[pash]

You can get fraud protection with Bitcoin (if you want it) by using two-of-three multisig transactions with an escrow agent of your choosing.

The "no recourse for fraud" meme about Bitcoin is simply wrong. There are not many dispute-resolution mechanisms right now because the technology is young and because most existing users don't particularly want (and don't want to pay for) the second-order services that credit-card companies provide. If Bitcoin catches on among a wider demographic, dispute resolution and most other things that Bitcoin "can't do" will get built.

The technology is very flexible and can accommodate just about everything that existing payment mechanisms (and monetary systems) offer; the reverse is not true.

[CPLX]

> The "no recourse for fraud" meme about Bitcoin is simply wrong.

OK, but wait:

> There are not many dispute-resolution mechanisms right now... If Bitcoin catches on among a wider demographic, dispute resolution... will get built. The technology is very flexible and can accommodate just about everything...

Ah, OK. So the fact that there's no recourse for fraud is actually correct. But because, in theory, there could be fraud detection, then there's no reason to worry about fraud.

Reminds me of: https://www.google.com/search?q=assume+a+ladder

[pash]

Are you asking me about the capabilities of the techology, or are you asking me to predict the future? I'm giving you the former.

I don't know what Bitcoin will look like in ten years. I do understand the technology and am interested in having a discussion about it. But on Hacker News, in threads like this one, a great many of the comments demonstrate fundamental technical misunderstandings or seem to regard Bitcoin as a mature ecosystem. So I think it's appropriate to try to dispel the ignorance and to emphasize that Bitcoin is actually a nascent technology, one that offers far more than the rudimentary sort of magic Internet money that we see today. Bitcoin is a base layer for permission-lite financial innovation in whatever direction the market demands. You can build all sorts of stuff on top of it.

That means that if Bitcoin's still around in a decade, the ecosystem will likely look very different from today's. "Assume we will never have a ladder," you seem to be saying. Meanwhile, plenty of capable people are hard at work building ladders.

[cpwright]

I find the fundamental disconnect to be that people are pushing the lower-cost transactions as a bit motivation for Bitcoin. The less enthusiastic point out all of the good anti-fraud infrastructure credit cards have from a consumer perspective. Then the proponents point out you can build that on Bitcoin, which is true; but it doesn't come for free, thus I expect mostly negating the transaction cost advantages that Bitcoin is potentially offering.

[dangerlibrary]

I can give you a sense of the future: Bitcoin will become completely unusable because the blockchain is growing at an increasing rate.

https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size?timespan=all&show...