Bitcoin is irreversible: strength and weakness

[Naughty Princess]

I think it is a good thing. It makes us cautious on every transactions that we do. It makes us think about every decisions we do in payments. It is like gaming on a gaming site where you have an asset or an advantage but you must be cautious on playing it because if you doesn't, it might give you the opposite, a disadvantage in the end.

The irreversibility makes the transaction won't lose as long as it is the correct address because you cannot cancel it once it is process. You really have to be cautious before you take an action because it is for your own good and not for others. I do not see it as the weakness because we are responsible enough to be carefully used online transactions.

[miropp]

I dont know whether it is possible to create some kind of system that would help people affected by fraud. That would be helpful. But on the other hand, it's against the rules of crypto. After all, its irreversibility makes crypto very popular among those who want to feel financial freedom.

[Ucy]

The irreversibility or immutability is a great feature. It is one of the most important (if not the most important) feature  of blockchain.
Exchanges could just build a reversible system for their customers and let bitcoin remain immutable

[Ranly123]

Your right, Bitcoin is both strength and weakness. It could be the strength that would raise our moral when prices is favorable on our side. It could also be a weakness when we became greedy but when the price drops down, that's when frustration kick in.

[FlightyPouch]

The irreversibility or immutability is a great feature. It is one of the most important (if not the most important) feature  of blockchain.
Exchanges could just build a reversible system for their customers and let bitcoin remain immutable

Is this possible? I mean in terms of blockchain that will be impossible, but how can those exchanges make that work? I am a fan of local exchange and I am using it for a while now. The transactions are fast and with that, I don't think they will allow irreversibility of these transactions since there is a lot of warning to always check the address, we should always do that.

[jake zyrus]

Bitcoin was made with it, being irreversible. And it could be both a strength and a weakness of it. But since it was made that way, it's good if it stays that way. The only thing you can do is to make sure you're sending it correctly. Don't just send your bitcoin to anyone if you don't want to get scammed. Every transaction we send, we're also responsible for it. So better to be always careful.

[Dondont]

Bitcoin does not have a central authority that control it activities and that is one of the advantage and also the disadvantage of decentralization, unlike the faint paper money where the bank can make refound back to the sender in the case of wrong sending or frauds where the found still remains in the receiver account and it part of the double spending mechanism. But bitcoin don't have this feature and before a blockchain development that will carter for this will be in place it will take a long time from now, may be when bitcoin get regulated that can happen but until then bitcoin transactions is just base on p2p no middle man.

But when we practice it directly, then unconsciously or inevitably we must still use paper money, not bitcoin. Both of them still have complementary points

[NathanJB]

The fact that Bitcoin transactions are irreversible makes it both good and bad, a hassle and a security feature. While it makes confirmed transactions final and unchangeable, which is good, it is also a huge problem if you have put a wrong address. That means it makes transactions well-thought of, properly ironed out, negotiated thoroughly, in fact double-checked, before finally sealing it into the blockchain. It is an inherent feature of Bitcoin. And I don't think it has to be changed.

[Dreamchaser21]

Even fiat and gold are irreversible in many ways.
Bitcoin was created with multiple functions and it's just disappointing somehow that we notice its weaknesses more than its strengths when in fact, it is just visible when being used in an illegal way.
We should accept the fact that Bitcoin itself wasn't created perfectly and it's still on the process of improvement so it is just for us to deal with these lapses.

Indeed, bitcoin is not perfect that's why altcoins are created i guess for that purpose and we can't really see this technology to run without having nay problem. If you do a mistake on your transactions then you must accept that its irreversible even if they hack you, no on can give that money back to you under the blockchain technology. We have to be more open for more improvements, we should not criticize every development like the adoption of many companies.

[waynechong1995]

It was designed to do so, once that transaction is broadcast-ed and verified things are certain. Its particularly 'bad' for most of the industry use cases where error is prone and rollbacks are essential for recovery plans. Yet bitcoin itself is money/assets, not banks, the network itself doesn't have any oracle layer to govern these transaction and i would say this feature fits correctly for money. Scams and those human traits to get wealthy by exploiting others, much like slaves on the old days. Dealing with these problems should be come from people protecting their private keys, having multiple addresses to safe-guard themselves

[Kakmakr]

The conundrum is as follows, once you allow a reversal of a specific transaction, you destroy the immutability of Bitcoin and that is one of it's strongest features. These decisions are easy in a centralized network, because you have a centralized authority to make those decisions and we have seen what that type of authority can do. <PayPal misusing their powers>

So, take away immutability and you will take away trust in the network and people will stop using it.    Bitcoin is based on very strong principles and immutability is one of the strongest features that must not be compromised. 

