Bitcoin is irreversible: strength and weakness

[Jeremycoin]

I myself have experienced the downside of this irreversible system. I was looking to buy a video game key through some websites and found this particular website a quite good deal. Unfortunately, I didn't really check on the status of the website, and it turned out that the website had been long in no service. Bitcoin had been sent, and I got nothing. I gotta admit that it sucks. A lot. Given that it was really a good amount of money. But what can I say, this is the thing that I have to endure if I want to keep using Bitcoin as a payment system. I don't see it as Bitcoin's fault, because it is technically my fault. Did I wish that Bitcoin was reversible? At some point, I did, but then I realized that it would tear apart the whole system. So, I think it is best this way.

[Lalafell]

One of the most important feature of cryptocurrency is its being irreversible. One the coin is sent, the only way for it to be back to the sender is if the receiver will do the same thing in reverse. Now, in cases of hacks, scams and frauds, it means that you better forget what you already lost as there is no way for you to recover the lost coins.

In other words, once you click the send button there is no turning back. I know that a lot of us are actually considering this a major advantage of Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency for that matter because unlike PayPal there can be no refund requests to happen.

Therefore when you are a victim of a theft, expect no one to be able to help you in recovering the coins. As one author said it, the bitcoin genie cannot be put back into the blockchain bottle.

I am wondering, can we not devise an effective and special technology that can be utilize in case of hacks or frauds? Given the advances of cryptocurrency and the blockchain we are experiencing right now, is it even possible?

Bitcoin does not have a central authority that control its activities and it is an advantage and disadvantage to a bitcoin users in case coins are being hacked from user's desktop or mobile wallet, only way to get them back is to find hacker and take that coins from him, but it is too impossible.There is one simple way to reduce huge hacks on centralized exchanges to a bare minimum and that is, the use of combination of phone number, email address, authentication app and other security features for alerts and verification when withdrawals are initiated. This should be an extra security measure and optional. 

[Astvile]

One of the most important feature of cryptocurrency is its being irreversible.

Also, one of the deadliest features since once you got scammed/wrong sent to someone there's no way in this world that you can reverse that transaction like on Paypal. You sometimes do some uncertain transactions which will end you up losing money so bitcoin being irreversible in any means I think is negative.

[Eugenar]

One of the most important feature of cryptocurrency is its being irreversible. One the coin is sent, the only way for it to be back to the sender is if the receiver will do the same thing in reverse. Now, in cases of hacks, scams and frauds, it means that you better forget what you already lost as there is no way for you to recover the lost coins.

In other words, once you click the send button there is no turning back. I know that a lot of us are actually considering this a major advantage of Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency for that matter because unlike PayPal there can be no refund requests to happen.

Therefore when you are a victim of a theft, expect no one to be able to help you in recovering the coins. As one author said it, the bitcoin genie cannot be put back into the blockchain bottle.

I am wondering, can we not devise an effective and special technology that can be utilize in case of hacks or frauds? Given the advances of cryptocurrency and the blockchain we are experiencing right now, is it even possible?

Basically the essence of blockchain will not be present if we will going to have a feature than might do the refund for a lost coin. It was called block, and it is fixed, once the transaction is completed, it's done. The only way I think that can lead us to the safe ground is our responsibility for each of our holdings and assets. Think before you click, is a line that we should always remember whenever we are sending or creating transactions of bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. Another way, is to secure our wallet since the best cure is prevention, we should prevent our selves to be vulnerable.

[doomistake]

One of the most important feature of cryptocurrency is its being irreversible. One the coin is sent, the only way for it to be back to the sender is if the receiver will do the same thing in reverse. Now, in cases of hacks, scams and frauds, it means that you better forget what you already lost as there is no way for you to recover the lost coins.

In other words, once you click the send button there is no turning back. I know that a lot of us are actually considering this a major advantage of Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency for that matter because unlike PayPal there can be no refund requests to happen.

Therefore when you are a victim of a theft, expect no one to be able to help you in recovering the coins. As one author said it, the bitcoin genie cannot be put back into the blockchain bottle.

I am wondering, can we not devise an effective and special technology that can be utilize in case of hacks or frauds? Given the advances of cryptocurrency and the blockchain we are experiencing right now, is it even possible?

