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A comment on Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in the future. Parent comment

Re:Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in ... by maclured on Monday February 08, 2021 @11:51AM (#26066956)
> What do you do if you pay someone online with bitcoin who then just doesn't deliver what you've ordered?

This is the big problem with crypto. Trust moves around. But there is one solution: escrow backed by smart contracts - see here for one implementation [1]

Personally I think what we'll see in future is people being offered the option of going through existing institutions as a form of insurance for the reasons you mention, but an alternative on offer for people who just want to minimize fees or who don't think they'll need those conflict resolution services.

[1] https://particl.wiki/learn/marketplace/mad-escrow/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in ... by tonyjstark on Monday February 08, 2021 @12:26PM (#26067441)
what if the "smart" contract has a bug?

Also now I have to trust the smart contract developer

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in ... by maclured on Monday February 08, 2021 @12:31PM (#26067494)
TBH I imagine developing smart contracts is clunky right now, like developing using AWS Lambda frameworks was a few years ago. But the tooling will improve. Perhaps it could be possible to digitally sign a smart contract's version, linking it to some proof of automated test coverage, or some other open way of verifying that it works as intended - e.g. attach the test suite and test results to the contract somehow and sign them. If you weren't happy with the quality of tests or their coverage, etc, you could decide not to use the smart contract.
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Re:Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in ... by itsArtur on Tuesday February 09, 2021 @08:15AM (#26077092)
Wouldn't that deposit requirement cause issues for high volume/low margin sellers?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Tesla buys $1.5B in Bitcoin, may accept it as payment in ... by maclured on Tuesday February 09, 2021 @04:50PM (#26082816)
Potentially. Or for sellers of particularly high value goods where buyers and sellers both have to put up the same amount again as a deposit. It still seems like a novel approach and I'm curious how it'll pan out.
[ Parent | on HN ]