5 ms·

> 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://inco

> 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.
- prepend 9y ago
  All payment systems have some system of loss. Visa/MC have fraud and error that eats away small percentages and relies largely on trusting people not to defraud you. If you run Starbucks and serve 1000 transactions per day, you’ll have some fraud. If 0.1% are fraud, that’s not too bad.
  - grey-area 9y ago
    This isn't a system of loss (systemic loss?), it's an abdication of responsibility - it's giving up on the payment system having any sort of fraud protection.
the_d00d 9y ago
You just used the same argument that some parents use when they decide to not vaccinate their children. They essentially rely on the fact that everyone else vaccinates so they don't have to. This trend catches on and now measles are at a 20 year high.

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.

prepend 9y ago
All payment systems have some system of loss. Visa/MC have fraud and error that eats away small percentages and relies largely on trusting people not to defraud you. If you run Starbucks and serve 1000 transactions per day, you’ll have some fraud. If 0.1% are fraud, that’s not too bad.
- grey-area 9y ago
  This isn't a system of loss (systemic loss?), it's an abdication of responsibility - it's giving up on the payment system having any sort of fraud protection.

the_d00d 9y ago

You just used the same argument that some parents use when they decide to not vaccinate their children. They essentially rely on the fact that everyone else vaccinates so they don't have to. This trend catches on and now measles are at a 20 year high.