I am curious when crypto will get there. Maybe 10 years or so?
For that matter, a sizable percentage of cryptocurrency advocates either don't know or care either; their only concern is how much fiat they can trade cryptocurrency for.
I do not know about US, but in EU bank transfers are generally not reversible (except forced by courts). If you send money to wrong bank number, you cannot cancel the transaction in bank, you need to ask the owner of that account to send them back.
Compared to BTC, there are two differences - it is possible to identify an account holder and justice system can effectively force bank transfers.
E.g. when that pirate bay founder hacked a bank's mainframe and transferred money out internationally the banks sorted it out, sending it back, without a court.
Maybe you're thinking something specific about "reversing a transaction", but the main point here is that yes if needed a court can just make that reversing happen. Not the case for cryptocurrency. And no matter what the coiners say, irreversibility is very much a bug that society doesn't want.
https://www.vox.com/2019/6/18/18642645/bitcoin-energy-price-...
But I generally agree with the advice that the service banks and fiat currency provide is probably worth the cost for almost everyone.
I’ve heard of this happening to others and have argued that the money is lost and cannot be recovered. People think it’s crazy the money is lost and cannot be recovered. From what I’ve heard it cannot be recovered.
Is your friend able to recover the funds?
How did it happen? Did the instructions for transfer get altered by someone?
Thanks.
I mean, it is always the state, if you follow the string to the end, that oversees and enforce compensation, rollback and error correction.
What kind of fully-distributed non-autoritative algorithm can do that?
For a while there was a workaround, it lasted a long time in the United States and after it ended Hollywood kept it around (in fiction) partly by using plots that were written when it was real and partly just because it looks cooler even though it's not possible.
Bearer Bonds. You'll notice that's what they're stealing in Die Hard. When it was made, and when it was set, Bearer Bonds weren't a thing (adverse tax treatment ensured they had basically ceased to exist) but when the novel the screenplay is based on was written it is reasonable that a wealthy multinational might possess large sums of Bearer Bonds in a vault.
Bearer Bonds were bonds (duh) but they weren't registered anywhere, the owner of the bond was whoever was holding it, just like cash, except a briefcase full of bonds could be worth tens of millions of dollars.
What we need is scalable micropayments, not ability to more easily lose $100M one transaction.
The people who do need to move $100M it's ok if we have a separate system for.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/03/magazine/mone...