Topic: Is the irreversibility of Bitcoin transactions a downside for an average person? - page 2. (Read 572 times)

The main problem, if Bitcoin was reversible would be when to be reversible and when to be irreversible.
If someone pays for goods and after receiving the goods reverses the payment? What happens then? How do we know when the person makes an honest mistake and needs to reverse the transaction or when it's a fraudulent activity?
Even with the traditional banking system that is centralized and controlled by third parties, you can't reverse a transaction. If you paid money into the wrong account or overpay for instance then the goodwill of the beneficiary will determine what happens next.

I would have loved for Bitcoin transactions to be reversible if it were possible, but there will be too much inconsistency and this can be a very big problem for it.

If Bitcoin were reversible, it’ll mean that there is a middle man involved who decides the status of the transaction. But we don’t want that. People want to know that when they receive or send their Bitcoin, it’s gone and no one has the power to make any changes. There’s a feeling of security that it gives especially when you send money very often. So, if you sent a large amount of money in Bitcoin, you can for sure go to sleep with peace of mind. We just need to be careful when carrying out transactions. If we put up a poll to see how many people have lost their crypto just because they sent it to the wrong address, it won’t be a lot compared to those who have never made the mistake.

good idea for a topic. many people do not need btc to send it. They may need it for other reasons.

If I am a seller its good for me as no whole can try to f me by lying.

If I am a buyer it may not be very valuable at all..

Frankly I don't see btc as an ideal currency I see it more as a long term investment or as escape money.

As escape money the irreversible aspect is priceless.

Such things, huh? Bitcoin was created as a digital cash system without third-parties. It is completely normal to have irreversible transactions. Otherwise, BTC would look more like a bank account. I know there are cases when one would like a refund after being deceived by a scammer, but there's nothing we can do about it. Especially if we're using non-custodial wallets to perform transactions on the Blockchain. If it was a centralized exchange or wallet provider, things would've been different. You'd have the ability to get your money back because there's a middleman behind everything.

If you don't want to get robbed, don't send BTC without doing due diligence. This way, you will avoid many headaches in the long run. Take Bitcoin's irreversibility as a feature, not a bug. This is what keeps it decentralized, after all. For refunds, Fiat currencies are the way to go. Just spend wisely and there should be nothing to worry about.

thats a senders problem not a payment system problem

if your willing to hand a suitcase of cash to a complete stranger.. check your mental health
if you dont know enough about the receiver to file a dispute/slap them with rotten fish if they do you wrong.. accept the risk you put on yourself. and be more cautious.

in real life if a stranger called you up and asked you to post $10k in paper-money cash, to a unregistered/unnamed po box where without collateral or identity proof they said they would make you rich in x months.. 99% of people would laugh and hang up the phone after calling them a scammer.. dont be the 1%

for other situations of genuine trust in privacy advocating traders. there are features like multisig and locks where funds cannot be moved unless conditions are met,
those that want some risk mitigation can use these features or use financial services like escrows/ registered trusted custodians/middlemen who act as middlemen for you to have a safeguard..
much like the dollar. banks act as middlemen/custodians and you can request a bank for the refund.. but you cant request the suitcase of dollar bank notes to refund itself, you ask a middleman service

It can be confusing why some consider a certain feature a downside when, in fact, it can be an advantage. In the case of payment systems, those who require reversibility can still use PayPal, which offers that option. However, some sellers or receivers prefer the irreversible transaction of Bitcoin because fraudulent buyers tend to use reversible payment methods like PayPal. This is why PayPal has implemented new requirements for this process, which is no longer as simple as just one click, to minimize fraudulent transactions in their system.

We can't expect all people to double-check their transactions especially for those who are in a hurry.
This is why for people who are not yet crypto users, they are hesitant to touch this market.
They are worried that they may get it wrong and would waste their funds for nothing.
But even crypto users can make a mistake if they are careless with what they are doing.
Double-check or triple-check what you are doing, and check the network if you are in the right one.

This doesn't mean that there's an equal proportion between senders and receivers. Most people have their salary as the main source of income, and they get it typically once per month. Most of their transactions are sending - they are paying for goods and services. Meanwhile merchants are receivers, they receive thousands upon thousands of transactions per month, and in comparison send only a little.

Making it reversible is much complicated rather than simply double checking if everything is correct before making a transaction.

Even for an average person, that wouldn't be hard enough to do such simple thing to make their transaction safe. It's not that bitcoin's transaction being irreversible is a downside, the problem here is that some people are not concerned about their transaction might gone wrong because of a very simple mistake, they just copy and paste the address then that's it. That's why it's too late before they realized they made a mistake at their end.

You also have highlighted the reason why this may not be possible because p2p network is designed to work that way, anyone that cannot completely comply to the bitcoin network protocols may finds another alternative means, this also indicates that an average person should bot have the mindset right from the start that if the bitcoin transaction are going to be possible on reversal, that's why the exchanges perform the escrow service because they are trusted, and when you send money to your own wallet, you cannot afford making mistake.

Without a question, the eBay/Paypal system is the worst example of what can happen when a centralized system isnt working right. Because you pointed out problems with the way things are built that leave sellers open to being ripped off, switching to decentralized currencies like Bitcoin is not only a good idea, its necessary. With Bitcoin, deals are direct and cant be changed. This gets rid of middlemen and reduces fraud. Everyone is responsible for being alert, which builds a sense of independence and duty.

