Nick Szabo  🔑

Think about this a lot @NickSzabo4 as many assume that democracies are OK collecting all the information about their citizens as they are benign. But this would be a mistake in Weimar Germany or World War 2 Czech Republic. One fell into the hands of nazis & other communists

This is why currently necessary trusted 3rd parties should minimize the amount of funds they have to interact with, and do everything they can to avoid user deposits.

If they’re a regulated company are you sure that “stranger” is an intellectually honest word here?

I fail to see your point. Individuals are also security holes, and in many instances several magnitudes worse than ‘trusted’ third parties. Self-custody is not de-risking, it’s just a shifting of risk. Bad intent is not a prerequisite for bad outcome.

If the dynamics of online trust distribution is towards centralization, then the value of that creation is diminishing. Offline third party trust must ideally be distributed over time because there are too few benevolent parties in the real world.

Given that everything is a security risk, the important metrics are the likelihood and impact of those. One could argue that Google Drive has been more secure for many than most home storage solutions. Likely the same principle for Coinbase and wallets.

Hey Nick, I wrote a thread about one of my earliest memories about money, hope you see it. Next up, I am planning to write about my earliest memory, which is about 3rd parties being sec holes. Feel like bitcoin is hardcoded into me.

If businesses want to use bitcoin we need trusted 3rd parties as custodians with great and audited security measures. Good enough to where Insurance companies will ensure 100% as time goes on.