bitcoin is failing in replacing fiat in physical shops

[Brangdon]

Moreover, the blockchain doesn't remotely support the functionality required for point of sale systems, such as refunds, discounts, reversals, approvals, points reward schemes, cashback - whatever.

Neither does cash. Bitcoin behaves rather like cash in this respect. It has advantages over cash for the vendor: it's easier for them to count; they don't have to physically take it to the bank; it's harder for their staff to steal it. (The main reason supermarkets offer cash-back is as a way to get rid of the cash and replace it with something digital, because cash is such a pain for them to handle.)

The main drawback here is that if someone hands you a £10 note, and then changes their mind, you can give them the £10 note back. With bitcoin, you can't do that: you can't send them the output of the transaction they just sent you, because it won't be in the block-chain with enough confirmations. You'll have to give them the output from an older transaction instead. You'll need to keep a pool of old transaction outputs ready, to handle change. Much as you need to keep a pool of notes and coins to provide physical change when customers pay with cash. (Again, it's easier with bitcoin because it's digital; it doesn't take up space and all your tills can share the same pool.)

I'm not saying payment processors won't happen, just that they aren't needed.

[1714261893]

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[1714261893]

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[toknormal]

That is not necessarily true. If the network propagation delay and validation time can be guaranteed to be fast enough, the block time can be lowered to what ever value the values allow for

The blockchain's unsuitability for point-of-sale is not under debate. It is not a POS system. It's bank.

Why do you think the cryptocurrency exchanges don't do realtime blockchain transactions for their trades ? It's not just a question of speed (although no exchange would ever be able to work with trades which ran at 'blockchain' speed) it's a question of functionality.

Day to day trades and transactions need to happen one step removed from the banking system - whether it's fiat or crypto - and then be 'committed' to the associated bank accounts / blockchain accounts once completed. There is no blockchin transaction speed or functionality that could ever match what payment processors provide and even if it did, the way that the blockchain operates is far too inflexible for use at point of sale. It's great as a 'bank' but point of sale operations are simply not the same animal as bank transfers.

There are so many examples which spring to mind if you've ever worked in a retail operation. Here's another one of the top of my head - a hardware retailer takes an order from a known customer with an account. The order needs to be modified because some items weren't in stock and some were. The retailer calls the customer to see if they would accept a substitute product with a minimal price difference. The customer agrees but wants the retailer to complete the order, reverse the old and charge the new amount to their account.

So now the **retailer** has to do the charging. This type of stuff goes on ALL THE TIME in retailing and can only done using accounts (ok, it may be a cryptocurrency account but its not going to be a blockchain transaction because the retailer would then need access to the customer's blockchain address and could run off with coins untraceably).

There are millions of examples like this that demonstrate that blockchain will never get anywhere near retailing without payment processors. That isn't a bad thing - it's a good thing - I'm just saying, we should be realistic in our expectations of how cryptocurrencies will develop and who needs to be convinced abut their viability as a store of value. Payment processors are pivotal in this whole game.

Without them, cryptos are going nowhere.

[BittBurger]

Bitcoin is a protocol which can be built on top of.

Bitcoin is not the end-all be-all to its own functionality.  

Services can be created on top of the Bitcoin protocol which provide instant transactions necessary for different types of commerce.

We need to stop thinking of Bitcoin itself as the "whole package".  

It is a foundational layer like TCP/IP.  On top of that layer, you've got Ebay, Monster, Esurance, Napster (lol)...etc

On top of Bitcoin you've already got MasterCoin Foundation, Gyft, and even insurance services guaranteeing the security of your wallets.

Much more is coming.

-B-

Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency controlled by predefined algorithms, the rational behind using bitcoin is that traditional fiat currencies are getting devalued by governments and gold is hard to verify and transport.
if by services created over bitcoin to provide instant payment you mean a third party company that clears transactions then we might as well just use fiat money, because this clearing company can now print bitcoins out of thin air just like banks do today.
if the transaction is not processed and verified on the blockchain there is no point in using bitcoin

No.  This would not require or imply "printing Bitcoins out of thin air".
Not only is that impossible, but that's not how the service would work.
They would more likely hold a stash of coins and enable immediate transaction within a system they've built.

if the transaction is not processed and verified on the blockchain there is no point in using bitcoin.

