Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangwu | Hacker News Reader

Waiting more than a few minutes eliminates all in-person, food delivery, and probably most same-day delivery transactions. Who’s going to wait an hour for the purchase to go through for an Uber Eats or Prime Now delivery?

View on HN

A vast majority of transactions don't need to wait for a full confirmation, simply existing in the mempool is enough. Just like my electric bill doesn't need to wait for the ACH transfer to complete before it's considered paid.

The blockchain has no support for this kind of feature. That's rather antithetical to Bitcoin. How do you propose to achieve this without a central bank figure?

The "blockchain" doesn't need to support this - the GP's point is that transactions don't need to irrevocably settle for all transaction types. If you're spending $5 to buy coffee, the chance that you are going to defraud the store is low, and there are a number of less complex ways you could accomplish this anyways (just take the item off the shelf, and leave without paying).

And I'll note that there are other ways to accept bitcoin payments without high fees or long wait times (lightning).

I strongly disagree. I think you are overestimating the morality of the common man. If you enable anonymous purchasing of items with no proof of funds being sent, it will be abused. A lot. No storefront will sign up for this. This is very different than physical shoplifting.

It's not anonymous if you're standing in the store paying..

It's anonymous enough if you never reveal your identity. It would be like driving somewhere, paying cash, then later the cash is revealed to be fake. And there's no way for the storefront to test for legitimacy until an hour later.

So, like credit cards (could be stolen, chargeback risk, etc).

1. Credit card fraud is an extremely small percentage of credit card activity. What you are proposing would likely not be.

2. Chargebacks are disputed, and as a storefront you can prove that you are not liable. Merchants can review the identifying documents of the cardholder for legitimacy and take other security steps, like using a chip-enabled card terminal, to further confirm the validity of the purchase. If they follow the process correctly, they are not liable for fraudulent purchases, the cardholder’s issuing bank is. Visa and MasterCard’s contracts generally put the burden of fraud reimbursement onto the bank.

Given your estimate of the "morality of the common man" why would credit card fraud be an extremely small percentage of credit card activity?

Because of aforementioned security protocols. It's much harder to get away with credit card fraud.

I have some shocking news for you about how most sit-down restaurants sell food...

And I'd argue that credit card transactions don't settle for somewhere ~90 days (if even then).

But that's because a company is extending credit to you, the customer, that money is being deposited next day or a few days at most into the merchant account. Without someone willing to be left holding the bag (credit card company) it's a bit of apples and oranges I think.

When credit card fraud occurs, I can assure you that it's the merchant taking the hit, not the credit card company.

That’s fine, it doesn’t change the fact it’s apples and oranges. There is no way to claw back money in BTC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com