Quote from: ascent on July 04, 2011, 03:12:33 AM

Quote from: wolftaur on July 04, 2011, 03:07:34 AM

When people are talking about "a small amount like for a hamburger" they usually are proposing that the merchant look at all relayed transactions -- they should see the burger purchase, and if a bit of time goes by and they don't see any other purchases from the same address, a double-spend would be harder.

So when you say, the merchant "looks at all relayed...", do you mean, a software application does all this automatically for the vendor and comes back with an "It looks good" message?

And then when you say, "a bit of time goes by...", do you mean, less than 5 seconds?

The point I'm getting at here, in a nutshell, is, can we reliably process transactions less than, say $50, in 5 seconds or less, or not?

Customers could create an account with an online site and deposit a few of their Bitcoins into this site. The customer could then use their credentials at this site, possibly using a smartphone, to purchase a burger. The burger restaurant trusts the site when it says the payment is coming, and surely enough the site wires BTC to the burger restaurant (at this point the customer is already eating). The site then credits the cost to the account of the customer.