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Comment by scardine | Hacker News Reader

> Receiving money via Credit Card is surprisingly risky for the merchant.

In this aspect cryptocurrencies are surprisingly dangerous for the customer because there is no easy way to revert a transaction done by mistake or fraud (lets say someone cracked your wallet).

With credit cards in the worst case you just screw the merchant and I guess this is what marketplaces will end up doing instead of setting up their own escrow systems in order to protect both sides because handling disputes is hard work.

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You can build in the ability to reverse cryptocurrency transactions into wallets however that use case is well covered by credit cards.

Credit cards/checks: Merchant trusts user, user doesn't trust merchant

Wire-transfers/Cashiers Checks/Cash/Bitcoin: User trusts merchant, merchant doesn't trust user

> You can build in the ability to reverse cryptocurrency transactions into wallets

But that just puts the risk back with the other party. We're just back to the credit card scenario like you mentioned.

The point is that crypto can't get rid of the issue of trust. At some level, there has to be some level of trust in order to perform a transaction.

No matter what we do, all we're doing is pushing the trust somewhere else.

>The point is that crypto can't get rid of the issue of trust. At some level, there has to be some level of trust in order to perform a transaction.

This is generally true however there are some exceptions. You can trustlessly trade Bitcoins for solutions to particular problems e.g. the preimage of a particular hash. This can be extended to a much larger class of problems with Zero Knowledge Contingent Payment (ZKCP).

Ok, and that's fine. It gives people choice.

If people want the option where you trust the customer, that's what credit cards are for.

And if people make the opposite choice, that is ALSO ok, and is what crypto is for.

It is still very valuable to be able to move that trust somewhere else.

To give a concrete example, what if the merchant is inherently more trust worth in a specific market? Then, it is BETTER to put that trust on the merchant.

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