{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub1nxlvf9mj3jzgue25n5d9y47s3h5hvg0ded9hwpejdxj9mtrs34vs97wjrv","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub1nxlvf9mj3jzgue25n5d9y47s3h5hvg0ded9hwpejdxj9mtrs34vs97wjrv","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2014-04-23\n📝 Original message:On Wednesday 23 Apr 2014 12:45:34 Mike Hearn wrote:\n\n\u003e OK, sure, let's say most Bitcoin users will be honest (we hope). But\n\u003e unfortunately in a situation where fraud is possible users wouldn't\n\u003e necessarily distribute evenly over transactions.\n\nThat's true, but even in the worst that that 5% hashing power attack means \nthat 95% of the time, your attack fails.  That means you end up paying for \nwhat you bought.  Also, you're again changing the comparison basis -- your \nCC figures were for the entire industry, not the most badly affected \nmerchant.  You can't say \"one particular bitcoin merchant suffers 5% fraud, \ntherefore that's worse than the 2% fraud averaged across all CC merchants\".\n\n\u003e If a merchant is selling something of value repeatedly, then a small\n\u003e number of scammers can go back and try their luck over and over. I'm not\n\u003e sure how many trades fall into such an exploitable category, though.\n\u003e\n\u003e Also, there's the philosophical question of how honest people really are\n\u003e when there's no consequences to their actions. For instance, if most\n\nThere _are_ consequences though: 95% of the time, you end up buying \nsomething and paying for it.\n\nViewed another way, if I buy something repeatedly from an at risk merchant \n(and there won't be many; as you pointed out, mail order is completely \nunaffected as you can simply wait for your confirmations) that costs, say \n0.01 BTC per item, then I have to buy 100 of them to get 5 of them for free.  \nDo I really want 100 of them?  Even if I do want them, then I've had to \nsupply capital of 1 BTC to earn 0.05 BTC in kind.\n\nIf what I'm buying is another form of money (as with exchanges, or perhaps \ncasinos) when that \"in kind\" is just as liquid as the BTC, then fair enough, \nthere is a risk, but that just incentivises the merchant in those cases to \nnot allow withdrawal/deposit until 6 confirmations have been received.  \nThose merchants then move from \"at risk\" to \"not at risk\".\n\nI'm still struggling to see how bitcoin could ever be as bad as CC fraud.\n\n\n\nAndy\n\n-- \nDr Andy Parkins\nandyparkins at gmail.com"}