Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: This is what's needed to help the adoption of bitcoin
by
edd
on 11/08/2014, 20:04:29 UTC
Looking forward to more adoption of decentralized bitcoin address registrations like this:

http://imgur.com/fdipIYO



Yeah but it only is a good thing if the lookup of those addresses happens on a decentralized basis. We could use namecoin for that. But some services that already exist actually are decentralized. If you are able to tamper with that system, you could easily pipe in your own address and steal someone's coins!
I think if this happens on a centralized bases or a decentralized basis it will be a huge target for fraud and scammers. In the OPs picture SeansOutpost was the example, but a scammer could make several addresses with slight variations of this name to try to get people to send them money when they misspell who they are trying to send money to.

Something like that happened with Coinbase. Someone not affiliated with Sean's Outpost opened an account under their name before they did, obviously hoping users would just assume it was theirs and send donations without checking. Fortunately, Jason King contacted Coinbase and got them to address it.