5 ms·

A 0-confirmation transaction normally is just fine. It's really not fine at all. The competition is full confirmation transactions on a debit card or bank acc

A 0-confirmation transaction normally is just fine. It's really not fine at all. The competition is full confirmation transactions on a debit card or bank account in seconds with much lower or zero fees.

seanp2k2 9y ago
>seconds At PoS systems in the US, it's typical to have to wait 30+ seconds for chip cards to go through. I'm guessing that this has more to do with the PoS system / slow internet connection for the store / slow network on the back-end card network, but cryptocurrencies would need to be sub-minute to be ~acceptable for in-person retail transactions. Until that is solved, until cryptocoins are more than speculative securities where the value is only the current market price on a handful of exchanges, and until you can use them to realistically buy and sell things instead of using cash or a credit card, I don't consider them a "real" currency (by my own definition). I DO hope that it gets there some day, but I don't see that happening for at least another 5 years, likely with quite a few people who put a significant amount of money into it getting burned quite badly.
- bootlooped 9y ago
  I have absolutely never had to wait 30+ seconds for a credit card transaction that used the chip, so I don't agree with your assessment of that amount of time being typical. Generally, for me, I think it takes about 3-5 seconds from the time I confirm the dollar amount to the time the confirmation comes back.
- dlubarov 9y ago
  30s isn't really typical; the average is in the ballpark of 10s. When I worked at Square we got our average down to 4.2s [1]. Modern Verifone terminals seem pretty quick as well. Long term, "instant" contactless will probably become the norm (though it's taking hold very slowly in the US). [1] https://squareup.com/townsquare/weve-chipped-away-at-emv-transaction-speed-and-were-not-done https://squareup.com/townsquare/weve-chipped-away-at-emv-tra...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- coolspot 9y ago
  Such time is possible if terminal is using dial up and establishes connection only when transaction started. Seen it couple times.
- grey-area 9y ago
  Sure, this varies. If your POS system uses dialup, it can take tens of seconds, if it uses wifi it will be just a few seconds. If it uses contactless it can be sub-second. But in principle it can be as fast as the network and one trusted node. The fundamental problem with bitcoin is that it is decentralised and trustless, and those two properties preclude fast transactions at a global scale - for that you need a federated system with trust between nodes. If you remove those properties, you're no longer using anything resembling bitcoin, and why not use a system with proper validated parties in the first place?
- prepend 9y ago
  But even with BitCoin you can submit the transaction and see it unconfirmed on multiple nodes within 5-30s. It may not be confirmed for hours, but it’s certaibly actionable and trustworthy enough for merchants. The bigger problem is having full blocks forever so it never gets processed.
ericb 9y ago
Debit and credit-card transactions don't confirm for about 120 days, which is when chargebacks become slightly more difficult. Those chargebacks also cost the merchant not only the price, but a $15 chargeback fee.
- grey-area 9y ago
  Chargebacks (i.e. unhappy customers) are a part of any business. Remedies might be business or legal, but you can't just wish them away by excluding them from a payment solution. I have no idea why you think that's related to time to confirm that a customer has money to pay for goods, which is an entirely unrelated problem which bitcoin solves badly in comparison to current payment networks, and due to its distributed nature is unlikely ever to solve well.
jstanley 9y ago
> It's really not fine at all. Actually, it really is. I've been accepting 0-conf transactions for nearly a year and had negligible double spends. https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/zeroconf-payments.html https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/zeroconf-payments.htm... The small number of double-spends that did occur since I wrote that blog post I think are mostly due to bad luck (and opportunism) rather than malicious intent upfront, and represent only ~0.1% of payments.
- ericb 9y ago
  Interesting that a bunch of arm-chair downvoters "know" this won't work, but in practice, it does...
  - snowwrestler 9y ago
    Things that work out fine when only a few people are doing them might not work so out so well when a lot of people are doing them. See: the entire history of Internet security.
    - ericb 9y ago
      Sure but 1-The current solution is worse on this dimension. 2-Since Bitcoin Cash doesn't have replace-by-fee this is impractical for any small transaction. 3-Most of the situations that need to be immediate are small--with the large ones it makes sense to wait.
- grey-area 9y ago
  Actually, it really is. I've been accepting 0-conf transactions for nearly a year and had negligible double spends. So your approach to preventing fraud is... to trust people not to defraud you? Glad it worked for you with bitcoin and the particular people using your service, but that's not really a good basis for a payment network. There are multiple other problems with bitcoin as a payment network and currency, the delay in transactions (which prompted your experiment in ignoring a key part of the currency) is only one of them.
cup-of-tea 9y ago
> The competition is full confirmation transactions on a debit card or bank account in seconds with much lower or zero fees. No. Those do not compete with trustless digital money. If you think that then you don't understand the point of Bitcoin. It's like saying landlines are better than mobiles because you can never misplace them.