Also, it might be hard to learn how to spot scams and keep your assets safe, but it is an extremely important skill in our increasingly digital economy. You make the case for a financial rebirth even stronger by saying that we need to adapt to this paradigm shift and use cryptographic currencies. We need to get rid of old, centralized methods and replace them with safe, decentralized ones like Bitcoin.

I like irreversibility because it confirms that once I receive money it's mine and no one can take it away unlike bank and paypal's chargebacks (I have been there).


Stick to trusted merchants, so they refund you if their product is not upto the mark.


I don't get the statement, every sender implies reciever on the other end.

In the end, I like choice. So you have the choice to use your fiat that constantly loses value over time, and basically controlled by someone else looking over your shoulder for every trabsaction.
Or, you have the choice to use Bitcoin and put on your big boy pants when you spend it.

It's up to you. Nobody's got a gun to your head forcing you to use Bitcoin.

In the past, you were forced to use the censorship surveillance money. You had no choice. Now you do.

Remember ebay/Paypal?

They basically had a system which sided with the buyers generally. It got to the point where many people stopped selling on eBay altogether because there were too many claims opened against sellers and the transactions were easily reversed and the seller was stuck with no product and no money.

This is a bad centralised system where it doesn't work in general. Hence payments like bitcoin are better because if people can trust one another then it can work as a exchange. Its easier to learn how to spot scams and protect yourself to not get your crypto stolen so you don't have to reverse it rather than have not and have to deal with transactions which can get reversed.

Here is what you have to understand about money. Money is nothing more than a means of exchange.

You have a chicken, and I got a slab of bacon. I trade my bacon for your chicken. This is barter. The next step up is to use something we all agree has a value. Because if you are Jewish or Muslim, my bacon has no value to you. I can't buy your chicken with my bacon.

So money is the next step up. As long as everyone agrees it has a value, it can be used as a means of exchange. It can be money if we all agree it has a value.

Now, when I trade my bacon for your chicken, I can't turn around a week later and decide I want my bacon back. I can't reverse one side of the transaction just because I found out the chicken has stinky poop, or it might be sick, or something.

So if I trade my silver coins or my bitcoin for your chicken, why should I be able to reverse my side of the transaction a week later?

The only way a reversible payment makes sense is if you make a plea of stupidity. That you are so stupid with your money, that you need someone else to control your transactions and reverse them any time you get too stupid.

Until 40 years ago, almost everyone paid with cash, irreversible payment, since the dawn of times.

It's only in recent human history that this ridiculous notion of consumer protection emerged.

Consumer protection and reversible transactions are the arguments the banks make: trust us with your money. "We hold and control your money for you and we can reverse or block some transactions from ever occuring. And of course, we promise we will never abuse this power." Right?

When you buy a carpet for your house, the carpet store can't come in and take their carpet back a week later. So why should you be able to take your money back? Are you really that dumb, you can't be trusted to buy your own carpet like a grown up?

This idea of reversible payments stems from socialism. The idea that the merchant us evil and bent on robbing you of your money while you are just the innocent and pure consumer who needs to be protected against the evil merchant.

You need to consider that there is a HUGE cost and potential for abuse when we make it possible for you to buy my bacon and take your payment back a week later.

My experience is pretty similar, and I think most users of banks and payment apps never have to reverse a transaction in their life, but the feeling of safety that comes from knowing that it could theoretically be done could be important to some people, and in that light they could view Bitcoin more negatively if they know that their mistake is nearly impossible to fix.

That’s why this isn’t fiat and even in a fiat operated banking system, you don’t just go about reversing money sent to an account without due processes of consultation of the recipient and possibly, having the recipient’s permission to proceed with the reversal.
Reversal systems are possible in a centralized system but, Bitcoin isn’t centralized is it. Surely it’s decentralized and with no one at the apex of these directives on the fate of transactions, it’s always going to be forward ever.

I see it to be a plausible system to the operation and as such, it calls for more carefulness in initiating a transaction on the part of the sender, knowing that, it ain’t reversible. It also gives recipient a sense of comfort that, you can’t have a deal retracted once concluded without consent.

I personally do not see irreversiblity as an issue in bitcoin ecosystem. Unless an ecosystem is centralised, this is always going to be the case. But it might be an issue for an average Joe who are new to this domain. Also it gives rise to the hackers as there's no way for the funds to get seized unless they are caught by the police or enforcement agencies.

Rather I see this as a feature that gives confidence especially to the merchants. There's no denying that it has downside as well but that's how the world is. Every system has a downside and a positive side. No system is fair.

Bitcoin being irreversible is good for merchants.  Since buyer cannot scam the merchants through cash charge back method but if the merchant plan to scam the buyer, then there is no way the buyer can get his Bitcoin after he paid for the item.

This is the downside of non-reversible transaction. The setup is more on the advantage of a merchant and a disadvantage of the buyer if some there is an issue with the bought product.

That makes one of us. Well if that becomes reversible then it loses its integrity. It means a block can be edited at any given time. It changes the way miners confirm the transactions that are included in the nodes. Basically, we are moving towards chaos if only a single change like "reversibility" was supposed to be added to the blockchain.

This leaves no difference between how a banking account operates and how a wallet would work. With the addition of such a feature we are also calling for hackers world wide to hack our wallets just like that. They will have loop holes, back doors to brute-force a transaction and do fake transactions. I think what we have is just better and original. Try changing anything in that and we can forget Bitcoin will exist anymore with proper sustainability.