Bitcoin Forum

It's been a while (several hours, at least) since I've posted a dumb question, and I need the practice.

Is there an opportunity in the bitcoin economy for selling double-spend insurance to merchants who believe their best business practice is to accept 0-conf transactions?

Not a bad idea, but the bitcoin network is working against you.  It silently buries all evidence of double-spend attempts.  Here is data from one node that publishes the re-spend attempts that it sees though.

http://respends.thinlink.com (http://respends.thinlink.com)

Deppends how often people in fact try to double spend with 0 confirmation transaction.

Usually business that use 0-conf transactions(casinos, and online stores) only allow withdraw after confirmations, or just don't ship until confirmation.

Thanks for sharing the page.
That is interesting, but I can't find the meaning of those green, yellow and red boxes.
Do you know what they represent?


Forget it, it is right in the bottom of the page. :)

I'd say definitely. People will always try to get one over on others unfortunately - and as long as that holds true, I think there will be a market for said insurance.

There might be a market, but everyday merchants will use something like BitPay. Merchants that process their own Bitcoin transactions are very low.

I think there would be a market for this, however it would be very easy for the merchant to abuse the insurance company.

The merchant could simply send funds to themselves for a "purchase" and attempt to double spend the transaction, whenever they are successful they would file a claim with the insurance company. The merchant would have no losses but would be paid by the insurance company (the insurance company would think they have losses).