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0 pointsacdha12y ago0 comments

> You do not keep more than an operating float of cash behind the counter. You keep it in the vault.

You're still making a fundamentally invalid comparison: with cash, your security threats are still limited to people who are nearby and have both the time and means to move large amounts of currency. Bitcoin allows anyone in the world to steal amounts which would require a large team with dump-trucks in the real world even if the bank completely screwed up their security design.

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Consultant3245212y ago· 3 in thread

One million dollars in $100 bills is 10,000 bills. A bill is 0.010922 cm in thickness. That would be 109.2 cm. That would be a stack of bills just over 3 1/2 feet high if you made a single stack. You could probably fit a million bucks in a decent sized brief case and could definitely fit it inside a duffle bag. It doesn't take dump-trucks to steal a million bucks.

petit_robert12y ago

Sure, but at MtGox, the theft was 477 millions.

http://news.yahoo.com/mtgox-opens-call-centre-500m-bitcoin-l...

That's a lot of duffle bags to haul.

acdhaOP12y ago

In addition to what petit_robert pointed out about the Mt. Gox theft being orders of magnitude larger, you're assuming the densest available US currency and that it's conveniently pre-packaged for easy shipment.

What we're actually talking about, however, is like being able to teleport into a bank anywhere in the world, wave a magic wand which converts everything on the premises into tightly packaged $100 bills, and teleporting back out of the country. In the real world, running out the door with a bunch of duffel bags and people shouting tends to attract a lot of attention and make escape a lot harder than closing a network connection.

Consultant3245212y ago

I fail to see how 99% of USD, which are just records in a database, is different than bitcoins in that regard then. The failure I would argue is in the original analogy of taking physical money to begin with.

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