Good point, it is pretty amazing how much ‘confidence’ the bitcoin community continues to have in cons; despite the almost complete lack of misleading symbols of stability and trustworthiness(which banks and financial instutitions are experts in: they all have reliable-sounding names and respectable buildings and stuff).
I suspect that some of it is pure greed making people stupid, and some of it is the (to me very surprising; but apparently widespread) confusion regarding what is and isn’t mathematically assured by bitcoin’s design: In fact, only bitcoin operations benefit from the blockchain and the bitcoin design. Without more than 50% of the hashing power, it is true that forging bitcoins, fraudulently transferring them, etc. is considered infeasible. However, that assurance extends to nothing else: crack somebody’s bitcoin wallet, and your transfer of all their bitcoins to you is 100% ‘legitimate’ mathematically speaking, since you have access to the necessary keys. Set up an ‘exchange’ or similar and let people give you bitcoins in exchange for IOUs, those IOUs have none of the properties of bitcoins; and none of the (limited, but nonzero) assurances of bank-issued IOUs.
I really don’t understand why this confusion persists, despite the fact that using bitcoins is like banking while multiple robbery teams shoot it out in the lobby and somebody crashes a truck through the wall to haul off an ATM, which should breed caution; but it seems to. As in crypto; the math can make some powerful promises; but you had best understand exactly what it does and does not promise.