Coinbase operates outside the blockchain for many of their transactions.
They are not an exchange, but moreso a broker.  They purchase in bulk ahead of time, and sell at their own prices.  
This enables additional features like (surprise) immediate availability of BTC purchases, before they've even taken the money out of your bank account (a process that takes 3-5 business days).

If your point is that it "could have been coded better for microtransactions" ?  I think everyone already agrees.
If your point is that Bitcoin is one big fail because it wasn't .. thats not rational.

"Might as well just use fiat"

That doesn't make any sense.  Why would all of Bitcoins benefits be nullified simply because certain aspects work better with 3rd party services built on top?
In the future Bitcoin is going to be 1% Bitcoin Protocol 99% 3rd party services built on top of it / latched into it.
Even for the things it already does well.  Just to add 100 more perks on top.

-B-

[ineededausername]

This whole malleability fiasco has shown once again that zero confirmation transactions can not be trusted.

since its not practical waiting for 10 minutes for a payment to clear when buying coffee it seems to me that bitcoin will never go mainstream in physical shops.
any solution involving a third party to clear payments defeats the whole purpose of bitcoin.

any third party will effectively turn into a bank along with all the classical fractional reserve practices we have today.

IIRC I believe that BitPay runs a network of low-latency nodes that ensure that they can accept zero confirmation transactions.  Anyone using BitPay is unaffected.

[Wipeout2097]

Bitcoin is not supposed to replace fiat. It is supposed to compete and put pressure on with credit cards, payment processors, collapsing banks, bail-ins, etc... I don't want to get rid of fiat (cash in hand) neither I want a cashless society.

[Axewax]

As an actual vendor who accepts bitcoins, this fiasco is tremendous fun.

Cash doesn't bring the drama like bitcoins.

[davidgdg]

might not be worth it for coffee, could very well be worth it for products 100$ and above in price (e.g groceries).

the fraudster doesn't need a miner that controls 30% of the hash rate.
see table on page 10 of https://bitcoil.co.il/Doublespend.pdf

with 6 percent of the hash rate i can double spend successfully 12 percent of the time (with only one confirmation).
so if a group of fraudsters sets up a small mining operation they can get a 12% fraud discount on all products sold in physical stores, that seems unacceptable to me.

Presently, the global bitcoin hashrate is approximately 25,000,000 GH/s (http://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate).

The market value of 1 GH/s is approximately $16 (https://www.cex.io).

In your example, you suggested that it may be worth acquiring 6% of global hashrate to double spend on groceries.  Let's do the math:

6% of global hashrate = 0.06 * 25,000,000 = 1,500,000 Gh/s

Market value of this 6% = 1,500,000 x $16 = $24,000,000.

So, yes, with a $24 million dollar investment you'll be able to fraudulently acquire groceries 6 - 12% of the time, until you eventually get caught and have your $24 million in mining equipment siezed.  

 

[franky1]

the retailers currently use bitpay/coinbase. where you send coins to an address a retailer gives you, which bitpay/coinbase gave them..

in the near future what will happen is that you will put a pocketmoney amount into a bitpay/coinbase account and simply tell the cashier to debit your account for the total. this way the coins are verified (as they have been preconfirmed when u deposited) and is faster then the cashier getting a QR code, printing it, showing it to you and then you fiddling around with your phone to pay them.

this will be done simply by a nfc in your phone coded to you bitpay/coinbase account.

now imagine the speed of your bitcoins paying for your groceries..fully confirmed and no need to press a single button on your phone

[Peter R]

...if crypto ever gets near a coffee shop of supermarket, FORGET blockchain transactions. We will not be using 'real' cryptocurrency transactions for day to day purchases any more than banks use 'real' banks transfers for fiat transactions today. Even a 20 second confirmation time is 5 times to slow for point of sale purposes.

There's already a grocery store in Vancouver that accepts zero-confirm transactions.  I doubt it's the only one in the world.  We also have restaurants, pubs and coffee shops that accept zero-confirm on-chain transactions too.  I already find paying with bitcoin less annoying than using my debit card.  

