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Imagine 3 parties: buyer, seller and third-party shipper. When the buyer has paid to a specific address, he will also email an irrefutable, digital proof of pay
by neokantian 8y ago
Imagine 3 parties: buyer, seller and third-party shipper. When the buyer has paid to a specific address, he will also email an irrefutable, digital proof of payment to the shipper, who will then ship the goods.
It is trivial to look up the signed transaction to the specific address in the digital currency's blockchain. Hence, the shipping company can handle that situation.
On the other hand, try to get an irrefutable digital proof of payment from a bank. For example, get them to email you anything to you, anything at all, that you can use as proof that you paid last month's rent. A bank cannot do that, not even to save themselves from drowning.
- pjc50 8y agoWhy does the shipper care that you've paid a third party?
- neokantian 8y agoEscrow situations work like that. You cannot use a bank in an escrow situation, because they are not capable of providing digital proof of payment. Whenever you need to digitally prove payment to a third party, you need to use a payment method that can provide such proof.
- DenisM 8y agoHow did we manage to ship anything so far? In practice that hasn't been a problem. Or has it?
- neokantian 8y agoThat is also what horse-and-cart sellers said when they saw the first car. The lack of digital proof of payment is obviously not felt when you don't have it in the first place. The same for multi-signature contracts. The same for atomic swaps. None of these things are needed if they do not exist in the first place. People did not even need a roof over their heads until they built the first one.
- DenisM 8y agoHow is a wire/ACH transfer not an immediate proof of payment?
- pas 8y agoYou can't link to it. It's just a screenshot. Or do you have something else in mind?
- DenisM 8y agoSuppose: I sent you the money, you call the shipping guys and notify them that it's time to ship the goods. That's all. I don't see why the shipping company needs to verify anything themselves - they just need a call from the owner of the goods directing the shipment.
- pas 8y agoI don't know either, but usual shipping is FOB - freight on board, so the seller pays half of it. And so the seller typically doesn't do shit until the money is there. And when it comes to trade between untrusted parties, it starts slow. To build trust. Though crypto is great to making faster payments, that's sometimes an issue, and it can save the seller from the buyer's scam, but on the other hand completely exposes the buyer to the seller's scams. (Because cryptocurrency transfers are non-reversible usually [as in ever, except with a hard fork].)
- weego 8y agoThat isn't and has never been an issue needing solving in day to day business for shipping companies. Their business isn't giving a shit about the upstream business situation.