There's a big difference. If a bank screws up and loses $5,000 of my money, I can (at least potentially) sue them and recover $5,000 which is pretty much identical to the $5,000 I lost. If a key escrow company loses my private key, getting back an identical private key is exactly the *wrong* solution.
Crypto keys are not interchangable like dollar bills. I never suggested that they were. I tried to point out a set of institutions on which we place similar, if not higher, levels of trust to those required to store a crypto key.
If your crypto bank loses your key, you can always revoke and resign. And you'll be back on the air much faster than you can recover $5k from a failed bank. And please do not get me out of context, I never said the hosted solution was perfect, nor that the analogy applicable to every aspect. And I am not trying to extend the success of RIPE's hosted solution to "everybody's digital identity". It is a vertical solution that is doing well (and will hopefully continue to do so) on a vertical application. For sure, it is probably not an example you can extend to other applications. Going back to money, I would *never* trust a hosted solution to hold a key I use to access my online banking. This would clearly be a case where a hosted solution is not applicable. regards Carlos -- Carlos M. Martinez LACNIC I+D PGP KeyID 0xD51507A2 Phone: +598-2604-2222 ext. 4419 Carlos Martinez Cagnazzo <carlos@lacnic.net>