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Comment by erikpukinskis | Hacker News Reader

> Worse, the merchant does not appear to be able to really know when payment from a credit card is actually final.

This is why I find it strange when people wring their hands over Bitcoin's 10 minute settlement window... Credit card transactions are regularly open for weeks if not months!

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From the consumer perspective CC transactions are effectively instant, at least for the strip transaction. Even introducing the short delay that the chips involve has been very unpopular. (Why they went with chip+sig is clearly some form of non-security motivation.)

The solution to bitcoin, ironically, would be bitcoin+signature. The signature is forming a contract, a promise to pay. This is different from waiting for /an/ actual payment to clear.

From my limited use of Bitcoin, the merchants only required the transaction to be broadcast They didn't care if it had 0 or 1 or 100 confirmations. They only cared that it was broadcast. Which makes sense. Considering they all apparently only did 4 Bitcoin transactions a month if not less. (2 cafes and a pub)

This is completely different to how online stores have processed my Bitcoin. Usually waiting for 1-2 confirmations before shipping (Trezor is my example here)

But I can buy a coffee with my credit card without having to wait weeks or months to get it. This works because people have faith in the system, faith which in turn is built on identity information and legal systems. You could probably achieve the same thing on top of Bitcoin, but at that point why bother with Bitcoin (and the cost is nontrivial)?

Bitcoin is the same. Instant verification of authorization, but then it takes 10+ minutes to settle the account.

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