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Comment by apthnz | Hacker News Reader

As far as I know, most Bitcoin transactions take ~10mins to get confirmed, so I'm not sure the current infrastructure would work for retail.

Admittedly I don't know what would need to be changed to speed up transaction confirmations to the point where you could use it in retail situations.

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10-minutes isn't that big of a deal. ACH transactions used to take 3 days for example.

The real big deal is that currently, BTC transaction fees are like $5+ right now. So its cheaper to use Paypal than to use BTC at the current prices.

When I say retail I mean things like buying steam games or buying web hosting, not actual brick and morter store purchases.

You can buy games on Steam with Bitcoin.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/28/11525482/bitcoin-steam-va...

Casinos & arcades sort of solve this problem. You walk & buy tokens, then use these tokens to spend, which can then be cashed back out when you're done. Also credit card transactions can be reversed up to months later, so in the grand scheme of things 10 minutes is not so bad, if big retail outlets wanted to make it work they could.

Except the majority of customers don't want to pre-purchase gift cards to shop at a retailer, but instead want to spend as soon as they make the decision to purchase.

Likewise, the frequency of chargebacks is so low it doesn't justify waiting up to 10 minutes to buy something for every purchase.

If both the shopper & retail store are using the same BTC exchange, or exchanges that trust each other, the exchange can just move the coins internally, which is instant. Retail outlets could also share information about scammers & create a blacklist of who not to trust, and then just accept the small amount of risk. Like you said, credit cards also have this problem but the frequency of chargebacks is low enough that retail stores do not require you to wait months before leaving the store with your goods. Even accepting cash entails the possibility of fraud. But these are good points you've made. I don't think demand is high enough that we'll see BTC go mainstream for retail, but if demand were to be high enough there are ways to make it work without waiting 10 minutes, but these would rely on exchanges & mutually trusted 3rd party agencies, which you could argue defeats the purpose of using BTC in the first place since its not decentralized but you'd still get the benefits of there being a fixed amount of BTC. People could also budget their monthly spending & transfer it ahead of time into an exchange. People already do this with checking/savings accounts, keeping some funds in checking for when they want to shop.

I read your entire paragraph and this just seems like a hammer looking for a nail. Credit cards automatically handle all of this (blacklisting, risk and fraud management, trustful 3rd party, etc.) so why would anyone want to use BTC for payments unless it's for things that CC companies won't touch (drugs, pirated software, etc.)?

> why would anyone want to use BTC for payments

You're right, that's why I said it probably won't happen, but if demand were high enough it could be made to work. One scenario that would increase demand would be inflation of the US dollar. Look at what happened in Zimbabwe. I'm not saying that's likely to happen, just playing devil's advocate.

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