namecheap has become the first merchant to accept bitcoin payments without waiting for confirmations.
How about EVR bar? Cups & Cakes Bakery? Room 77 and the rest at Bitcoin Kiez? The Pao Cafe? Green Ave Market?
All these are bricks & mortar businesses that don't wait for confirmation.
None have reported any double spending having occurred.
As you can see from my sig I live in Asia so I've never heard of these businesses before. I thought namecheap was the first in this regard.
I'd like to know what you think of the recent namecheap move? Do you think other merchants will follow suit?
A merchant category that would have the highest risk of loss from accepting payment on 0/unconfirmed would be the quarter machine at an unattended laundromat. In that instance, there is little (or no) profit from each sale, and thus any losses due to double spend translate directly into losses to the merchant. If the attacker has to try twenty-five times before finally succeeding at a double spend attempt with try #26, the attack is profitable to the attacker -- the attacker has both the loot and the bitcoins that were double spent. Since the merchant won't know about the double spend until after the attacker has left (at the soonest), it can be presumed the chance of the attacker getting caught is nil.
We don't have these machines where I live but I assume by the name that only small sums are involved? Would a thief go through all that trouble for a few dollars?
Namecheap is a merchant that is on the other end of the spectrum. Namecheap registers domain names, provides web hosting, etc. If an attacker is successful at a double spend, as soon as Namecheap learns of the double spend they have at their disposal their full control of the domain and any hosting services they provide. So at most an attacker would get hours (or maybe a day) of domain registration or hosting and then lose access to the domain. Thus there's absolutely no benefit from attempting to double spend against a merchant like Namecheap.
Actually one of the problems that hosts face is that people sign up, start spamming or otherwise abusing their services and then chargeback. With bitcoin it would be a double spend instead of a chargeback. You can spam quite a bit even within a few hours and the host is left to clean up the mess. So there is always a risk.