[faeriechangling]

>2. Can the courts force a blockchain to reverse a transaction that was made.

The courts already can't necessarily force a transaction to be reversed as it is. The money can be gone long before they get involved.

>To me there is a large difference between a system (like credit card settlement) that can have transactions revoked easily after settlement, and one that can only be revoked by another separate transaction that the sender makes.

There's a good deal of irreversible transactions, such as inter-bank transfers in traditional finance. It's also my understanding that most "Reversals" are just new transactions or cancellations of pending transactions. I don't see a HUGE difference in how an inter-bank wire transfer works and how sending somebody crypto works except that in the case of crypto it's the wallet/account holder in full control.

I'll acknowledge there are differences, which impacts the probability of reversal and who can do the reversal, but I still feel it borders on the edge of "implementation detail". It only feels like a truly profound difference if you want to make a transaction a bank would normally interfere with, like a ransom payment, payment for fraudulent goods/services, drug deal, money laundering, funds being sent to political dissidents, or similar. Whereas the idea of smart contracts bypassing the expense of the courts entirely seemed like a much more broadly useful notion.

[otterley]

Courts will try to figure out a way to make a plaintiff whole even if the transaction can’t technically be reversed.