[Cryptography] Bitcoin theft and the future of cryptocurrencies

[John Levine]

In article <5A318B45.8010501 at connotech.com> you write:
>On 13/12/17 06:06 PM, John Levine wrote:
>> Of course.  The payment systems that people use for transactions in
>> the real world, credit and debit cards, checks, and (outside the US)
>> bank transfers all have ways to reverse bogus transactions.  Bitcoin's
>> model is envelopes of cash, too bad if you change your mind.
>
>FYI, Canada LVTS (Large Value Transfer System) is a system where 
>payments are "immediately final and irrevocable."

Well sure, but it's not for retail transactions.  It has 15
participants, all of which are either the government or large banks,
and the average transfer is over C$7,000,000.  (It's not a bad
candidate for a private blockchain.)

International wire transfers are also not usually reversible, but we
don't use them to buy groceries, either.  At my bank least, before you
can do one there are multiple levels of are you absolutely sure, and a
special code generation step using a dongle or phone app.

>A procedural protection is to precede a large payment with one of say 
>14.87 $ to the intended recipient (with an off-line confirmation) before 
>the large payment is made. Sophisticated cryptography is not always needed.

Something like that could help, but it's not going to scale for day to
day transactions.

>Bitcoin does not qualify as a currency, its volatility disqualifies it 
>(if nothing else, e.g. scalability).

Now we're back to the swamp of what bitcoin is if it's not
a currency.  Electric gold?  Electric pet rocks?  Who knows.

R's,
John