141–150 of 211 posts
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> Are there plans to build equivalent features on Blockchain for crypto currencies? Basically every crypto enthusiast out there touts the non-reversibility of crypto transactions as its primary feature , not a bug, and that is why I see crypto as generally useless for your average person.
Not a fan of crypto, but your argument applies to cash, wish is still widely used (not only by shady people ;) )
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Wire transfers can be reversed in some cases but it's not as simple as filing a chargeback; AFAIK it requires cooperation between law enforcement and the recipient bank.
Definitely have been cases where they have not been able to reverse transfers of this type, even for huge sums, where they know exactly where the money went ie. the bank and the specific accounts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery
The net loss was in fact minuscule (in % terms) compared to the attempted amount. Summarising from the article you linked.
> ....illegally transfer close to US$1 billion
> ..The Federal Reserve Bank of New York blocked..US$850 million
> ..with US$20 million traced to Sri Lanka...recovered
> ..traced..US$81 million to the Philippines...out of which US$18 million has been recovered.
So the actual loss is ~US$60 million. I would say the system has worked as intended, for sure there's a scope for improvement which I'm sure are being worked upon. Also I imagine the 4 individuals, the final recipients of the money are being pursued.
If I do a thought exercise with bitcoin; what are the potential options to prevent such a heist? I would imagine within an hour or so $1B would get distributed to to thousands of wallets. Sure, you could trace all of that, but then what? Would you instruct the Blockchain network to not authorise any spends originating from those addresses? Kind of maintain a black list?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/technology/how-to-disappe...
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Didn’t this comment make you a potential target?
What information in particular did I give away? This is important to me, please let me know.
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> I am yet to work with a payment method that does not support reversal (except for physical cash). I'm not sure I get your objection: Physical cash is exactly the use case for bitcoin. There will be financial services and other layers built on top of bitcoin, just as it is done for the dollar, and we are seeing the nascent industry now. (Whoever provides insured services first is going to make a mint.)
I thought Bitcoin was more a store of value (e.g. analogous to gold) than a currency similar to physical cash? If so the problem becomes, is your personal security up to defending attackers who want to take your pile of digital gold.
Physical cash is money, and serves the functions of money (see eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money#Functions)
Bitcoin does the same.
In the nascent crypto world, different areas are using this new money in different ways: The US currently tends to store of value. Other areas (Venezuela, El Salvador) are tending toward medium of exchange.
In any case: OP's reversibility-of-transactions is a financial services function, not a "money" function.
It is funny that a man so obsessed with privacy, anonymity and his physical security still uses online dating apps. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/technology/how-to-disappe...
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Not a fan of crypto, but your argument applies to cash, wish is still widely used (not only by shady people ;) )
I really don't know anything about the subject but I think stolen cash is much more hard to conceal and to move. It can be marked also and tracked (or so they say in the movies). You need to justify its possession. You cannot go to the airport with an arbitrary amount of money.
This is actually a major problem in the U.S. where the fourth amendment is supposed to protect against unreasonable seizure. It is not illegal to carry cash, but federal and local law enforcement agencies will by policy seize cash without charging anyone with a crime. The victim needs to sue to get their money back, and then the agencies use tax-payer dollars to fight it. This is a clear violation of the 4th amendment, but is absolutely rampant.
If we don't fix these problems with cash, you can bet they'll come for your crypto when it becomes popular enough.
But if you don't have the keys to move your money, it becomes a lot less useful as money. It's still like gold though, something that you have a sort of vault that you rarely visit. If you got drugged and someone took your phone to do a bank transfer, I would imagine there would be some hope of reversing the transfer, with a whole lot of painful steps. With crypto it's pretty futile if they manage to move it. Also th…
It's a question of how difficult you make to steal and thus how much riskier you make it for someone to attempt an attack.
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It’s pretty easy to make it hard to move your crypto while you maintain access to all keys involved. It becomes even easier if you use a blockchain that supports smart contracts. Something as simple as using a contract to delay any coin transfers with one or more keys that can stop the transfer is trivial to implement. Even simple multi-sig is pretty good assuming you don’t rely on two keys both stored in your phone.…
Seems like even bitcoin supports it, even though it's not typically thought of as a "smart contract" platform. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Timelock
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> Are there plans to build equivalent features on Blockchain for crypto currencies? Basically every crypto enthusiast out there touts the non-reversibility of crypto transactions as its primary feature , not a bug, and that is why I see crypto as generally useless for your average person.
Not a fan of crypto, but your argument applies to cash, wish is still widely used (not only by shady people ;) )
Right, so it's important to understand the context in which cash is used.
The vast majority of cash transactions take place in exchange for goods/services rendered immediately. Like I go to a grocery store, buy a pound of bread and pay cash. So disputes are settled right there and then, merchant and customer talk it out. Also, about 90% of cases ticket size is ~20$ so even if a dispute isn't settled in spender's favour it's no big deal. The spender will not transact at the merchant again so in fact more often than not merchants are willing to settle in favour of customers.
Now for larger ticket items I'd hypothesise that 99% of them are done through online through credit-card, bank transfer and what not. Due to safety reasons customer as well as merchant wouldn't want to deal with big sums of physical cash.
That leaves us with suitcase piles of cash being paid; and it's not hard to guess it's mostly being done to avoid authorities. Note that there is a legitimate use case for moving large piles of cash, say casino depositing daily earnings at their local bank. That is not a transaction in a meaningful sense.