Hacker News Reader

Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

Related true story: I wrote a free e-book about Bitcoin[1], and Bitcoin dev lead Gavin Andresen wanted to send a donation as thanks. He apparently meant to send $10, but sent 10 BTC by accident. (worth $3,000 at the time, now worth $25,000)

He emailed me and my co author asking (very politely!) for us to send it back, which we did (minus some amount to make it come out to the intended donation).

You can see the transactions here: https://blockchain.info/address/19QsxWwNyeQ9NceaXZFXkHSHbdKC...

(And verify that address matches up with the donation address on the site).

[1] http://understandingbitcoin.us

View on HN

There was a recent thread in r/Bitcoin about someone missing a 200k deposit on Coinbase. With the quote "say what you will about the banks, at least you can get on the phone with them." These super anti banking activists want banks when shit really hits the fan, surprise surprise.

BTC will never be a currency for anything legal. Anyone telling you otherwise is pumping so they can eventually dump. Regulations, inflation, etc these are all features, , not bugs. None of the Bitcoin true believers want to spend theirs which is exactly the problem with deflation.

Maybe it can be a store of value. Maybe. It's primarily a Ponzi scheme and a way to buy drugs.

> BTC will never be a currency for anything legal

It is actually already quite common for many legal internet-based services.

Such as, for instance, pornography.

Privacy issues aside, many people don't trust porn sites. Bitcoin enables them to pay with absolutely zero chance of them being stuck with a recurring subscription.

Also, anti banking activists don't use services like coinbase.

are you writing this from a timewarp and youre stuck in 2012? i have personally bought loads of stuff with BTC ranging from coffee to headphones to international flights and hotel bookings.

its also a pretty flawed comment when its already accepted on something as huge as steam, and at places like CEX, BIC camera and a growing list of other retailers.

and you say none of the true believers want to spend theirs, im sorry but youre wrong there too, ive been heavily into bitcoin since about 2011, but ive always been of the belief that if nobody uses them then they will never become a currency so i always spent mine (if id saved even 10% of what ive mined id be a millionaire by now but c'est la vie) im certain i am not the only person who shares this belief.

> These super anti banking activists want banks when shit really hits the fan, surprise surprise.

Not all Bitcoiners are "super anti-banking activists".

> BTC will never be a currency for anything legal.

It already is.

A Ponzi scheme would be impossible, no coinholders are paid dividends. Perhaps you just meant "scheme".

I just bought parts for my PC on Newegg and paid fot everything in Bitcoin.

you can still have bands and services ontop of bitcoin which allow refunds. Bitcoin is just like hard cash in that the transactions themselves are non-refundable.

These sort of UX issues will have to be resolved before cryptocurrencies become "mainstream". It wouldn't be seen as acceptable by mom and pop to "accidentally" send thousands of dollars to a store for a pack of cigarettes. However, I do think we'll start to see some fixes for this in a few years, hopefully without increased centralization (like the DNS system).

Even with perfect UX, these kind of "user errors" will still happen. I wonder if there is any recourse available? So far it seems like you can either hope the person on the other end will give you something back (unlikely) or convince the entire Bitcoin chain to fork to void your transaction (even less likely).

It happens with cash too though. Sometimes you hand over a 20 when you meant to hand over a 1. To be fair though US cash does have some UX issues, with the same size and similar coloring.

And securities. Quite often people sends orders with the number of shares accidentally set to the intended nominal value.

"Fat Finger" errors are reasonably common.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-finger_error

Reply on news.ycombinator.com