Because there are millions of people out there in the world who can't read and write.
From a historical perspective, literacy levels for the world population have risen drastically in the last couple of centuries. While only 12% of the people in the world could read and write in 1820, today the share has reversed: only 14% of the world population, in 2016, remained illiterate. Over the last 65 years the global literacy rate increased by 4% every 5 years – from 42% in 1960 to 86% in 2015.
LOL what a stupid argument. If someone cannot read and write how are they going to use Bitcoin anyway, regardless if their wallet uses seed phrase as a backup or not, come on! Also, 8 billion people should not be using seed phrases because a few million are illiterate? Since when we level down in technology? Perhaps we should also stop driving cars because blind people cannot use them? Or maybe let disable or encryption because most people don't understand cryptography? Get lost.
Well, you are almost on point.
People do not use cryptography because they do not understand it and they may not understand how to run IT systems because cryptographic protocols were made complex.
This might be a problem for savvy users since they banally operate in reduced anonymity set.
However, your message is perfectly clear and in a sense you are totally useless for Bitcoin adoption. Sorry.
Bitcoin is a natural selection.
Yes, is the harsh truth, truth always hurts.
If people are not educated, can't use Bitcoin.
And those that can read, still have to learn about Bitcoin, how to use it, how to secure it etc.
If they are lazy... sorry but no sorry HFSP (more sats for me).
Do you know how to bake bread or sew clothings? Do you like if somebody makes it for you?
Yes I do that. And many other things, by myself. If I can do it, even that I don't know how to do it, I will learn.
So you don't need Bitcoin in the first place because you do many other things by yourself.
And you can't actually teach anybody about Bitcoin because you don't need using it.
I use Bitcoin almost every day. I live only with Bitcoin for many years.
But I use it for IMPORTANT things I need.
Which ones, for example?
beer
And do you want from persons who brew and serve you beer to be literate?
Is your point that the less than 15% who are illiterate is the population group that has the most to gain from bitcoin adoption? That might be true, but then do you think it's an issue that the seed phrase words are all in English? What about the enormous population that does not use the latin alphabet?
It wasn't my point but this may be important. Poorest may benefit from bitcoin but normally there are no opportunities for them to buy, store and even have extra money on top of regular day to day spendings.
Luckily we have different dictionaries for BIP-39. This is nice because it makes the problem more tolerable.
Hmm, I wonder if emojis would be easier to remember for literate but non-english speaking people.
I guess we need seed emojis then 😂
No a bad idea to me. I actually thought to make a logging wrapper for representing hex-encoded strings in terminal with emojis. You know, just for debugging things.
I mean ... this could be done unironically. We'd just have to agree on a standard as a community, idk if unicode to bytes is enough here
But idk how many people on this world use a smartphone, can deal with numbers but aren't literate. Maybe that is just my ignorance ... aren't literacy and basic maths related (I genuienly don't know)
Something close to this exists and have been implemented in some DeFi wallets, Argent for instance, which uses emojis for security verification:
https://www.argent.xyz/blog/argent-crypto-wallet-security-emoji-hash-cryptography-trust/
Why not, if it can increase usability...
That's actually pretty cool!
By now many people use metal punchcards to save their seed. We just need more 12x11 matrix input and then the illiterate people problem would also be solved.
This is good idea. Probably it may be lined paper or just a suggestion of backup variant when it is being suggested to the user to line paper and make markings on it.
One does not need to read, per se. They merely need to transcribe.
Ok, agree. But it may lead to errors. Luckily BIP-39 by its design reduces error space.
your quote literally states the increased levels of literacy in the world
seed phrases aren't bad, but suppose they were - how about proposing a better bip?
I have no idea about "better bip" in the first place. Something like splitting seed on Shamir Shares and reading them via QRs on different devices of trusted persons might work but there are issues with such way of backing up root key, too.
No one says seed phrases are a one-size-fits all.
While coding the other day I did realize something about seed phrases...
Seed phrase 1 + passphrase = Seed phrase 2
Don't know if that makes sense.
I do not understand what you meant.
If I I put a seed phrase and supply a pass phrase, my client will generate a private key. But, the client won’t store my passphrase.
So later, if I export my private key as a seed phrase, it will be different from the one I first supplied.
This will confuse some people, for sure.
Now I understand. This may confuse for sure even experienced user. Because if there are many wallets around, it may happen that the user completely forgets about existing passphrase.
You can't use money without numeracy. Sure, just add the option of a decimal version with spaces between groups of 3 numbers, problem solved. Hexadecimal is only 5 more symbols than numbers. Illiterate people often do have basic phonetics and alphabet.
And maybe the bitcoin will give them some more spare time to learn to read better.
Seed phrases are anyway just 11 bit values, two base32 ciphers is the same as one word. Yes, in case you didn't know, a 12 word cipher only gives you 132 bits, it has to be hashed to get your secret. You could make a base32 equivalent of a 12 word cipher with 24 letter/number symbols like the Bech32 cipher set.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwx
or as a decimal number, the maximum value for a 128 bit key seed:
5444517870735015415413993718908291383296
put spaces on it:
5 444 517 870 735 015 415 413 993 718 908 291 383 296
Still shorter! And I only need to be able to decipher 10 symbols.
People discovered monetary goods long before decimal system and Arab writings which you did use in this message.
And numeracy issue might be addressed by putting bitcoins in physical form which implies trade-offs as well.
Why stop there? Let's eliminate everything that involves reading because some people can't read.
Sure. I'd like to unread it.
Incredible! You just demonstrated one more thing Bitcoin fixes! Bitcoin will motivate 100% of people to become literate, at least up to 24 words. It's a good start. Bitcoin fixes everything strikes again!
People may not have reading skills not because of lack of motivation.
So screenshot?
BIP 39 isn't just in English too, there are a bunch of other languages. Also a lot of wallets like sparrow use an autocorrect so you don't need to be able to spell
Yes. Screenshot and transcribing should be working if application has no special mode forbidding screenshots.
12-24 words can be picked up faster than a private key)
Many people will soon be convinced of that!
Satoshi will laugh.