Author: Mike Hearn 2014-04-23 11:45:34
Published on: 2014-04-23T11:45:34+00:00
The discussion revolves around the fairness of Bitcoin, with a rebuttal to the claim that not all Bitcoin users will be dishonest. The concern is that in situations where fraud is possible, users may not distribute evenly over transactions. This is illustrated through a study conducted on Gmail, which found that a random subset of email accounts from Nigeria showed up on abuse reports and dating site blacklists at a disproportionate rate. While this doesn't imply that all Nigerians are scammers, the few that are responsible for such actions can create a significant problem. A similar issue could arise with Bitcoin if a merchant is selling something of value repeatedly, allowing even a small number of scammers to go back and try their luck over and over again. It's unclear how many trades fall into such an exploitable category. Additionally, there's also a philosophical question of how honest people really are when there are no consequences to their actions. For example, game studios report piracy rates of 95% despite having cracked DRM. Despite the hope that most people are honest, this suggests that the vast majority of users are not honest when given the opportunity to act without consequence.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T20:56:36.884810+00:00