"No currency system is safe"
The difference is, if someone hacked into my bank and emptied everyone's accounts, their insurance and failing that the US government will cover my losses. If someone steals my credit card number and charges stuff to my account, the credit card company will cover my losses. Counterfeit bills can hurt a business that was given them, but it is a pretty small problem. Maybe someone buys a TV for $500 and pays in counterfeit bills so Best Buy loses $500. If someone walks into a Mercedes dealership and gives them a bag full of counterfeit bills and drives off with an SL550, that's their own fault for taking that amount of cash (which they would have to know was likely drug money or someone defrauding the IRS)
If someone steals my bitcoins, I lose. If you had 1000 bitcoins in that exchange, you lost a half million dollars with no way to get it back. That makes bitcoins a hell of a lot less safe than dollars or pounds in my book.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
