a row" to most people.

The best strategy is to use a BIP-39 seed phrase with an additional passphrase. The seed phrase should be written down/etched into a piece of metal and stored safely (with redundancy), and the passphrase should be memorized by yourself and possibly a family member (as insurance if something happens to you).

You can leave a small amount of coins in the wallet using the same seed phrase but with no passphrase as a decoy. This way, if somebody "stumbles upon" your seed phrase, they'll attempt to recover this small amount of money, and you can monitor using only the xpub to discover it has been compromised. You then have some time to move the other coins before anybody could potentially brute-force your passphrase (Since they need to compute PBKDF2 for each attempt).

You can reuse the same seed phrase for multiple wallets, using a different passphrase for each. There is no way for somebody to determine if you have surrendered all passphrases for a give seed, since there could be infinitely many. This offers plausible deniability in the case your thief is the government.

Listen to yourself. Decoys? What percentage of people do you think won't go running away screaming when you tell them that this is how they should store their wealth? If I lose my bank password I can walk into a branch and talk to a human. No need for metal etchings and incantations.

Yeah, not everyone needs custody of their own money.

But those of us who do, can.

Under fiat, we can't.

And that'd be fine if btc was a niche product for a few people who want this control but it also comes with extreme social costs in terms of emissions. The power use argument that advocates make is that it'll be fine once btc is used by literally everybody.

Cannot be debased? When the US government rules it illegal, or enough people collectively lose interest, btc will no longer have value.

> When the US government rules it illegal, or enough people collectively lose interest, btc will no longer have value.

Recall that for the first 2 years of its life, bitcoin had no market price. Bitcoin acquired a price because it has value to some people. That is, its having value preceded it having a price. What that should tell you is that even if a lot of people lost interest, bitcoin would still be valuable. The key insight arrives if you figure out what is valuable about Bitcoin that caused btc to acquire a price.

" It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. " https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/17...