> yes, I can steal your Bitcoin

Let's fix that phrase:

- yes, I can steal your Bitcoin keys

And then go further and transfer the bitcoins

Other than that, no, you CANNOT steal "my" bitcoins

Um, no, I don't think language works like that. Let's try to rephrase that with gold: "You CANNOT steal the gold under my mattress. You can steal my keys or break my door, walk in and then move the gold from my house to your car and drive off.". Don't you agree the above is equivalent to me stealing your gold?

That's a good argument, but notice what I'm saying is that stealing the bitcoin wallet keys is the only known way to steal bitcoins (I'm not saying bitcoins cannot be stolen, nor that it would be wrong to phrase that bitcoin was stolen as the result of compromised keys). If you're hiding gold under a bed one could steal your door keys, break the door through brute force, set your door on fire, get in through the window, make a hole through the floor under the bed, wait until you get the trash out and sneak in, and so forth. Bitcoin allow you to be concerned with only one thing: keeping your keys secret.

You’re getting into a semantic argument. The idea of someone stealing bitcoins, vs the keys, is an attempt to deviate from the issue/discussion at hand.

Fair point. It has gotten a bit semantic.

But you can blame gold itself for that. Gold is inherently valuable; and one flaw of inherent physical value is that it can physically change hands forcibly and, well, the bearer of that value now controls it in complete and total form.

Cryptographically verified exchange is a different kind of exchange, and it has its own benefits and drawbacks. one of the benefits of this kind of exchange is that mere custody of the currency in question does not relate to ownership.

Does that make gold worse or better than bitcoin? No, it just makes them different.

You can blame gold if it is very easy to steal. Or if owners are more likely to have it stolen, etc etc.

Crypto has certain vulnerabilities that gold doesn’t. But it also has lots of benefits.

But I don’t know of any situations where gold banks let them drive trucks of $40M in gold before they stopped customers. It’s just harder to move.

? Candidly I don't know what you mean, so I will share this anecdote about gold in trucks: there is a building in downtown Chicago, built at the height of the mob days, with an elevator which can lift an entire (full) armored car.

It can lift it several stories up, into the building, where the bank can unload it safely without risk of robbery.

Also, of course, you can't actually steal bitcoin, you can merely steal the keys. That is an actual distinction because possession of the article itself is meaningless without the other half of the cryptographic operation it takes to move it.

I can insure gold, bitcoin is much more difficult to insure. In fact, I can have my gold stored in a secure facility that I don’t own yet still retain full ownership rights.

yes, you sure can, but that's just a matter of delegated custody; the facility that stores it for you is acting as your agent.

bitcoin is harder to insure because guaranteeing the safety of keys remains a challenge.

No bitcoin has always been difficult to insure because no sane company would insure something that can double or triple value overnight. The extreme finite quantity of bitcoins is what makes it difficult to insure.

i suppose i thought you meant insurance against theft, not loss of value

theft is loss of value. either way the fact remains, Bitcoin is difficult to insure due to its scarcity. If I insure 1 BTC now worth $10k then in 20 years or so (or maybe overnight) it jumps to $1mil. The insurance company hasn’t gotten enough premiums to cover the payout. Insurance works well for inflating assets, not so much for deflating.

you don't actually need to lose your coins for them to lose value... custody and value aren't the same thing.

Stealing the keys is effectively stealing Bitcoin. Otherwise you get into semantic mumbo jumbo because Bitcoin isn’t owned by anyone, it’s just assigned to an address that is controlled by a private key, etc etc.

If I steal your keys, I steal your Bitcoin. And it’s easier to steal the private keys to $40M in Bitcoin than it is to steal $40M in gold (700 kg).

What I meant with my poor analogy is that if a bank is planning on blocking customers from withdrawing funds, it’s much harder to ship out the gold to their friends than to ship out Bitcoin. It’s pretty trivial to allow Bitcoin withdrawals. It’s just logistically hard to coordinate the transport of 700kg of gold out of the bank and to somewhere else.

yes, i agree, but that is still a distinction, is it not? i'm not making a value argument, i'm merely pointing out that possession of the currency itself is not the same as the keys required to exercise control over the currency.

arguably, if we are making value statements, there are a set of similar trade-offs for physical protection of keys vs. primary material. 700kg is harder to move: that's a security feature. keys are small: that's a security feature, because they are a small O(1) surface area to protect regardless of how much value they maintain control over at any given moment.

these are simply tradeoffs. it is only "easier" to steal keys if they are left unprotected.

here's the enormous truck you would need to carry $40m in gold, apparently: https://www.tkingauto.com/mini-truck/rear-single-tire-truck/...