On 6 June 2013 02:19, Peter Vessenes wrote: > So, this > http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/the-last-straw-for-bitcoin-1059608-1.html?pg=1 article got posted today, noting that FinCEN thinks irrevocable payments > are money laundering tools. > It's great that this article quotes the first page of Sasoshi's white paper. There are some other text that they missed, though, which I think may be relevant. [[ Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non- reversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party. What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers. ]] > > I will hold my thoughts about the net social good of rent-seeking large > corporations taking money from consumers over fraudulent reversals. > Actually, I won't, I just said it. > > At any rate, it got me thinking, can we layer on revocability somehow > without any protocol change, as an opt-in? > > My initial scheme is a trusted (hah) escrow service that issues time > promises for signing. If it doesn't receive a cancel message, it will sign > at the end of the time. > > The addresses would be listed by the escrow service, or in an open > registry, so you could see if you were going to have a delay period when > you saw a transaction go out. > > This seems sort of poor to me, it imagines that mythical thing, a trusted > escrow service, and is vulnerable to griefing, but I thought I'd see if > some of the brighter minds than me can come up with a layer-on approach > here. > > When I think about it, I can imagine that I would put a good number of my > coins in a one day reversible system, because I would have warning if > someone wanted to try and spend them, and could do something about it. I'm > not sure if it gets me anything over a standard escrow arrangement, though. > > Peter > > -- > > ------------------------------ > > [image: CoinLab Logo]PETER VESSENES > CEO > > *peter@coinlab.com * / 206.486.6856 / SKYPE: vessenes > 71 COLUMBIA ST / SUITE 300 / SEATTLE, WA 98104 > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > How ServiceNow helps IT people transform IT departments: > 1. A cloud service to automate IT design, transition and operations > 2. Dashboards that offer high-level views of enterprise services > 3. A single system of record for all IT processes > http://p.sf.net/sfu/servicenow-d2d-j > _______________________________________________ > Bitcoin-development mailing list > Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development > >