Quote from: bitcoinbeliever on August 28, 2014, 03:23:42 AM

The idea that third-party solutions will fix 0-conf... it completely throws the baby out with the bathwater. Sure, it could work -- Visa works.

But it would no longer be bitcoin. It would no longer be a global peer-to-peer currency.

Why do so many people believe this?

There are risks inherent in transactions, for all parties. Why do so many people insist that it is wrong to use third parties to manage those risks?

I get it that credit card companies are reviled, and for good reasons. But bitcoin removes the power imbalance that allows them to act in ways that earn our ire. If they want to continue to exist, they will have to provide valuable services at reasonable costs.

The bitcoin blockchain is global and public. Do you really think it is necessary that all transactions, no matter how trivial, must be in it? Keep in mind that we have absolutely no clue how much it really costs to maintain the blockchain, and we won't know for many years. I suspect that all of our estimates are very, very low, and eventually we will realize that trivial transactions are just too expensive to store publicly.