Bitcoin does not have a central authority that control its activities and it is an advantage and disadvantage to a bitcoin users in case coins are being hacked from user's desktop or mobile wallet, only way to get them back is to find hacker and take that coins from him, but it is too impossible.There is one simple way to reduce huge hacks on centralized exchanges to a bare minimum and that is, the use of combination of phone number, email address, authentication app and other security features for alerts and verification when withdrawals are initiated. This should be an extra security measure and optional. 

Finding hackers is really impossible, they disappear together with your coins or funds from your wallet, it is impossible to locate where and how did they get your money. Irreversible is a disadvantage for using bitcoin but it is created to be like that. Being responsible and sensitive to the information of your wallet will prevent this things from happening, using strong passwords and using hardware wallet will also help.

It is a hopeless case scenario, even though you find the hacker (not in person), in this forum for example, you find who amongst us here hacked your accounts and stole your funds, but there is no guarantee that he will send it back to you, especially if it is a big catch, he will choose to be red tag than to send back to you the coins he stole. The other thing that I don't like cryptocurrency if you accidentally send you bitcoin into a Ethereum wallet and etc. and it is all gone.

But this teaches us to be responsible and don't make fast decisions.

[HarmonyA]

Your ideology is right. Cryptocurrency should be reversible after been sent, even if it should take 10 to 30 minutes open period to undo a sent crypto, that would help to build to build trust. This will also help in calling back a transaction if sent to the wrong address.

[alexsandria]

Well its irreversibility, the reason why it is that because of the nature of bitcoin.  This irreversibility decreases the possibility of abuse, because there are some customers who cancels their transactions just because of change of mind and the seller is the one who suffered on that situation. Maybe to prevent fraud, one should be extremely cautious in buying.  I mean, even using fiat you also need to be extremely cautious.

[blckhawk]

Having someone responsible to handle thefts and scams will no longer be different to centralized systems such as banks. There's not much you can do since no regulations are imposed in cryptocurrencies, therefore no action could be made in case of thefts/scams since no one would enforce it.

Make a governing body, but agree to terms like KYC policy, etc. Have a system where ICO's and other crypto related projects undergo contract signings to ensure consumer protection. All of which would change the idea of it being decentralized.

[DabsPoorVersion]

One of the most important feature of cryptocurrency is its being irreversible. One the coin is sent, the only way for it to be back to the sender is if the receiver will do the same thing in reverse. Now, in cases of hacks, scams and frauds, it means that you better forget what you already lost as there is no way for you to recover the lost coins.

In other words, once you click the send button there is no turning back. I know that a lot of us are actually considering this a major advantage of Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency for that matter because unlike PayPal there can be no refund requests to happen.

Therefore when you are a victim of a theft, expect no one to be able to help you in recovering the coins. As one author said it, the bitcoin genie cannot be put back into the blockchain bottle.

I am wondering, can we not devise an effective and special technology that can be utilize in case of hacks or frauds? Given the advances of cryptocurrency and the blockchain we are experiencing right now, is it even possible?

Bitcoin does not have a central authority that control its activities and it is an advantage and disadvantage to a bitcoin users in case coins are being hacked from user's desktop or mobile wallet, only way to get them back is to find hacker and take that coins from him, but it is too impossible.There is one simple way to reduce huge hacks on centralized exchanges to a bare minimum and that is, the use of combination of phone number, email address, authentication app and other security features for alerts and verification when withdrawals are initiated. This should be an extra security measure and optional. 

Finding hackers is really impossible, they disappear together with your coins or funds from your wallet, it is impossible to locate where and how did they get your money. Irreversible is a disadvantage for using bitcoin but it is created to be like that. Being responsible and sensitive to the information of your wallet will prevent this things from happening, using strong passwords and using hardware wallet will also help.

It is a hopeless case scenario, even though you find the hacker (not in person), in this forum for example, you find who amongst us here hacked your accounts and stole your funds, but there is no guarantee that he will send it back to you, especially if it is a big catch, he will choose to be red tag than to send back to you the coins he stole. The other thing that I don't like cryptocurrency if you accidentally send you bitcoin into a Ethereum wallet and etc. and it is all gone.

But this teaches us to be responsible and don't make fast decisions.

If we can find a hacker in this forum, we can alert everyone to be careful and tag his account as a hacker, but he can easily create another account and become anonymous again.
It is our responsible to secure our wallet and when it comes to having a transaction, we should check the correct wallet where we are sending our funds, making a mistake by sending bitcoin to an eth wallet or any other kind of wallet will be our own mistake.

[Darooghe]

One of the most important feature of cryptocurrency is its being irreversible.

