Quickly skimming through the Wired piece, am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto? Or Namebase.io managing Handshake domains? Most people don't care about self-hosting/self-managing their stuff and just want something that works and is easy to use. With both of these (Bitcoin & HNS) you can still have 100% control over it if you choose to.
So what if 90% of people decide to instead trust a third party with their holdings (like 100% now do with banks)? A portion of Coinbases holdings are even insured[0], gasp. And with regular banks you're paying increasing amounts in "management fees" to maintain this insurance. Cryptocurrencies have proven that you don't have to have traditional layers of trust and that's where I see the technological breakthrough.
Disclaimer: Somewhat neutral about crypto in general.
So what if 90% of people decide to instead trust a third party with their holdings (like 100% now do with banks)? A portion of Coinbases holdings are even insured[0], gasp. And with regular banks you're paying increasing amounts in "management fees" to maintain this insurance. Cryptocurrencies have proven that you don't have to have traditional layers of trust and that's where I see the technological breakthrough.
Disclaimer: Somewhat neutral about crypto in general.
[0] The USD/EUR holding rather than crypto IIRC