That doesn't change the fact that blockchain transactions are not scaleable at the point of sale. If any physical retailer of any significant size (e.g. a supermarket) had to do blockchain transactions at the point of sale, their operations would grind to an immediate halt. It's just not going to happen. I develop e-Commerce systems for a living and payment processors are essential to scaling any kind of retail operation. Consider the following scenario:

[1] - you are in a supermarket queue with 30 items
[2] - the cashier rings through your items
[3] - they ask you if you want "cashback" with your sale and if you have a points card
[4] - you pay for the transaction, receive £50 (or $50) cash, which gets charged to your card account along with the groceries
[5] - as you pack your items, the guy behind you realises that the cashier accidentally rang through one one of his items on your side of belt splitter
[6] - the cashier discounts your sale, refunding you the excess balance and asks you if you want the refund in cash or refinded to your charge account
[7] - you leave the chop, having storecard points added, received your "cashback" amount in fiat, and having the corrected amount charged to your account

Now, there isn't a snowballs chance in hell of all that happening on the blockchain in realtime. It's not what the blockchain was designed for. This is what payment processors are for - they handle all this stuff effortlessly and provide added value to the retailer at the same time, for example by insuring the transaction, supporting auxiliary products such as discounts and store cards etc.

So don't have any illusions that Visa and Mastercard are going to loose any business to Bitcoin. They will be needed more than ever if cryptos take off (which I think they will). In fact they will actually be part of what drives the crypto economy and if we don't get them on our side then there will be no "gateway" for big retailers to come on board.

I was pointing out the fact that on-chain zero-confirm payments are already working in retail.  PoS transactions are scalable, and many of the "features" you described can also be carried out on-chain with the appropriate payment processor.  The transaction processing capabilities of bitcoin can scale greatly, even to Visa levels: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability.  We will remove the 7 tps /1 Mbyte block-limit when required.  

That being said, I agree that companies like Visa will continue to play an important role, by extending credit and offering consumer protections. And I also agree that in a "bitcoin future" more transactions would be done off-chain, and I gave an example of how Coinbase is already working towards this goal in an open and seamless manner.  

The vision that I have is bitcoin PoS similar to how franky1 just described one post above: if you have a BitPay or Coinbase account, you pay super quickly via NFC at the till, off-chain transaction, no miner's fee.  But if you don't have such an account, there will always be the option to pay "on chain" should that be required.  

[AnonyMint]

That is not necessarily true. If the network propagation delay and validation time can be guaranteed to be fast enough, the block time can be lowered to what ever value the values allow for

The blockchain's unsuitability for point-of-sale is not under debate. It is not a POS system. It's bank.

Why do you think the cryptocurrency exchanges don't do realtime blockchain transactions for their trades ? It's not just a question of speed (although no exchange would ever be able to work with trades which ran at 'blockchain' speed) it's a question of functionality.

Day to day trades and transactions need to happen one step removed from the banking system - whether it's fiat or crypto - and then be 'committed' to the associated bank accounts / blockchain accounts once completed. There is no blockchin transaction speed or functionality that could ever match what payment processors provide and even if it did, the way that the blockchain operates is far too inflexible for use at point of sale. It's great as a 'bank' but point of sale operations are simply not the same animal as bank transfers.

There are so many examples which spring to mind if you've ever worked in a retail operation. Here's another one of the top of my head - a hardware retailer takes an order from a known customer with an account. The order needs to be modified because some items weren't in stock and some were. The retailer calls the customer to see if they would accept a substitute product with a minimal price difference. The customer agrees but wants the retailer to complete the order, reverse the old and charge the new amount to their account.

So now the **retailer** has to do the charging. This type of stuff goes on ALL THE TIME in retailing and can only done using accounts (ok, it may be a cryptocurrency account but its not going to be a blockchain transaction because the retailer would then need access to the customer's blockchain address and could run off with coins untraceably).

There are millions of examples like this that demonstrate that blockchain will never get anywhere near retailing without payment processors. That isn't a bad thing - it's a good thing - I'm just saying, we should be realistic in our expectations of how cryptocurrencies will develop and who needs to be convinced abut their viability as a store of value. Payment processors are pivotal in this whole game.

Without them, cryptos are going nowhere.

Why can't the retailer send a real-time message to the customer with the bill to be paid and the customer clicks a button on their smartphone to pay it if the wallet is on the phone?

