I had one of those umpteen years ago with RBS. I hated it at the time too :)

However, I use a Yubikey as often as I can nowadays and authenticator apps too where possible.

I'd like the option to use one but I can't :(

I thought they still did for website flow at least. Bizarrely we seem to think that phone apps are infinitely secure and don't need the extra step because biometrics?

I once had a banking app that reported the wrong transaction amounts (downloading the statements resulted in a different balance than what was shown in my account -- this isn't the US, so it should show the correct amount). When I reported the bug, they changed the values on my statements instead of fixing the app -- so now, it didn't reflect my receipts.

It was a fun time. They eventually fixed it in the app to show my true balance and fixed my statements back to what it was. But holy shit, the fact that an engineer would think that would be the proper fix is wild... this is pre-llms, otherwise, I'd think they'd been vibe-coding.

I am 1,000,000% sure that many fintech companies are taking security very, very seriously (I am Stripe customer myself). But I don't think that has anything to do with statement "we are heavily regulated, and audited" - that is too funny.

> But Bitcoin is hard capped at 21 million coins

Bitcoin is not an immutable law of nature. If the coin minting cap is reached, all that needs to happen is for miners to start running a fork with a higher cap. Tada, more coins conjured out of the ether, just like all the previous ones. If you want enforced scarcity, you need to be tied to something physically scarce.

You say "devalue the paper currency even more" but if bitcoin holders need to be bailed in any given country aren't we talking about a scenario where bitcoin is the thing that's lost a bunch of value? Some sort of "it turns out shady bitcoin holders or companies were artificially pumping up the value in a sneaky way and then someone connected the dots" situation?

First thing that comes to mind off the top of my head as a US-Govt option here would be something like: bail out US people/companies of bitcoin holdings in USD in conjunction with banning bitcoin in the US going forward. So that would be quite the string of events at that point for non-US bitcoin holders: first a crash that caused all these US bitcoin holders to go screaming to the government for help. Then the overnight removal of a huge chunk of the bitcoin market, coupled with either a firesale to comply with the ban or US gov seizure of a bunch of the coins, which will push the price lower for anyone who hasn't sold yet since their buyer pool is now much lower.

The government can bail Bitcoin owners out by buying a lot of Bitcoin and holding it, or even burning the wallets.

At present BTC is usually denominated in USD. Until I start to see BTC used as the cross-rate I'm sceptical. Presuming it occurs, it would occur relatively quickly?

If, for whatever reason, all the mining power switches to the other chain, it will become the de facto "Bitcoin".

I don't know what the specific mechanism would be, but I would bet that it relates to the billions of dollars backing the current ecosystem, and the interests of the people behind them. If the right event or crisis comes along, then people could be compelled to switch over to something else.

I'm sure there's someone out there still mining blocks on that chain with the exploit from 2010, but that's not where the mining power is. If the right series of events occurs, the miners will switch.

Power comes from the barrel of a gun.

If anything, the real risk of BTC isn't governments destroying it.

It's that everything you do on the blockchain is there forever, so if a government needs you in jail for using it, they can show you were involved in a financial crime and the blockchain proves it... And if you are unwilling to give up your public wallet they can keep you in jail indefinitely until you do.

Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. Every activity on the network is encoded into a perpetual auditable dataset, by design.

The chain was forked, ultimately, by Vitalik Buterin - the president of Ethereum - and his cabinet. Calling a thing by different words doesn't make it a different thing.

That's a silly assumption to make. I'm clearly talking about the poor security offered by cryptocurrency, in practice, as evidenced by the frequent hacks impacting cryptocurrency companies.

Are banks breached at the same rate as bitcoin brokers? I think that was op’s point.

No. It's like saying that cash is risky when a bunch of cash gets stolen or lost.

When a bank gets breached, there are mechanisms to make the victims whole, up to and including "Just print money; it's a fiat currency."

No such mechanisms in Bitcoin, so hacks have longer-term impact.