This is why actually if people can understand what's happening and what cryptocurrency is, this is another incident that is a very good advertisement for cryptocurrency.
Because actually the idea is that instead of relying on some third party to follow some words on paper, you trust math and computer science. You don't need the third party at all for most things, just use you own cryptocurrency wallet.
For more complex things, we can use smart contracts, which are not based on trust but actual math. The program being on-chain literally makes it impossible for them to misappropriate funds (at least without the details being in public and reviewable beforehand).
Things that regularly go wrong in cryptocurrency go wrong in cryptocurrency and that is an argument for using cryptocurrency???
I couldn't make this up!
As for the "smart contracts", nobody who is familiar with programming bugs would want there not to be better checks and balances there. The depressing frequency of 8 figure hacks of the terms of said contracts is a concrete demonstration of this principle. Thanks, but no thanks in anything like its current state.
For most users, traditional finance is faster, cheaper, and safer in practice than crypto. Which is exactly why the main use cases for crypto are speculation, money laundering, and various illegal activities like paying ransoms for ransomware attacks.
I have written and effectively used many smart contracts, although not for speculation.
There is constant abuse of customer funds, as a matter of course, by banks. It generally is less public or visible though than public ledgers (blockchains).
Its the difference between trusting a company that is trying to profit just from holding your funds in ways that you cannot audit, versus trusting a math and computer programs that you can audit.
There have not been more abuses by cryptocurrency exchanges than banks overall. They are just more recent. But what I am saying is that these cryptocurrency exchange companies really don't have anything to do with cryptocurrency -- their business model is antithetical.
Because actually the idea is that instead of relying on some third party to follow some words on paper, you trust math and computer science. You don't need the third party at all for most things, just use you own cryptocurrency wallet.
For more complex things, we can use smart contracts, which are not based on trust but actual math. The program being on-chain literally makes it impossible for them to misappropriate funds (at least without the details being in public and reviewable beforehand).