On Wednesday 23 Apr 2014 12:07:25 Mike Hearn wrote: > > Just pedantry: 100% of credit card transactions _can_ be fradulantly > > charged > > back but arent. > > If you do a chargeback the bank double checks this, investigates it and > people who repeatedly try and do fraudulent chargebacks get their > accounts terminated. It's not like your bank offers you a "reverse this > payment" button in the UI that always works, right?
True; the effort of a chargeback is non-zero on credit cards; but that's my point: it's non-zero for bitcoin too. > > If N was 5%, then only 5% of bitcoin transactions _could_ be > > fraudulantly "charged back"; so then why wouldn't only 2% of those > > bitcoin transactions be fraudulant too, just as in the CC case? > > If you attempt fraud against a bank, they know who you are and will come > after you in one way or another. But it's safe to assume that users of a > double spend service would be anonymous and the kind of merchants they go > after are not hassling their customers with strong ID checks, so there > would be no consequences for them. It's a game they can only win. You're still being unfair to bitcoin. Not everyone who uses bitcoins will be dishonest. The dishonest 5% hashing power is not going to be used in 100% of any given merchants transactions. That's all I'm saying. You're original statement that we could end up in a position that bitcoin has a higher failure rate than credit cards seems unfair to me. > if N was only, say, 5%, and there was a large enough population of users who were systematically trying to defraud merchants, we'd already be having worse security than magstripe credit cards. "[If] there was a large enough population" -- why are bitcoin users more dishonest than credit card users? Most people are honest, so it seems unlikely that that 5% attack surface would be used at 100%; or even 40% necessary to equal the 2% chargeback rate with CC. I really didn't want to get into an argument over this: all I'm saying is that things aren't as bad as you painted them. Andy -- Dr Andy Parkins andypark...@gmail.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Start Your Social Network Today - Download eXo Platform Build your Enterprise Intranet with eXo Platform Software Java Based Open Source Intranet - Social, Extensible, Cloud Ready Get Started Now And Turn Your Intranet Into A Collaboration Platform http://p.sf.net/sfu/ExoPlatform _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
