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From: Justus Ranvier <justusranvier@riseup.net>
To: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] alternate proposal opt-in miner takes double-spend (Re: replace-by-fee v0.10.0rc4)
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2015 10:00:05 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <54E9FD05.3000807@localhost.local> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <2953246.T2DHreG0Tu@crushinator>

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On 02/22/2015 07:50 AM, Matt Whitlock wrote:
> This happened to one of the merchants at the Bitcoin 2013
> conference in San Jose. They sold some T-shirts and accepted
> zero-confirmation transactions. The transactions depended on other
> unconfirmed transactions, which never confirmed, so this merchant
> never got their money.
> 
> I keep telling people not to accept transactions with zero
> confirmations, but no one listens.

A better solution is to track the failure rate of zero confirmation
transactions, and adjust prices accordingly to cover the expected loss.

This is what every merchant *already does* since no payment method has
a 0% fraud rate.

Even physical cash has a probability of being counterfeit, and the
prices you pay for things at a convenience store already have that
risk priced in.

The idea that zero confirmation transactions require a 100% guarantee
is a strawman, especially since there exists no number of
confirmations the actually produce a 100% irreversibility guarantee.

Zero confirmation transactions can work as long as the risk of
reversal is measurable and reasonably stable.
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  parent reply	other threads:[~2015-02-22 16:00 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 16+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-02-22  8:02 [Bitcoin-development] alternate proposal opt-in miner takes double-spend (Re: replace-by-fee v0.10.0rc4) Adam Back
2015-02-22 12:34 ` Peter Todd
2015-02-22 13:29   ` Natanael
2015-02-22 13:50     ` Matt Whitlock
2015-02-22 14:07       ` Peter Todd
2015-02-22 16:00       ` Justus Ranvier [this message]
2015-02-22 16:17         ` Natanael
2015-02-22 16:25           ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-22 16:36             ` Natanael
2015-02-23 11:03       ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-22 14:44     ` Natanael
2015-02-22 14:11   ` Adam Back
2015-02-22 14:25     ` Bryan Bishop
2015-02-22 14:33     ` Peter Todd
2015-02-22 15:18       ` joliver
2015-02-22 15:41         ` Peter Todd

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