Quote from: eugene2k on July 04, 2011, 08:12:00 AM

Got your attention now, didn't I? Grin

Anyway, I'd like to talk about one of the disadvantages of bitcoin over other digital currencies. Non-instant payments. In today's world we're used to instant payments. We go to the mall, pay with our credit card at the checkout and we're done, we use various digital currencies and payment systems online to again make payments in seconds. This is not possible with bitcoin even with 0 confirmations, and "0 confirmations" approach is quite insecure to be widely used. So in order for instant payments to be possible we need to have the payment confirmed in a faster way. The only one I can think of is by having trusted parties managing the money, thus when a trusted party confirms the money has been sent, you can be sure you'll receive a payment. In effect, these trusted parties are basically banks. However, because it's very easy to set up such a bank, because it takes few resources, anyone can create such banks. And this leads to the main question of this topic: how do we make sure fraudulent banks do not get included in the system? Or perhaps I'm going about this the wrong way entirely? What are your thoughts?

This is also my conclusion - this is the next step for bitcoin. I think the chances are good here - because there is such a low barrier to entry for the 'banks' there should be much competition between them and the market should fix the trust problems. Maybe this is where cooperation with Ripple (http://ripple-project.org/) could bring much benefits?

Please change the title of this thread.