Author: Mike Hearn 2014-06-16 15:43:26
Published on: 2014-06-16T15:43:26+00:00
The context discusses the issue of merchants and customers not trusting more than a handful of third parties for payment methods, as seen in the stagnant duopoly of trusted third parties in the credit card market. The author suggests that either no one cares about this Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) because Bitcoin provides good enough double spend protection or there are hundreds of anti-double-spend providers. However, the author argues that waiting for confirmation is not a feasible option, as neither the customer nor the merchant wants to wait for an hour. The alternative is to pay by credit card or cash as no shops accept only Bitcoin and require waiting for a block. The author proposes that the BIP needs an extra field allowing merchants to offer a discount for a no-double-spends proof, thereby inverting the system to make the sticker price what normal Bitcoin transactions cost, and the wallet shows the regular BIP70 price minus the discount plus the third party's fee as what the customer finally pays. By doing so, the market would determine if the TTP fees are worth the lower losses due to double spending fraud.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T00:01:37.705525+00:00