Quote from: poncho32 on January 12, 2015, 08:04:57 PM

Quote from: mlferro on January 12, 2015, 05:33:09 PM

Quote from: jbrnt on January 12, 2015, 05:19:06 PM

Quote from: Torque on January 12, 2015, 05:07:12 PM

If the news author's exact quote is correct, then Gavin did use the word "dangerous" to describe Bitcoin. If Gavin didn't mean this, then he should learn to choose his words more carefully.

Jornalists like to create drama. I think Gavin was referring to bitcoin being "dangerous" for ordinary people who are not comfortable with computers. We know how easy it is for new users to loose coins to hackers and scams.

may be, it makes sense. It is certainly very easy to lose bitcoins when there is no good familiarity with computers and internet

There are still people who have never used a computer in their lives. I have had to walk people through opening an email account. These are the types of people he was probably referring to. The journalists probably needed to fill some space due tio lack of news, so came up with a sensationalist misleading headline. All Gavin appears to be saying is if you are not computer literate enough to know what a firewall is then don't use bitcoin. He could have added that the same type of people would be well advised to avoid using credit cards, online banking and anything related to finance until they have learned about basic computer security.

Whether you know what a firewall is and the job it performs or not, holding bitcoins is a risk, and even most people on these forums really have no idea what they're doing when it comes to computer security. For example, just yesterday a gentleman posted a thread with a sensationalist prediction and a malware link in the speculation section of this forum. There was almost a full page of comments about the prediction before anyone (cough *me* cough) bothered to check the link's reputation and notify the mods. I can't even guess how many people naively clicked the link before it was removed two hours later

There are plenty of people who think they understand security well because they don't download executables online. Like my cousin who didn't even run AV software on his PC because he's "not dumb enough to download random shit off the Internet". Then, when I checked his netstat output, we found call outs to a known malicious Russian IP. Roll Eyes

I'd wager there are plenty of armchair "security experts" here who think they know what they're doing, until the day their wallet balance shows zero and they run to reddit to make an appeal to the hacker to return their coins.

But it's all a moot point anyway. As Mr. Trollin pointed out, why would anyone want to use bitcoin in the first place? Especially given all the security exploits involved with storing them?