The new technologies change the ball game.

the retailers currently use bitpay/coinbase. where you send coins to an address a retailer gives you, which bitpay/coinbase gave them..

in the near future what will happen is that you will put a pocketmoney amount into a bitpay/coinbase account and simply tell the cashier to debit your account for the total. this way the coins are verified (as they have been preconfirmed when u deposited) and is faster then the cashier getting a QR code, printing it, showing it to you and then you fiddling around with your phone to pay them.

this will be done simply by a nfc in your phone coded to you bitpay/coinbase account.

now imagine the speed of your bitcoins paying for your groceries..fully confirmed and no need to press a single button on your phone

Depositing money with third parties either means we need accounts at many third parties, or we need one third party to become dominant, so we are right back to VISA monopoly again.

Rather seems to me we only need better integration of wallets and the web browser for online commerce and as you say NFC for physical retail.

We lower the block period to under a minute (for a better designed altcoin) as I explained in my upthread posts.

[Sheldor333]

Yeah I never understood how confirmation can be so slow when bitcoin has so much mining power. I mean it simply isn't logical if that power isn't used to make transactions faster. If we can't compete with credit cards then we'll be in trouble, at least in replacing fiat in physical shops, and I do think it is important that it happens if bitcoin is to become one coin.

[hamiltino]

Bitcoin enthusiasts endlessly trying to workaround a gen 1 crypto-currency.

How about get with the times?  

[Peter R]

If we can't compete with credit cards then we'll be in trouble, at least in replacing fiat in physical shops, and I do think it is important that it happens if bitcoin is to become one coin.

I've found bitcoin to be faster than credit/debit card, and I've personally made over 50 bitcoin purchases.  Anyone with bitcoins can confirm this for themselves right now by going to Gyft.com and purchasing an Amazon gift card.  The BitPay receipt will say "PAID" and the gift card will be credited to your account and ready to spend nearly instantly.  It is pretty slick.  

If you are near Vancouver, come and test out bitcoin PoS at one of the many brick-and-mortar venues shown on coinmap!    

Yeah I never understood how confirmation can be so slow when bitcoin has so much mining power. I mean it simply isn't logical if that power isn't used to make transactions faster.

Transaction propagation times and acceptance by the nodes' mem-pools have nothing to do with mining power.  Transactions typically propagate extremely quickly and, from my experience, faster than credit card transactions.  

Transaction propagation times are independent of network difficulty, which is dynamically adjusted so that block confirmation times target 10 minutes.   But we don't even want really fast block confirmation times, due to orphaning risk and other network organization problems.  

[roslinpl]

What I think is that it will be hard for bitcoin to replace fiat.

And I think bitcoin is not mentioned to do that!
This is cryptocurrency and it would be nice to buy potato 4 bitcoin, but I guess best world of bitcoin is around interweb

[hamiltino]

If we can't compete with credit cards then we'll be in trouble, at least in replacing fiat in physical shops, and I do think it is important that it happens if bitcoin is to become one coin.

I've found bitcoin to be faster than credit/debit card, and I've personally made over 50 bitcoin purchases.  Anyone with bitcoins can confirm this for themselves right now by going to Gyft.com and purchasing an Amazon gift card.  The BitPay receipt will say "PAID" and the gift card will be credited to your account and ready to spend nearly instantly.  It is pretty slick.  

If you are near Vancouver, come and test out bitcoin PoS at one of the many brick-and-mortar venues shown on coinmap!    

Yeah I never understood how confirmation can be so slow when bitcoin has so much mining power. I mean it simply isn't logical if that power isn't used to make transactions faster.

Transaction propagation times and acceptance by the nodes' mem-pools have nothing to do with mining power.  Transactions typically propagate extremely quickly and, from my experience, faster than credit card transactions.  

Transaction propagation times are independent of network difficulty, which is dynamically adjusted so that block confirmation times target 10 minutes.   But we don't even want really fast block confirmation times, due to orphaning risk and other network organization problems.  

buying from gyft uses 0 confirmation time? How can they afford that risk? Or does it depend on the purchase amount?

