Quote from: Nagle on September 28, 2011, 07:28:07 AM

Quote from: repentance on September 28, 2011, 05:53:58 AM

After all that's in the Bitcoin world over the last few months, why are people still so willing to do business with entities about whom they have no real life information?

That is my fundamental objection to the Bitcoin economy.

Bitcoin enables irrevocable unidirectional money transfers between anonymous parties. The Bitcoin fan base thinks that's a good idea. This is the scammer's dream.

I don't think it's a flaw of Bitcoin per se. I can do irrevocable, unidirectional transfers from my bank account to merchants too and in many cases I can do them without revealing my identity - when I pay for my groceries by EFTPOS at the supermarket the merchant doesn't receive identifying information about me. Likewise, I can order a lot of stuff online using just an order number and without disclosing my personal details. But I'm not going to transfer money from my bank account to the account of a merchant whose credentials I can't check in some way.

I think the trap people have been falling into is thinking that because they want to be their Bitcoin dealings to be somewhat it's not reasonable to ask that those offering goods or services provide information about themselves. Just because Bitcoin offers the potential for transactions to be mostly anonymous on both sides doesn't mean that it's vital or even desirable for most transactions to be conducted that way.