Bitcoin isn't a store of value (its too volatile), it isn't a currency (too slow and expensive for small transactions), and it isn't even a product in its own right.
If you don’t like it or think it’s too slow doesn’t change these facts.
I agree that it’s not a product though. It is a distributed system that nobody owns.
And yes you can functionally make transactions, but based on current transaction fees it looks like I'd pay $0.22 in fees so I could wait 10-20 minutes for a transaction to likely clear. I'm not doing that at a gas pump, grocery store, etc.
But a lot (generalizing here) don't like giving up access "in case they need it". I haven't worked backend in ages, but years ago there was one developer that went to the ops guys and said "can I just ssh to production I need to check some env vars to debug my software" (or something to that degree). Ops team was good and it was a hard no - "just add some logging, you can deploy a new release quickly enough".
A good solution to this is to have a "break glass" system. Ie. access permissions get granted to the developer directly in an emergency by going through a set of steps available beforehand. All requests by that developer are then allowed, limited to 10 kilobytes of results per minute and logged.
For example, imagine you run a bank, and a rare code bug means that at exactly midnight on new years eve all bank balances have $1B added to them.
Your oncall takes down the production servers to to reduce losses and uses the break glass system, by getting approval from n other developers, allowing them direct database access. They use that access to count(accounts) with a balance around $1B or more, see it is everyone, and subtract $1B from them all, before bringing production back up with an older software release. Downtime = 2 hours.
In the morning, all the developers actions are reviewed.
If the developer turned evil and trying to dump the database, the n approvers and 10 kilobytes per minute would reduce data loss. But the break glass system still lets the developer make fairly major emergency fixes to reduce losses or downtime.
For example at most good crypto companies that hold wallets it's not possible to ssh at all, even if someone asked and go permission. It just simply isn't possible short of having a AWS root key or physical access to a computer in a DC.
There is no login, no accounts, no ssh keys or similar, they are immutable containers running from images with a signed SHA. The SHA can only be built by a build system that has it's own set of strict security controls.
Without details, I don't know why a comproised laptop would make any difference unless it submitted code through a PR and had it approved by multiple people.
I agree it's a grave fuckup but its a common one. You should just assume that when you deposit coins somewhere there are dozens of people who could just walk off with everything on their own. It's remarkable that it doesn't happen more often.
This is a one-sentence horror story. I almost can't believe someone would let this happen, unless the 1Password account is not important (highly unlikely).
The nice thing is that using the private key requires physical touch. That means that AI itself (or a remote attacker, for that matter) can't do things unless I confirm.
In my thinking, this is more secure than plaintext in filesystem
you know most tools like gcloud, bitwarden, etc store auth keys just in dotfiles too?
Local compromise is KO now, and we can't do shit on platforms like MacOs didn't research Linux recently