Bitcoin Q&A: Irreversibility and consumer protection
Irreversible transactions and consumer protection. Why would people want irreversible transactions? Will that slow down adoption? The difference between a system of hard promises which can be softened and a system of soft promises which can't be hardened. We're used to operating in a system of soft promises, where your bank can reverse your transactions whether you ask it to or not. These blockchain system involve hard promises, but Bitcoin and Ethereum do not guarantee that a payment will happen irreversibly -- it guarantees that the contract within the transaction will be executed irreversibly. If that contract says "Without second thought, send this money to here and never look back," that is the contract which is going to be executed irreversibly. But that's not the only contract you can put in there. Options: 30-day refund payments, third-party escrows, reintroducing counter-party risk. The difference is that the owner of the money is the only one who can reintroduce those constraints. It is an irreversible guarantee that the wishes you expressed as a consumer within your transaction script will get executed, simulating all of the softness that you want. Right now it's too difficult to do those scripts, but that's an engineering problem just a few rounds of incremental innovation away. We can offer more robust, more predictable guarantees for consumer protection than any system of soft promises. There will be bugs, but you iterate through the bugs. This is part of a talk which took place on September 18th 2016 at the Silicon Valley Ethereum meetup in Mountain View, California: http://ift.tt/2rrGKl5 RELATED: Hard Promises, Soft Promises: Promoting Autonomy instead of Authority - https://youtu.be/UJSdMFPjW8c Bitcoin, Payment Security, and Consumer Protection - https://youtu.be/qMkGfB8X58o Immutability and Proof-of-Work - The Planetary Scale Digital Monument - https://youtu.be/rsLrJp6cLf4 Programmable Money: Hard Promises, Soft Contracts - https://youtu.be/prHax4yrncY Will compliance with regulation benefit Bitcoin? - https://youtu.be/QpVmt3ufdrs What is the role of nodes? - https://youtu.be/fNk7nYxTOyQ Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and well-respected figures in bitcoin. Follow on Twitter: @aantonop https://twitter.com/aantonop Website: http://ift.tt/1lek8e4 He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin,” published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin; “The Internet of Money,” a book about why bitcoin matters. THE INTERNET OF MONEY, v1: http://ift.tt/2o8HU2S MASTERING BITCOIN: http://ift.tt/2g7r3G5 [NEW] MASTERING BITCOIN, 2nd Edition: http://ift.tt/2qUfKqY Subscribe to the channel to learn more about Bitcoin & open blockchains! Outro Music: "Unbounded" by Orfan (http://ift.tt/2o8tuA5) Outro Graphics: Phneep (http://www.phneep.com/) Outro Art: Rock Barcellos (http://ift.tt/1HKZSHT)
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