> What guarantees that, having done an irrevocable funds transfer, you get something back?
How is that at all different from a regular bank transfer?
Re:The Mirrortable
by bradleybuda on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @01:17PM
(#29716291)
Because if a regular bank transfer is erroneous, it can be reversed, usually via the cooperation of the banks in question and in the worst case via the legal system, which understands and is empathetic to nuance and human fallibility.
Important to note that this is only true for domestic transfers, and even then it’s not necessarily an easy task https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/dec/07/i-lost-my-1930...
Also this is only true for erroneous transfers, fraud puts you in a completely different situations.
And in any case, erroneous transfers seem like an easy problem to solve. No? Cryptocurrency addresses have already mostly solved typos with checksums.
What guarantees that, having done an irrevocable funds transfer, you get something back? Or get back what you expected. Or that the investor is the person expected. This needs something like a two-phase commit - everybody agrees on the terms, and then all parties trigger the transaction locked to those terms. Any conflict and nothing happens.
There's some handwaving about "smart contracts", but those have trouble controlling anything that isn't on the blockchain. Like actually doing something in the real world.
I'm not saying that this is impossible, but it looks like the proposal has some holes in it.
Also, in practice, if you send US$100 million in USDC to someone, which a VC might do, can the recipient actually convert it to dollars and get it into a bank account within a few hours? Or will they stall for a few days?