Quote from: franky1 on December 23, 2015, 08:11:20 PM

Quote from: BruceSwanson on December 23, 2015, 07:54:33 PM

Apologies if the following point has already been discussed ad infinitum elsewhere, but I've noticed that whenever I have sent BTC, the transaction has always been published instantly, even though it took a few minutes to actually confirm. If the Bank of America or Visa were to use the BTClockchain for their own internal purposes, they would certainly have procedures in place to prevent their employees from trying to double-spend the BTC sent to addresses to establish transactions. Since such published transactions are sure to be confirmed, shouldn't publication alone be sufficient both for legally accountable record-keeping and to initiate or complete smart contracts? If so, doesn't this mean that, for such uses by such institutions, there is no transaction-time limitation?

imagine it as if funds where debited out of your account instantly. but the recipient cant use them yet as they havnt been credited to him until its confirmed.
many people can still mess around and cause issues before its confirmed. and so for large purchases its not enough to rely on the publishing of a tx, but rather wait till its confirmed.

bitcoin is still not perfect in regards to the limbo between publishing a tx and having it confirmed.. however there are many idea's in the woodwork that are all aiming to sort that out.
that way payment systems can have 100% trust that once a transaction is published, its then locked in the waiting list to be confirmed. and any attempt to respend the same origin funds elsewhere will be ignored

Quote from: knightdk on December 23, 2015, 08:09:55 PM

Quote from: BruceSwanson on December 23, 2015, 07:54:33 PM

Apologies if the following point has already been discussed ad infinitum elsewhere, but I've noticed that whenever I have sent BTC, the transaction has always been published instantly, even though it took a few minutes to actually confirm. If the Bank of America or Visa were to use the BTClockchain for their own internal purposes, they would certainly have procedures in place to prevent their employees from trying to double-spend the BTC sent to addresses to establish transactions. Since such published transactions are sure to be confirmed, shouldn't publication alone be sufficient both for legally accountable record-keeping and to initiate or complete smart contracts? If so, doesn't this mean that, for such uses by such institutions, there is no transaction-time limitation?

No. Even if a transactions is broadcast, there is no guarantee that it will confirm and thus become irreversible. Sometimes transactions have some issues like low fees or dust outputs which prevent that transaction from being confirmed. With the upcoming Opt-In RBF feature, it may not be safe to take unconfirmed transactions if it has opted in to be able to be replaced by another transactions with a higher fee.

I'm not sure I understand you both. Knightdk, correct me if I'm wrong but I think you may have meant to say that even if a legitimate transaction is broadcast, because of the possibility of a bad transaction within that same block there is no guarantee the block will confirm and thus become irreversible. Franky1, I think you may have meant to say that many people can still mess around with their own transactions and cause issues within their blocks, thus causing them to be orphaned. But as I understand it, should there be a bad transaction, the revised block belonging to the first miner to solve the new hash will be the one used thereafter and the fork will continue from there, orphaning the block with a bad transaction or miner's error. But the legitimate transactions within that orphaned block will surely not destroyed or ignored -- even the slightest practical possibility of such an outcome would invalidate the BTC system completely and it would never have been tried.

What I think I am saying is that because an institution will have full control of its own BTC transactions and will ensure that each one obeys the rules, once they are published they are as good as confirmed for the institution's own purposes, and so can immediately be used for a range of internal reasons, including initiating or concluding smart-contracts.