>"Well, of course your accounts got hacked, because you didn't create a separate 27-character totally random password for every single account you need, like I do, and never store those passwords anywhere except your head!"

The keys can be recorded as a seed phrase. Typically this is a sequence of dictionary words. Look into it before you dismiss it so flippantly. Things have come a long way to make things easier for the user. There are also dedicated hardware wallet devices for key storage.

If you're not transacting or conducting business with cryptocurrency, why do you care so much? It is literally none of your business. Nobody is forcing you to pay taxes or finance wars with BTC.

And "dedicated hardware wallet devices" are exactly the kind of thing that I'm talking about here. There is no way those are going to be appealing to mainstream users; thus, if cryptocurrency were ever to genuinely enter the mainstream, the vast, vast majority of users would be keeping their crypto on exchanges.

Y'know, exactly the way the vast, vast majority of people keep their money in regular bank accounts. Which don't require this kind of rigamarole, and never result in regular people (ie, not the very wealthy) losing money, because it's all regulated and insured by the government.

(Yes, I know FDIC insurance has a limit. The limit is high enough that regular people will never even have to care that it exists.)

There are a few more reasonable options here.

1) Create or advocate for a cryptocurrency with reversible transactions and all of the regulatory features you desire. Let the market decide how large that niche is.

2) Loosen or advocate for loosening the existing regulations on traditional financial products so that they are competitive with some of the features of cryptocurrency. See also, Zelle. Another product HN seemed to hate.

Yesterday someone was arguing that Peter Thiel is a super villain. Another full page of comments was decrying one of PayPal's policies necessitated by regulations. People are generally unhappy with PayPal's fee structure, but they continue to use it. The fees and draconian policies are largely required to comply with regulations. Want more personable human support? That also costs money.

The argument for regulating cryptocurrency is basically an argument for creating a captured and gatekept ecosystem. Of course, I get it. "Think of the children", "Think of the helpless normies", same story. What we will get instead will be more PayPals.

As for scams and outright Ponizis, it is worth noting that those go on under the watchful eye of the regulatory state you love so well. Bernie Madoff was similarly connected and even served on regulatory boards. SBF, the disgraced FTX head had direct connections to the SEC and chairman Gary Gensler. SBF even testified, asking for more regulation.

I'm doubtful, but still hopeful for the possibility of a good faith discussion. Regulation is not a pancea against fraud. Instead it creates an atmosphere were connected insiders can create greater frauds. The FTX debacle is illustrative of this. Yet here we are hearing the same appeals for more regulation from would be saviors of normies. Posters who themselves do not use cryptocurrency and insist that it has no legitimate use.

For myself I just wanted to run a few online games with payouts for players in cryptocurrency. Now players also want NFT character saves. I've never used a centralized exchange. I don't make big money in this niche. I do have fun. The community is happy. Nobody is crying about valuations. Actual users of cryptocurrency aren't saying, "There outta be a law!". None of my users are claiming, "If only there were a statist savior protecting us from this video game!" or, "This game would be so much better with barriers to entry for developers"

From that perspective, yes I do feel comfortable asking you and the rest of HN's passionate cryptocurrency haters to butt out. You could also go out and build a better alternative in the marketplace of ideas.

I'm not sure how you read my comment as elitist or utopian. All I'm asking here is that paternalists don't ruin it with saviorism, regulatory capture and gatekeeping.

>When something goes mainstream that gets lost.

Isn't this an elitist sentiment?

Our community has fun with people who aren't deep into tech at all. I started it with faucet rewards integrated into an io game. Anyone can install a wallet when transactions are free. Couldn't be further from what you're projecting.

Maybe not, but they have to regardless. Banks force this on users anyway (outside the USA). To pay for things I have to use either a chip card (token), or equivalent embedded in my phone (a token), or log in to e-banking using a chip card PIN pad (token) or my phone again, or auth an online CC tx with a phone app (token).

But no matter what I do the only way to move money around without invoking a hardware cryptographic token at some point, is use paper money and physical coins.

So this isn't really something new. Bitcoin was just ahead of the curve in this regard. Also, it's really hard for banks to reverse transactions outside of the USA. What makes bank money "safe" compared to crypto is simply that:

1. Governments will bail banks out because they're too big to fail. Of course you end up paying for it through inflation anyway.

2. Everything is KYCd/AMLd up the wazoo so even if money is drained from your account in the same way it could be for a cryptocurrency, the perps will find it much harder to evade capture.

None of that has any ethical or sociological consideration inbuilt. It's a simply observation of the system.

Anyway, yes, that means the system is bad. But this is an ethical and sociological consideration.