Quote from: aminorex on June 19, 2014, 05:15:24 PM

Quote from: Richy_T on June 19, 2014, 05:04:24 PM

Waiting for confirmations makes usage of Bitcoin problematic for taxi driving anyway. Not that it couldn't be done but there need to be other kinds of infrastructure in place for that to work (effectively a Bitcoin credit card or preloaded escrow)

Firstly, I don't think taxi fares are a primary use case. It is the remittances to offshore families which are the primary use case.

Secondly, I don't think that any confirmations are remotely justifiable for cab fares. The 60 seconds of demurrage saved by an automated payment mechanism, relative to a card swipe and signature, would more than offset any fraud losses, which would be incredibly rare. Anyone who can execute such a fraud has far better uses for their time, which are vastly more lucrative. Actually, card chargebacks are probably several orders of magnitude worse than risks of accepting unconfirmed payments, in this case -- and compounded by merchant clearing fees.

I think it is far from a consensus view that 0 conf transactions will become widely accepted for amounts larger than micropayments. Luckily, that's not a problem, since there are payment providers (bitpay, coinbase) that will take that risk, for a premium that minimal compared to that of traditional payment providers.