Actually It isn't, It is just hard to reverse. In a few cases after disasters the bitcoin blockchain has been reversed up to 50 blocks worth of transactions in the early days of bitcoin, and altcoins that use the same technology and code as bitcoin have also had specific transactions reversed by adding special rules to the code to block specific transactions, in cases where a majority of the entire alt was stolen. As well as 51% attacks reversing transactions on smaller coins. Bitcoin is only difficult to reverse, requiring some majority agreement that it should happen, it is not impossible or even difficult at a conceptual level to do so.

But the fact that they are irreversible is a huge part of the value proposition behind bitcoin. If some central entity could reverse, withhold, freeze and otherwise mess with transactions, bitcoin wouldn't really be different from the existing solutions (Paypal, Visa, wire transfers etc). another thing is that bitcoin is probably not very useful to people who don't trust themselves. Bitcoin requires you to educate yourself and take responsibility for your finances but it also empowers you in ways a centralized system never could.

[Dabs]

CZ of Binance mentioned something about a roll back. It was met with criticism. We're talking about 7000 BTC here. In the end, his exchange covered the losses. All your funds are SAFU.

So if your transaction is smaller than 7000 BTC and you are not one of the world's biggest exchanges in terms of volume, and the transaction in question has more than 1 or 2 confirmations, good luck getting it reversed. Not gonna happen.

[pixie85]

No I don't wish that bitcoin was reversible. It teaches people responsibility. We are used to throwing money around and then demanding that people and companies pay us back.
In reality all money should be like cash. You give it to someone they can put it in their pocket and run away with it. You have to always remember about it.
The biggest weakness of this system is that people are careless and there will always be a group that gets burned.

[jakoylantern]

One of the most important feature of cryptocurrency is its being irreversible. One the coin is sent, the only way for it to be back to the sender is if the receiver will do the same thing in reverse. Now, in cases of hacks, scams and frauds, it means that you better forget what you already lost as there is no way for you to recover the lost coins.
In other words, once you click the send button there is no turning back. I know that a lot of us are actually considering this a major advantage of Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency for that matter because unlike PayPal there can be no refund requests to happen.
Therefore when you are a victim of a theft, expect no one to be able to help you in recovering the coins. As one author said it, the bitcoin genie cannot be put back into the blockchain bottle.
I am wondering, can we not devise an effective and special technology that can be utilize in case of hacks or frauds? Given the advances of cryptocurrency and the blockchain we are experiencing right now, is it even possible?

I agree that it is one of the disadvantages of bitcoin for me. But this is impossible especially if you get hacked and take all you coins because bitcoin doesn't have any authority to control this kind of activities ( scams, frauds, hacks, etc.) that's the reason why some ppl don't want to use bitcoin especially in payment systems that don't have an escrow. Also, that's the other reason why banks can't truly embrace cryptocurrencies.

[bitbunnny]

To my opinion the fact that Bitcoin is irreversible is more advantage than disadvantage.
Yes, sometimes we might wish to pull back transactions because we changed our minds or because we made a mistake, or maybe our coins are stolen but that is smaller problem compared to possibilities of different manipulations and frauds if Bitcoin was reversible. I guess everyone has already accepted irreversibility and got used to that.

[teosanru]

One of the most important feature of cryptocurrency is its being irreversible. One the coin is sent, the only way for it to be back to the sender is if the receiver will do the same thing in reverse. Now, in cases of hacks, scams and frauds, it means that you better forget what you already lost as there is no way for you to recover the lost coins.

In other words, once you click the send button there is no turning back. I know that a lot of us are actually considering this a major advantage of Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency for that matter because unlike PayPal there can be no refund requests to happen.

Therefore when you are a victim of a theft, expect no one to be able to help you in recovering the coins. As one author said it, the bitcoin genie cannot be put back into the blockchain bottle.

I am wondering, can we not devise an effective and special technology that can be utilize in case of hacks or frauds? Given the advances of cryptocurrency and the blockchain we are experiencing right now, is it even possible?

The thing is that among the two things that you have mentioned only of these is actually possible because you can either reverse the transsactions or you can't how can one successfully prove that it happened because of theft and hack and therefore it must be reversed. There is no tribunal of any sort guiding disputes related to bitcoin so this could make things worse. Moreover irreversibility is rather a strength of bitcoin than a weakness because this makes bitcoin pretty secure for accepting payments online. So no we cannot and must not devise any special technology to reverse the transactions over blockchain.

