If you mean waiting for x validations before accepting a transaction, yes -- but do you really think that it's practical to wait 30 minutes before delivering goods for a transaction? That's going to be a really long time spent staring at the little spinny thing over a line of text saying "verifying your payment" ...
It's completely reasonable. Bitcoin is not a good candidate for a medium of exchange despite what some adopters will tell you. It is more like virtual gold. You can see in the real world that mediums of exchange and stores of value aren't the same thing because the properties that are desirable in one are not desirable in the other.
And there's another electronic currency system coming online now that should handle instant transactions well: ripple.com Its a new incarnation of a relatively old idea, but the good thing about the new ripple is that transactions are (and should continue to be) nearly instant. And it is very, very easy to trade bitcoin for ripple using the ripple system, and should get even easier. So I imagine a future where value is stored in btc, and spent using ripple (in any of the supported currencies).
How do you think credit card transactions work? The auth code you get back from a "valid" cc transaction doesn't represent a transfer of money. That might not happen for another 24 hours.
Doesn't reserve funds, it's rarely realtime. "Guarantees payment" just means that the cost has been shifted from the retailer to the card provider - for a while anyway, then the card provider starts grabbing money back.
Yeah it does reserve the funds, I've worked in this industry. Settlement happens later, but authorisation does put a reserve on the funds in the credit account if the transaction has gone end-to-end.
If you mean the 'chargeback' feature when you say "then the card provider starts grabbing money back", then yes, absolutely, this is a feature of card payments and is essential for people to have any trust in internet commerce at all. Chargeback is good
End to end is the key point, loads of places still use off line terminals that batch the job up at eod.
I wasn't referring to chargeback; I meant stroppy card providers. The sort of thing these guy are fighting (although that was for a security breach rather than too many authorised charges against empty accounts):
If you mean waiting for x validations before accepting a transaction, yes -- but do you really think that it's practical to wait 30 minutes before delivering goods for a transaction? That's going to be a really long time spent staring at the little spinny thing over a line of text saying "verifying your payment" ...