[Bitcoin-development] Revocability with known trusted escrow services?

[Peter Vessenes <peter@coinlab.com>]

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So, this
http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/the-last-straw-for-bitcoin-1059608-1.html?pg=1
article got posted today, noting that FinCEN thinks irrevocable
payments
are money laundering tools.

I will hold my thoughts about the net social good of rent-seeking large
corporations taking money from consumers over fraudulent reversals.
Actually, I won't, I just said it.

At any rate, it got me thinking, can we layer on revocability somehow
without any protocol change, as an opt-in?

My initial scheme is a trusted (hah) escrow service that issues time
promises for signing. If it doesn't receive a cancel message, it will sign
at the end of the time.

The addresses would be listed by the escrow service, or in an open
registry, so you could see if you were going to have a delay period when
you saw a transaction go out.

This seems sort of poor to me, it imagines that mythical thing, a trusted
escrow service, and is vulnerable to griefing, but I thought I'd see if
some of the brighter minds than me can come up with a layer-on approach
here.

When I think about it, I can imagine that I would put a good number of my
coins in a one day reversible system, because I would have warning if
someone wanted to try and spend them, and could do something about it. I'm
not sure if it gets me anything over a standard escrow arrangement, though.

Peter

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[image: CoinLab Logo]PETER VESSENES
CEO

*peter@coinlab.com * /  206.486.6856  / SKYPE: vessenes
71 COLUMBIA ST / SUITE 300  /  SEATTLE, WA 98104

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