Friends, I am mesmerized by Bitcoin, it's a great currency alternative and lots of innovation going around but to be honest everywhere I see people's are fearing a lot, they want to invest in bitcoin and yes they already invested but still fear is prevalent. Everybody fears and they are afraid mostly about the following:
1) What if someone hacks and steal my bitcoin.
2) What if government shut down bitcoin.
3) What if I buy something via bitcoin and the seller doesn't send me what I paid for.
This list goes on.... What do you guys have to say about it? Why so much fear around Bitcoin? is it time to centralize the Bitcoin so that we could shop freely so that we could have purchase protection just like visa and mastercard Chargeback policy. Decentralization is good but it truly sucks.
Good to see that you're interested in bitcoin, even though you have some doubts, it's good to ask questions.
1. If someone hacks your computer, then you can do nothing. There is no magic dispute button like the ones in paypal.
2. They can't. Bitcoin is decentralized and p2p therefore, if they want to shut down bitcoin they'd have to shut down every single computer that is running bitcoin.
3. Nothing you can do, therefore, do your own due diligence and use escrow.
Decentralization has its benefits and downsides. I think that the benefits of not having a government controlling your future far outweighs the fact atht you can't reverse transactions. Plus, bitcoin is fungible, meaning that two units of bitcoin are worth the same. So as a seller of goods, you have 100% confidence in receiving bitcoin, knowing that nobody can dispute it wrongfully.