I think many people will find out soon that they didn't even had any Bitcoins in their posession, ever. People who trade on Coinbase are naive to think they owned Bitcoins. What they did own, was just a claim to Bitcoin, called a Bitcoin IOU, which may or may not be honored.
Your entire account at Coinbase is a Bitcoin IOU, which is Coinbase's debt towards you, which normally could be repaid, however we see now that this may not always be the case.
If you have noticed the recent news, the US IRS agency, which is the tax enforcement arm of the government, wants information about every person that traded there back to 2013, and I'm sure many people didn't paid their taxes, which means that a lot of accounts will be frozen, or even funds will be confiscated (well taxes are that too).
Naive people keeping all their money in a centralized exchange, what could go wrong? Why do you think Bitcoin was invented in the first place? If centralized institutions were so great then Bitcoin would not exist now.
Repeat after me:
IF YOU DON'T CONTROL THE PRIVATE KEYS SOLELY, YOU DON'T HAVE BITCOINS!
IF YOU DON'T CONTROL THE PRIVATE KEYS SOLELY, YOU DON'T HAVE BITCOINS!
IF YOU DON'T CONTROL THE PRIVATE KEYS SOLELY, YOU DON'T HAVE BITCOINS!
IF YOU DON'T CONTROL THE PRIVATE KEYS SOLELY, YOU DON'T HAVE BITCOINS!
IF YOU DON'T CONTROL THE PRIVATE KEYS SOLELY, YOU DON'T HAVE BITCOINS!
IF YOU DON'T CONTROL THE PRIVATE KEYS SOLELY, YOU DON'T HAVE BITCOINS!
IF YOU DON'T CONTROL THE PRIVATE KEYS SOLELY, YOU DON'T HAVE BITCOINS!
IF YOU DON'T CONTROL THE PRIVATE KEYS SOLELY, YOU DON'T HAVE BITCOINS!
IF YOU DON'T CONTROL THE PRIVATE KEYS SOLELY, YOU DON'T HAVE BITCOINS!
IF YOU DON'T CONTROL THE PRIVATE KEYS SOLELY, YOU DON'T HAVE BITCOINS!
....
Now write this down 1000 times and memorize it! People should not be comfortable in their ignorance, the danger is real!
Theft is real, and it can happen, it will happen, and if you are not in control of your money, it can be frozen, confiscated, etc. Even if you are innocent, you can still be harassed by the authorities just to keep you in line. The only thing you need to do with your wealth is to protect it, and grow it, and for that you need to analyze the risks properly.
Keeping your money in a centralized way is never safe, no matter what the threat is. I bet most innocent people's funds will be frozen too, because it's almost impossible to single out targets in bitcoin. If they start an investigation into bitcoin transactions, then even if you are linked to a "criminal" (in quotes) by transaction, you can also face harassment. So it's guilt by association, since bitcoins are not fungible.
LACK OF FUNGIBILITY IS A HUGE ISSUE OF BITCOIN IN SITUATIONS LIKE THIS!
So privacy/anonymity is crucial, especially for innocent people, because they are harassed most of the time. You have to protect your individual right to privacy, there is no other way.
The big criminals are in the big banks probably rigging some interest rates right now cashing in billions of $, while the "authorities" are busy, chasing your for your undeclared 100 satoshi faucet profit!
The situations is really grave now, but remember it's always the low hanging fruits they pick, the people at the top are untouchable!
SOLUTION: BITSQUARE
It is really sad that we have to go out of our way to protect our privacy when transacting with fellow human beings, but nontheless our privacy should be sacred. Bitsquare both gives us privacy, confidential transactions, and also makes the fungibility problem go away.
It doesn't require any identification, and it respects all your financial rights, especially the right to private property, which should not be subject to arbitrary account freezing/confiscation. Although the volume is small now, if people would stop using centralized exchanges and switch to there, it could out-compete the centralized ones, and people could reclaim their liberties.
In the meantime we have Shapeshift, although they have dropped STEEM recently, which is bad, and they don't do fiat transfers, only crypto-crypto, but nontheless better than other ones. It should be a combinations between Shapeshift and Bitsquare in the future.
Source: https://memegenerator.net
Upvote, ReSteem & 