[DPrillio]

It was designed to do so, once that transaction is broadcast-ed and verified things are certain. Its particularly 'bad' for most of the industry use cases where error is prone and rollbacks are essential for recovery plans. Yet bitcoin itself is money/assets, not banks, the network itself doesn't have any oracle layer to govern these transaction and i would say this feature fits correctly for money. Scams and those human traits to get wealthy by exploiting others, much like slaves on the old days. Dealing with these problems should be come from people protecting their private keys, having multiple addresses to safe-guard themselves

Yes, bitcoin transaction on blockchain is irreversible unless it will be send back to you by the person whom you send first and that is one of the blockchain's security so there is no room for mistakes and that is the opportunity that online theft wants, as the fact that blockchain is having no central control and all transaction was done node by node and digitally over the internet.

[kerneal]

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[minersday]

In as much that Bitcoin transactions are not reversible, it has more advantages than its weakness. But I believe a solution will be made available as the crypto world develops as years pass by..

[Aptekary]

Perhaps you are right, but today it is Bitcoin instability that affects its practical application in the real world.  The value of bitcoin today is precisely that everyone expects to make extra profit.

[libert19]

You can roll back the BTC transactions with 51% miners consensus, and when binance was hacked a while ago, CZ had actually thought to do it, but didn't proceed.

[Sithara007]

There are a lot of reversible payments methods available (like PayPal and credit cards) and anyone interested in such a system should use those. I never use PayPal, because I had very bad experience with them in the past. There was one occasion when my account got frozen and it took almost 4 months to remove the restrictions. And in another instance, one of the payments that I received was reversed without any reason, and again it took many months to get the reimbursement.

[pooya87]

The conundrum is as follows, once you allow a reversal of a specific transaction, you destroy the immutability of Bitcoin and that is one of it's strongest features. These decisions are easy in a centralized network, because you have a centralized authority to make those decisions and we have seen what that type of authority can do. <PayPal misusing their powers>

So, take away immutability and you will take away trust in the network and people will stop using it.    Bitcoin is based on very strong principles and immutability is one of the strongest features that must not be compromised. 

exactly. i have seen newcomers usually neglect the importance of immutability, specially in some cases of altcoins that performed some sort of roll back and nullified their immutability and turned into a shitcoin overnight. coins like ethereum and bcash have have already lost that characteristic and that is why nobody trusts them anymore and that is why they have no value, their price is high only because their centralization is pumping them and preventing their demise.

[Malvika_sitlani]

It is better if we can think of the ways to stop Hacks or fraud. instead of thinking of a pros and cons of a worth technology.

[Mike Mayor]

I like the irreversibility and don't see it as a weakness. Reversibility is also a weakness and you can see a good example of this in paypal chargeback scams.

i thought chargebacks or reversible payments can help us return our money when we were got scammed  . its rarely been used on hacking because they will be caught since regular payment methods such as paypal are not anonymous as when compared to cryptocurrencies  .

ireversibility can be considered as a weakness of bitcoin because once we got scammed there is no way to trace the scammers and get the money back  .

You forget bout the other way around. What if you are a vendor and people are making charge backs?

Bitcoin is truly irreversible. I have a story regarding this. I suppose to send someone a .045 bitcoin. I put it on a wrong address.  Sadly, that's so worth it right now. It's just sad that once you click send, there's no way to get it back. And there's another one, my friend wants to join an investment on ICX I think with me, but he sent his bitcoin to a different address. Sadly, that was .1 btc yikes.

That really sucks. You need to check your address is correct and match it. I check on average 5 times to make perfectly sure. I also get up and have a walk or have some water or something then come back and complete the transfer. I do this because it allows me time to think and realize if the address or amount is wrong.

I like the irreversibility and don't see it as a weakness. Reversibility is also a weakness and you can see a good example of this in paypal chargeback scams.

i thought chargebacks or reversible payments can help us return our money when we were got scammed  . its rarely been used on hacking because they will be caught since regular payment methods such as paypal are not anonymous as when compared to cryptocurrencies  .

ireversibility can be considered as a weakness of bitcoin because once we got scammed there is no way to trace the scammers and get the money back  .

The trick is not to get scammed in the first place.

It's much easier to scam people who think they can always reverse the payment. Why should they even spend time to research the party they're doing business with. Why should they ask about colateral?

Smart people will get fake bank accounts and withdraw from ATM before you can file your complaint.

Yes this is exactly why I say KYC and all that is useless. People who scam with fiat just make fake accounts or get someone else to open an account or perhaps even steal someone's identity or something.