Re:Founders Fund Makes Bet on Bitcoin
by dcosson on Tuesday January 02, 2018 @04:31PM
(#16055907)
> There's a huge savings in accepting payments in a form that the buyer can't reverse.
Bitcoin just kind of flips the problem, it doesn't solve it. In a world where payments can easily be reversed, sellers take on all the risk. In a world where they can't be, buyers take all the risk.
You can get pretty far with a reputation system, and in a market with many more buyers than sellers it's nice that now only the seller's reputation matters. But for a lot of people there's still benefit in having a trusted middleman like Paypal.
Bitcoin just kind of flips the problem, it doesn't solve it. In a world where payments can easily be reversed, sellers take on all the risk. In a world where they can't be, buyers take all the risk.
You can get pretty far with a reputation system, and in a market with many more buyers than sellers it's nice that now only the seller's reputation matters. But for a lot of people there's still benefit in having a trusted middleman like Paypal.