Topic: Important! Regarding Restaurants Accepting Bitcoin - page 2. (Read 2473 times)

So, if I'm a rogue competitor, and I come into your restaurant and pay with Bitcoin, I would not be able to reverse engineer blockexpoler or blockchain to see your other transactions. Is that what you're saying? And is this fact? Is this easy to implement for the restaurant owners?

No.  Not like that.  That is 1 address for all transactions.

I'm talking about 1 address per transaction.  Nobody else will ever see your address besides you and your server/cashier.

You mean like this?

Source: http://starburst.hackerfriendly.com/?p=1530


http://blockchain.info/address/1MTbKpYWnzqmsLvCjdTtwrvuX81g3HCgC

Color guess: Burnt orange at approximately 7:35 PM EST.

I meant generate a new address for each receipt.

As for expenses correlating addresses, you can make a few wallets and mix them up, or send them all to MtGox or any other trustworthy site.

I'm sure Bit-Pay could do something about this, like generating a random number of addresses for merchants that are randomly rotated for every purchase.  This feature could be turned on and off at will.  

So, for example, a company may sign up with Bit-Pay and receive 20 wallet addresses linking to their Bit-Pay account.  At random, 1 out of these 20 addresses would be used for the first transaction after which another 1 out of 20 addresses would be selected randomly for the 2nd transaction.  The merchant could choose to turn the randomness feature on and off at will so that someone who thinks they can simply look at one address and multiply it's received BTC by 20 to estimate the gross earnings would be making a mistake.

Another option would be for Bit-Pay to use a Bit-Pay-owned static address that indirectly funnels the money from the customer to the merchant.  So, if a customer purchases something, the money would be sent to the Bit-Pay-owned address, and then the money would be send to the merchant.

Diagram:    Customer -----> Bit-Pay ----->  Company A, or B, or C, or D, or E, etc.

As far as going straight from a customer's wallet to a merchant's wallet, improved client options for addresses may be needed.

How hard would it be to create and print, with the press of one button, a unique QR address for each customer tied to the restaurant's wallet? The few techno-impaired folks like myself who have no use for QR codes (especially not on my deodorant...) could be given the dirty backup address.

Even if the transaction is conducted via mental telepathy, it'll still be transparent on blockexplorer.


I knew you concurred, rjk, but was making sure I wasn't missing anything with my follow-up question.

~Bruno~

Exactly. And the vanity address could still be used - for tips! No harm having those be public right?

Just print a QR on the receipt.

Your first post outlined the very reason why it might not be a good idea...

You saying that they use a different address for every transactions, oppose to only using the same one, e.g., 1TacoBell1.......dVh7n? I not only envisioned them using only one address, but a vanity address to boot.

I'm pretty sure GrubGo is using only one address: http://blockexplorer.com/address/18n4wFPmLgZSz4GQJ6Kf6M93JE8eePWMAX And it would be nice if it were a vanity address: 1GrubGo1...........................

~Bruno~

Any sane business owner that wishes to remain competitive would use unique addresses to receive funds. However, the only other issue is when the coins get spent - if they are sent from multiple addresses in a single transaction, that just proves that those multiple addresses are linked.

How do we fix this conundrum?

I felt I needed to start a new thread on this very important subject. I didn't want to see it develop into a discussion on the thread I quoted the post from in case restaurant owners happen to visit this site and read that thread. I also opt to put this in Off-topic, opposed to Discussion, for the same reasoning. I hope I'm wrong with the below, but...


Please stir me right in my thinking!!!

I clicked the link and my head went into overdrive. I thought, "WOW! I could use this." (along with other great thoughts)

Then it hit me--in like about 15 seconds. What if I were a restaurant owner. Perhaps I don't want others seeing my income. PayPal doesn't show others what I sell. My bank doesn't. My credit card provider doesn't. After a while, my competitor will be able to figure out exactly what I gross per year simply by extrapolating the data provided by blockexplorer or blockchain, like what meals and beverages sell the best, exact hour of the day I'm busy, the average check amount, etc. I've manage restaurants (Alabama), and know damn well on how great it would be to know what your immediate competition is doing.

For those thinking that this is not important or, worse, impossible, all I need to see is 10 (20 max) sales on the blockchain and a menu of Meze Grill, and I'll show you the information I can glean from that data. I'll go one step further and tell you what color Bruce's shit will be and at what hour (+/- 2 hours, but I'll get the color correct). Though humorous, I hope, I'm not trying to be funny here. Only stating facts. Imagine what a competitor could do if they were privy to 50-100 transactions spread out over a month. As a competitor, they would be looking for such businesses that accept Bitcoin, but would stay away from using it themselves. And if the Bitcoin address isn't readily available, all they would have to do is go and dine there once and pay with Bitcoin, then check blockexplorer and glean the address.

Please forgive me for playing Devil's Advocate, but felt it necessary to bring this to light. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If I'm not, then somebody needs to develop something to protect these businesses that are about to accept Bitcoin.

~Bruno~