Quote from: llama on August 08, 2011, 02:13:13 AM

Bitbills here,

Prove it.

(Ok, that's sorta dickish, but it's still a valid demand.)

Quote from: llama on August 08, 2011, 02:13:13 AM

On the topic of our SSL certificate, we find it hard to believe that a community as skeptical as Bitcoin holds much faith in the security theater that is the modern Public Key Infrastructure. Recent events have shown that none of the "authorities" can be absolutely trusted. We believe that a CACert, WOT based certificate is better than any commercial offering, but due to requests from the community we've moved to a commercial solution. If anybody has any doubts about whether the public key is truly ours, I'd be happy to personally send them a postcard with a copy of our public key.

Nice of you to believe that. However, as long as this is the experience of anyone trying to order:

then it really doesn't matter what you believe. Skepticism, like charity, begins at home. You can call it security theater, but what you have right now looks like a bad 6th Grade production of Our Town.

Quote from: llama on August 08, 2011, 02:13:13 AM

Regarding bitcoin storage, there is absolutely no perfect solution. There are advantages to home-grown storage solutions, but also to solutions that do include an element of trust. While there's certainly a risk of a webwallet turning criminal, there's also a risk that you accidentally left the bitcoin client open when you backed up your wallet and corrupted your coins. Indeed, others have lost nearly as many bitcoins as Bruce did to MBC simply because they didn't encrypt their home-stored wallet.dat file, or made some other small mistake. At some point, people need to honestly ask themselves whether its more likely that a reputable bitcoin service will turn out to be a massive conspiracy, or that their flash drive will get stolen.

Not even close. I've had numerous flash drives over many years. Never once have had one stolen. I honestly ask you to name a reputable bitcoin service. We can all name several that turned out to be somewhere between conspiracy and woefully incompetent. I understand BCEmporium's point about scaling from $.01 to ~~$30.00$20.00$10.00$~~7.50 in value and the attendant change in security requirements. But, at this point, the relationship between bitcoin service providers and the community looks an awful lot like battered woman syndrome.

BSP: C'mon, baby, just trust me. I promise I won't hurt you again.
BitCommunity: ... ... ... OK! What's your address?!

Quote from: llama on August 08, 2011, 02:13:13 AM

There's a very good historical precedent here: traditional currencies. There's no theoretical reason why somebody couldn't store their entire net worth in their basement as cash, but they don't do it. Why? Regulated banks provide services that they need, and probably more security too. Being a digital currency, bitcoin doesn't have many of the problems that banks solve (e.g., bitcoin has no need for huge storage vaults or ACH). But bitcoin is not a miracle currency. For example, offline transactions between parties untrusting of each other are not generally possible with bitcoins, but with Bitbills this becomes possible.

A minor fix for you, did you catch it? And with that fix, I'll add: the reason Gold is going through the roof (Hey what's that down there? Oh that's $1,700/oz) is that people are beginning to store their entire net worth in their basements in the form of Gold. The primary reason for that is because deregulation in the financial sector has led to almost immediate and continuous bubble-bust cycles and ridiculous things like BOA writing devastating CDSs on European Sovereign Debt. Before I'm labeled a socialist, I don't think bitcoin services should be regulated by national governments. But there needs to be a body that regulates and enforces standards or we will have the same bubble-bust cycle with less confidence (bitcoin has no backstop). FFS, we are a peer to peer community that is developing our own currency. I'm sure we could come up with a democratized process of self-regulation and enforced transparency on service providers that goes beyond appearing on The Bitcoin Show.

Quote from: llama on August 08, 2011, 02:13:13 AM

I'm sorry I didn't have time to make this post shorter, but here's the big idea: every method of using bitcoins has risks, and sometimes trusting somebody else just a little bit is actually the least risky solution. Choice is better than no choice.

On a different, but related note, we're working very hard on a new product that we think will be a huge step forward for bitcoin storage: trustless bank cards. Details are forthcoming.

Translation: C'mon, baby, just trust me. I promise I won't hurt you again.