[pjscott]

Interestingly, Bitcoin does support transactions which have a third party acting as an arbitrator; these transaction require the consent of two out of three participants in order for the money to be transferred. PayPal is essentially a fraud detection business disguised as a money-transfer business, so this seems like a natural niche for them.

(Technically, every Bitcoin transaction has a script in a Forth-like, non-Turing-complete bytecode which specifies the conditions needed for the transaction to be valid. It supports m-out-of-n signature requirements, among many other fun things.)

[johnx123-up]

> Interestingly, Bitcoin does support transactions which have

> a third party acting as an arbitrator

Can you please share some references? I'm looking to implement exact scenario, but couldn't find any references yet.

[wfn]

As I take it, it's not really possible yet. In any case, we're talking about 'multi-signature transactions' [0]:

    A multi-signature transaction is one where a certain number of Bitcoins are "encumbered" with more than one recipient address. The subsequent transaction that spends these coins will require each party involved (or some subset, depending on the script), to see the proposed transaction and sign it with their private key. This necessarily requires collaboration between all parties -- to propose a distribution of encumbered funds, collect signatures from all necessary participants, and then broadcast the completed transaction. [0]

If you are using Blockchain's Mywallet, you might already be able to use them, as an end-user. [1]

One way to implement them is by allowing a more generic 'script execution per transaction' (not sure of wording) mechanism, proposed in BIPs 16 and 17. [2] [3]

Also see bitcoin.stackexchange question about multisig TXes. [4]

As I understand it, if you're a developer wanting to implement arbitrated bitcoin transactions, you'll have to wait. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

[0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0010

[1] https://blockchain.info/wallet/escrow

[2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0016

[3] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0017

[4] http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3718/what-are-mul...

[johnx123-up]

Thank you