EDIT: I just read another thread and found this post "I know bitpay already does instant transactions with merchants (I'm sure there's a limit on the transaction value) and if double spending were to occur they cover the cost so merchants have nothing to worry about.  I'm not 100% sure but I believe coinbase has started offering the same thing.  They simply account for occasional losses in their business model. "

Well that is still not good enough in my book as you have to rely to a thrid party to make zero confirmations with no risk. That is like increasing the centralization of bitcoin.

I say not good enough because their are going to be alternate crypto-currencies that won't require this to have near instant transactions.

[Peter R]

buying from gyft uses 0 confirmation time? How can they afford that risk? Or does it depend on the purchase amount?

Even a $1,000 Amazon gift card was instantly credited to my wife's account.  She used it at Amazon before her payment to BitPay received even its first confirmation.  

But this just shows that zero-confirmations are actually very secure^* provided that the transaction has been accepted by many nodes in the network and that no double spends have been detected.  Double spending is very difficult and one can only succeed with a probability proportionate to how much global hash power one controls [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=465474.msg5151306#msg5151306].  

As I calculated above [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=465474.msg5151972#msg5151972], to succeed at double spending 6 - 12% of the time, one would need to purchase $24,000,000 of mining equipment [and risk having this forfieted by law enforcement if you got caught].  This is not a concern.  


^*The malleabily problem has revealed an edge-case that makes a small subset of zero-confirm transactions less reliable, namely unconfirmed transactions that contain as inputs the change outputs of other unconfirmed transactions while the network is under malleability attack.  This is the "malleability bug" that people are worried about--it is a real concern.  While the core developers work to eliminate malleability entirely, the work-around now being rolled out is to prohibit wallets from creating transactions from unconfirmed change.  

[lightfoot]

How odd. I just bought three Sapphire cards from a vendor using Bitcoin. He showed me his QR, I put in the price, hit send, and we both agreed that it would be highly unlikely that I would be able to reverse the blockchain and double-spend the transaction.

Whatever.

C

[Soros Shorts]

The premise that people would attempt to double-spend real world micro transactions (e.g. get free coffee or even a cart of groceries) is absurd.

For larger transactions, such as buying gold bullion or a Lamborghini, waiting for 6 confirmations is reasonable. Besides, I doubt you could register a car with the DMV in the time it takes to do 6 confirms.

I do a lot of localbitcoins selling directly from my Android wallet, and the buyer has always been happy to hand over thousands of USD and walk away once they see evidence of the Tx broadcast.

[Littleshop]

This whole malleability fiasco has shown once again that zero confirmation transactions can not be trusted.

You do not understand what transaction malleability is.  If I am taking an in person transaction sent to my own Bitcoin address and I see it unconfirmed, and it is for some reason altered, I still get the Bitcoins.  They just have a different transaction ID but they end up in my wallet anyhow.  

PS - I took an in person Bitcoin transaction today, along with doing several purchases with Bitcoin and selling online items out of my store.   

[AnonyMint]

How odd. I just bought three Sapphire cards from a vendor using Bitcoin. He showed me his QR, I put in the price, hit send, and we both agreed that it would be highly unlikely that I would be able to reverse the blockchain and double-spend the transaction.

Whatever.

C

Nonsense. Seller has no way of knowing that you didn't send a double-spend within the past few seconds, because your spends don't instantly go into the block chain. Learn what 0-confirmations means.

The premise that people would attempt to double-spend real world micro transactions (e.g. get free coffee or even a cart of groceries) is absurd.

For larger transactions, such as buying gold bullion or a Lamborghini, waiting for 6 confirmations is reasonable. Besides, I doubt you could register a car with the DMV in the time it takes to do 6 confirms.

With the 50% unemployment coming to the western world in several years, I can see them attempting a double-spend for a bag of groceries if they have up to 10 minutes to disappear from the store.

If caught an attempted defense might be, "someone must have hacked my password, I didn't send that double-spend".

I do a lot of localbitcoins selling directly from my Android wallet, and the buyer has always been happy to hand over thousands of USD and walk away once they see evidence of the Tx broadcast.

A fraudster could send the $1000s in BTC to himself, some seconds before issuing the second Tx. Most likely both transactions would be rejected once the duplicates propagate over the network. Or one of the transactions might make it into the next block solution before the other propagated.