[throwdecro]

> Which is widely available and effectively free

What? Who is going to fight off people trying to obtain or destroy that USB drive to increase the value of their own holdings (i.e. speed up deflation by reducing available bitcoin), or extract the passcode from its owner, for free?

EDIT: I realize this is the plot of Goldfinger, but the author did invoke Fort Knox, and the strategy of destroying stores of value to increase the worth of your own stash makes sense.

[night862]

Who does it now?

I don't see how it follows that if bitcoin is useful that somehow militaries or rule of law can't exist.

[throwdecro]

> Who does it now?

France sent a warship to escort its gold from the US to France. Wasn't free, probably wasn't cheap.

[wyager]

Conveniently, USB drives can be backed up.

[throwdecro]

Sure, but anyone holding that much wealth could expect some kind of "advanced persistent threat" working against them to either destroy all of the backups, or transfer the coins to /dev/null after extracting any passcode from the owner. The keys and anyone that knew how to use them would need a high level of physical security. The "costly militarized facilities" would still be necessary, contrary to the author's statement.