seanp2k2 9y ago

>seconds At PoS systems in the US, it's typical to have to wait 30+ seconds for chip cards to go through. I'm guessing that this has more to do with the PoS system / slow internet connection for the store / slow network on the back-end card network, but cryptocurrencies would need to be sub-minute to be ~acceptable for in-person retail transactions. Until that is solved, until cryptocoins are more than speculative securities where the value is only the current market price on a handful of exchanges, and until you can use them to realistically buy and sell things instead of using cash or a credit card, I don't consider them a "real" currency (by my own definition). I DO hope that it gets there some day, but I don't see that happening for at least another 5 years, likely with quite a few people who put a significant amount of money into it getting burned quite badly.

bootlooped 9y ago
I have absolutely never had to wait 30+ seconds for a credit card transaction that used the chip, so I don't agree with your assessment of that amount of time being typical. Generally, for me, I think it takes about 3-5 seconds from the time I confirm the dollar amount to the time the confirmation comes back.
dlubarov 9y ago
30s isn't really typical; the average is in the ballpark of 10s. When I worked at Square we got our average down to 4.2s [1]. Modern Verifone terminals seem pretty quick as well. Long term, "instant" contactless will probably become the norm (though it's taking hold very slowly in the US). [1] https://squareup.com/townsquare/weve-chipped-away-at-emv-transaction-speed-and-were-not-done https://squareup.com/townsquare/weve-chipped-away-at-emv-tra...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
coolspot 9y ago
Such time is possible if terminal is using dial up and establishes connection only when transaction started. Seen it couple times.
grey-area 9y ago
Sure, this varies. If your POS system uses dialup, it can take tens of seconds, if it uses wifi it will be just a few seconds. If it uses contactless it can be sub-second. But in principle it can be as fast as the network and one trusted node. The fundamental problem with bitcoin is that it is decentralised and trustless, and those two properties preclude fast transactions at a global scale - for that you need a federated system with trust between nodes. If you remove those properties, you're no longer using anything resembling bitcoin, and why not use a system with proper validated parties in the first place?
prepend 9y ago
But even with BitCoin you can submit the transaction and see it unconfirmed on multiple nodes within 5-30s. It may not be confirmed for hours, but it’s certaibly actionable and trustworthy enough for merchants. The bigger problem is having full blocks forever so it never gets processed.

ericb 9y ago

Debit and credit-card transactions don't confirm for about 120 days, which is when chargebacks become slightly more difficult. Those chargebacks also cost the merchant not only the price, but a $15 chargeback fee.

grey-area 9y ago
Chargebacks (i.e. unhappy customers) are a part of any business. Remedies might be business or legal, but you can't just wish them away by excluding them from a payment solution. I have no idea why you think that's related to time to confirm that a customer has money to pay for goods, which is an entirely unrelated problem which bitcoin solves badly in comparison to current payment networks, and due to its distributed nature is unlikely ever to solve well.

jstanley 9y ago

> It's really not fine at all. Actually, it really is. I've been accepting 0-conf transactions for nearly a year and had negligible double spends. https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/zeroconf-payments.html https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/zeroconf-payments.htm... The small number of double-spends that did occur since I wrote that blog post I think are mostly due to bad luck (and opportunism) rather than malicious intent upfront, and represent only ~0.1% of payments.

ericb 9y ago
Interesting that a bunch of arm-chair downvoters "know" this won't work, but in practice, it does...
- snowwrestler 9y ago
  Things that work out fine when only a few people are doing them might not work so out so well when a lot of people are doing them. See: the entire history of Internet security.
  - ericb 9y ago
    Sure but 1-The current solution is worse on this dimension. 2-Since Bitcoin Cash doesn't have replace-by-fee this is impractical for any small transaction. 3-Most of the situations that need to be immediate are small--with the large ones it makes sense to wait.
grey-area 9y ago
Actually, it really is. I've been accepting 0-conf transactions for nearly a year and had negligible double spends. So your approach to preventing fraud is... to trust people not to defraud you? Glad it worked for you with bitcoin and the particular people using your service, but that's not really a good basis for a payment network. There are multiple other problems with bitcoin as a payment network and currency, the delay in transactions (which prompted your experiment in ignoring a key part of the currency) is only one of them.

cup-of-tea 9y ago

> The competition is full confirmation transactions on a debit card or bank account in seconds with much lower or zero fees. No. Those do not compete with trustless digital money. If you think that then you don't understand the point of Bitcoin. It's like saying landlines are better than mobiles because you can never misplace them.