Author: Mike Hearn 2013-06-06 09:03:19
Published on: 2013-06-06T09:03:19+00:00
In an email exchange between Peter Vessenes and others, they discussed an American Banker article that claimed FinCEN believes irrevocable payments are tools for money laundering. However, Vessenes disagreed with this assertion and argued that credit card transactions are not completely reversible either. He also believed that the head of FinCEN may have a vested interest in expanding the definition of money laundering. Vessenes then proposed the idea of layering on revocability without any protocol change as an opt-in. He suggested using 2-of-3 dispute mediation, which is already outlined in Satoshi's paper. However, he noted that such a solution would require deployment of the payment protocol first, and a lot of work would be needed to define how disputes would be opened and mediators found. Ultimately, Vessenes believed that having reversible payments where one party decides whether to reverse seems pointless, as it is equivalent to post-pay for buyers and just a refund for sellers, which can already be supported by the payment protocol.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T18:33:46.774632+00:00