Re:Tulips, Myths, and Cryptocurrencies
by michaelt on Wednesday May 24, 2017 @10:16AM
(#14410148)
Then why is it when I use Visa in a shop I can leave with my item within seconds of presenting my contactless card to a reader; whereas with bitcoin sellers want to wait for at least one confirm - which takes 5-15 minutes even if I pony up a 360 satoshis/byte (~$1.90 per transaction) fee to get into the next block?
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Because thanks to the extreme cautiousness of Bitcoin developers who have abundantly communicated the (small) risk of accepting zero-confirmation transactions to the public, people have generally heeded the advice of waiting for at least 1 confirmation.
But in reality, if it is OK for a shop to tolerate the risk of credit card chargeback fraud (which is real and is exploited every day) then it is OK to also tolerate the risk of accepting a zero-confirmation Bitcoin tx. Notice the language I use. "Tolerate" doesn't mean "annulate", but "accepting some degree of risk that can be controlled."
Of course the downside of this cautiousness around zero-confirmation transactions causes people to think Bitcoin transactions are slow, when it's not true. They are as fast as, if not faster, than CC transactions.