Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposed BIP 70 extension

[Roy Badami <roy@gnomon.org.uk>]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 10:21:46AM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 9:27 AM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net> wrote:
> > Wallets would then be able to persist this data to disk and compete on cool visualisations for how much money you saved over time.
> 
> heh, this is a cool idea.
> 
> It also seems like it would be subject to instant inflation, as it's
> unprovable, and a rational economic actor may choose to exaggerate
> such numbers.  It also seems collectively rational by some points of
> view for all bitcoin actors to inflate this number.

Rather than offering discounts, how about offering automatic cashback?
I know they're kinda stupid, but I gather cashback deals are very
commonplace in the US and (probably as a result) not unheard of elsewhere.

So you add an optional cashback_to field to the Payment message,
distinct from but conceptually similar to the refund_to field.  The
wallet can tally up how much cashback is received, without having to
trust the merchants.

Much harder to game, AFAICS.

roy