[Zeke_23]

One of the most important feature of cryptocurrency is its being irreversible. One the coin is sent, the only way for it to be back to the sender is if the receiver will do the same thing in reverse. Now, in cases of hacks, scams and frauds, it means that you better forget what you already lost as there is no way for you to recover the lost coins.

In other words, once you click the send button there is no turning back. I know that a lot of us are actually considering this a major advantage of Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency for that matter because unlike PayPal there can be no refund requests to happen.

Therefore when you are a victim of a theft, expect no one to be able to help you in recovering the coins. As one author said it, the bitcoin genie cannot be put back into the blockchain bottle.

I am wondering, can we not devise an effective and special technology that can be utilize in case of hacks or frauds? Given the advances of cryptocurrency and the blockchain we are experiencing right now, is it even possible?

The thing is that among the two things that you have mentioned only of these is actually possible because you can either reverse the transsactions or you can't how can one successfully prove that it happened because of theft and hack and therefore it must be reversed. There is no tribunal of any sort guiding disputes related to bitcoin so this could make things worse. Moreover irreversibility is rather a strength of bitcoin than a weakness because this makes bitcoin pretty secure for accepting payments online. So no we cannot and must not devise any special technology to reverse the transactions over blockchain.

Even if proving that your wallet/acc has been hacked, once you become a vitctim of hacking, you cannot reverse the crypto that was sent from your wallet. This is the main reason why experts advise to avoid clicking suspicious links and using hardware wallet to store your crypto was the best thing to do than store it in some online wallets.

[Murat]

Obviously, This one is very harmful and unrecoverable loss of this platform, earlier of this year, I made a payment through a BTC address instead of Litecoin address so I Instantly lost my payment for a silly mistake, if this thing would not be fixed then the acceptance and popularity of Bitcoin will not go up in the future. Of course, there should be an alternate reversible system but it has not still, I know Bitcoin has a lot of potentiality regarding trading and holding but also some barrier which makes this system too hazy, not only that but also this type of inconvenience would bring a negative mindset towards this platform. Everything is getting progressed and developed with the change of time, So here something should be added for the shake of its credibility and acceptance more and more.

[Sithara007]

A reversible transaction doesn't always mean that victims of scams are going to get compensated. From what I have seen in PayPal and Ebay, this option is now so misused, that it is used more by the scammers to con unsuspecting users than vice versa. In PayPal, there were incidents when other users reversed their payments even after I shipped my stuff to them. I got the funds in the end, but had to spend a lot of time and effort.

And an irreversible transaction doesn't always mean that the money is lost for ever if some mistake is made. I have seen several times, when users returned the coins to the senders after realizing that the transaction was made by a mistake. But it depends on the individual. If he or she is thick enough, then the coins may not be returned and there is nothing that you could do about it. The best thing to do is to avoid any mistakes, so that you don't need to depend on the mercy of other users.

[fullhdpixel]

Well its irreversibility, the reason why it is that because of the nature of bitcoin.  This irreversibility decreases the possibility of abuse, because there are some customers who cancels their transactions just because of change of mind and the seller is the one who suffered on that situation. Maybe to prevent fraud, one should be extremely cautious in buying.  I mean, even using fiat you also need to be extremely cautious.

It would have been a very great disaster if bitcoin was reversible, and I think there is a difference between cancelling a transaction and reversing it, there was a time that in my country, the bank made is possible to recall a transaction after 5 minutes that it has been showed as approved, which the receiver could even see that the transaction had gone, but like you said here, many people started reversing the transaction.

I have been duped because of that, so I think bitcoin not being able to reverse bitcoin is really one of the greatest features of bitcoin, but there should be opportunity to quickly cancel transaction before it goes in case one discovers that it is going to the wrong address which the possibility of it getting refunded is extremely low.

[magneto]

I personally think that all reversible payment methods are flawed from the beginning, and is a big part why Paypal has such a bad reputation. The benefits that a reversible payment protocol brings is far outweighed by the negatives that come with it, in my opinion.

Sure, BTC's irreversibility means that victims of scams may not be able to recoup their losses, but on the flip side, the fungibility of the currency being transacted is vastly improved, sellers no longer have to worry about chargebacks, and it essentially encourages prudent decision making much more than a payment method that you know you can chargeback later on down the line.

I'd rather take an irreversible currency any day, because I know it's much more desirable. The benefits simply outweigh the detriments, again.