If bitcoin or other things like that caught on. Theives and scammers will have a field day preying on the old and taking their money and as you say making it untraceable.

But if the elderly had bitcoins in their bitcoin wallet, they couldn't be tricked into giving up their banking details.

So maybe the elderly would be less susceptible to crooks calling them on the phone, trying to get their banking information. With bitcoin, there is no bank. There is only the electronic ledger.

A tragic case.

But obviously, this woman's funds were not protected with the current banking system, so whatever the moral of the story is, it's not that she would have been worse off with crypto.

So maybe the elderly would be less susceptible to crooks calling them on the phone, trying to get their banking information. With bitcoin, there is no bank. There is only the electronic ledger.

Scaming someone out of crypto via a ordinary phone call would be nigh impossible, as any instructions to send crypto funds would require explaining that a victim must send funds to an address that looks something like:

"16dfIfe6I4UUdhheiCThiidieia6339FdU"

And yes, it would be case sensitive. The length of the address must be a precise count, but other than that, any errors, even upper or lower case errors would mean funds could still be sent, but would be sent to oblivion. Pretty much, the only way to communicate receiving crypto addresses is via digital form, such as email or by QR code, which is the square 2D bar code with 3 distinct smaller squares in the corners. So scamming someone out of crypto over the phone would be quite unrealistic.

Certainly it would be ideal if it were not possible to send funds to oblivion.... obviously, though I've never heard of it happening. But crypto is a "living" currency in a way in that software development can always improve things.

Bitcoin, and probably many other cryptos offer a feature where sending funds can require several custodial authorizations in order to be sent, such as 3 out of 5 authorized parties. Such a mechanism could be used to protect the elderly in cases like the above. I'm not sure banks even offer such a feature.

Scaming someone out of crypto via a ordinary phone call would be nigh impossible, as any instructions to send crypto funds would require explaining that a victim must send funds to an address that looks something like:

That occurred to me as well. I do think that scammers are gonna scam, whatever the system is. And they don't lack for boldness in tactics.