Topic: The Holy Grail! I wish I could kiss the author of Bitmessage on his face. - page 19. (Read 92723 times)

That's the word I used initially.

"Anachronistic" might be even more accurate: they could have done it if it suited their purposes to do so, but instead time has passed them by.

That's why I said the banking system is archaic by not providing cryptographically signed transaction receipt, to facilitate the whole process.

Process as per http://pastebin.com/SsLrxVP6. If I'm reading it right, Jorg has USD he's offering to put in Alice's nominated account (which might be her own or might be someone elses) and is willing to accept her BTC in exchange - the bitmessage is involved in the discovery process by which Alice and Jorg can meet in a distributed market. Alice sends BTC, Jorg wires USD to the other account.

If Alice wanted to send as Shekels, or Pesos, the discovery process finds someone who has those and wants to sell them, and presumably is located within that jurisdiction. Indeed if Alice has Russian Roubles and wants to pay a bill in South African Rand and doesn't have BTC at all then she could still do in two goes: discover someone who wants BTC in return for Rand: they provide a BTC address, she provides the South African bank details. Then she finds someone who offers BTC in return for Roubles -- she provides the BTC address from the first guy, he provides his bank account details. She pays in at the cashiers desk, he sends the BTC, the South African receives them and pays the bill denominated in Rand. (Obviously matters of escrow also, dealt with in the pastebin linked above.)

Arbitrary person-to- arbitrary person fiat A to fiat B transfer, no international aspect, "below the radar" in both source and destination country.
If I'm reading it right, that is

I suspect this relates to a discussion waxwing and I were having on another thread, cypherdoc.

Integrating knowledge of SEPA and ACH into the software doesn't appear to be that difficult.  Software-driven settlement on the network through ACH/SEPA becomes feasible.  (And yeah - you'd want any account that was OT-enabled to be completely isolated from your normal banking structure, obviously)

The big problem hasn't been settlement within a single currency - it's been settlement across different currencies - that is, cutting out the currency exchange vigorish and regulatory structure.  And this looks like a solution.

But, like you, I have some studying to do.  I'm optimistic though.

Yeah I would like a process walkthrough to understand this better.

i am wondering about this too.

perhaps fellowtraveler could take us thru an example of how to convert BTC to USD and the exact steps involved.

So bitmessage is essentially snapchat (i think, i dont use it) plus encryption. My cryptosense isn't particularly adept, but the bit about 'passive operating mode' seems too much like "security through obscurity" rather than security through mathematics (sending parts of message/acks through other paths to obscure a communication channel). Not that this matters much on the replacement-of-email level, but on a currency exchange level it makes all the difference in the world.

Currently accepting any explanations that will help me ->

How does this enable wiring of funds and conversion of currencies between OT and the conventional banking system?

What sucks is, surprise, the completely anachronistic banking system. Had banks digitally signed transactions like SEPA transfers, the dispute resolution could have been much easier.

Fellowtraveler, this is very exciting. I've been reading your OT stuff for a while and trying to absorb it all. Are you or your new company going to take OT now and develop it into this P2P exchange application? I think you should because it doesn't look like anyone else is ready to produce a product like this. I'm sure you could garner some serious donations if necessary since you've already proven yourself by putting OT together.

There will be tons of opportunities for everyone once this kind infrastructure is in place, so I hope we can all work together on it and keep it open.

Quick, someone snap a picture of Jonathan Warren before he disappears forever...

While I love the idea of BitMessage, it has never worked when I've tried it. Me or my counter-parties never received the messages we sent.

If/when it starts to work as it it's supposed, it has the potential to become an important tool alongside Bitcoin for decentralized and pseudonymized transactions.

Ditto.

best of luck on this.

i have some studying to do.

Out of curiosity if this was to gain momentum what would it mean for traditional Bitcoin exchanges? I am curious as today I just started working on a new UK exchange (small scale).

* I will be back on tomorow to read the paper too * 

Just learned about Bitmessage. I suggest people go read the white paper on their wiki - short and to the point. It has the potential to upset email because of the increased privacy, built-in mailing-list functionality, and anti-spam measures (proof of work makes it hard to create lots of messages fast). This Open Transaction use case is a perfect example of the innovation possible with it.

This really looks like a promising idea. Will be following closely.

Fantastic!

One thing I'm curious about is the propagation and validation. With the transaction notification being passed through bitmessage, acceptance is still dependent upon the receiver, correct? Txs therefore can be instantaneous, but might also incur a variable delay?

Wow, not sure if this means what I think it means, but after checking out open transactions, I have a feeling it means the end of the not so open Ripple idea.