Re:Tulips, Myths, and Cryptocurrencies
by mrb on Wednesday May 24, 2017 @04:09PM
(#14413044)
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.
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.