Increasing numbers of confirmations of a transaction in the Bitcoin blockchain exponentially decreases the probability of a double spend attack. If you were selling a Lamborghini in person, it would be wise to wait for a few confirmations because that customer might be motivated to attempt a double spend attack (easier said than done)...of course, if you were shipping it , you couldn't possibly ship it under an hour, so it's a moot point--the transaction either gets confirmed many times or you don't ship. Bitpay, a bitcoin to conventional currency conversion service, uses "a proprietary" algorithm (using publicly available info) to estimate if a transaction will be confirmed. Bitpay then assumes the exchange risk for the transaction by taking the bitcoin and depositing conventional currency in the merchant account. They've only had two transactions they predicted would confirm actually fail to confirm (both small transactions...like <$10, I believe) and 0 double spends since they started business (2011 I think). > On Mar 26, 2014, at 4:50 PM, "Brent Shambaugh" <brent.shambaugh@gmail.com> wrote: > > I spoke with someone last night that said that they were worried about delays in confirmation with the Bitcoin blockchain. So for point of sale, they were not sure if they were instantly paid or not. Is this a legitimate concern for this use case? > > >> On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Steve Klabnik <steve@balancedpayments.com> wrote: >> To be clear, recurring isn't central to this implementation: since you can charge an account, you can also charge an account every week. It's fundamentally a one-off payment, Gittip just happens to bill their customers weekly. >
Received on Thursday, 27 March 2014 18:15:10 UTC