Why does the shipper care that you've paid a third party?

neokantian · on Feb 18, 2019

Escrow situations work like that. You cannot use a bank in an escrow situation, because they are not capable of providing digital proof of payment.

Whenever you need to digitally prove payment to a third party, you need to use a payment method that can provide such proof.

DenisM · on Feb 18, 2019

How did we manage to ship anything so far? In practice that hasn't been a problem. Or has it?

neokantian · on Feb 18, 2019

That is also what horse-and-cart sellers said when they saw the first car. The lack of digital proof of payment is obviously not felt when you don't have it in the first place. The same for multi-signature contracts. The same for atomic swaps. None of these things are needed if they do not exist in the first place. People did not even need a roof over their heads until they built the first one.

DenisM · on Feb 18, 2019

How is a wire/ACH transfer not an immediate proof of payment?

pas · on Feb 18, 2019

You can't link to it. It's just a screenshot. Or do you have something else in mind?

DenisM · on Feb 18, 2019

Suppose: I sent you the money, you call the shipping guys and notify them that it's time to ship the goods. That's all.

I don't see why the shipping company needs to verify anything themselves - they just need a call from the owner of the goods directing the shipment.

pas · on Feb 18, 2019

I don't know either, but usual shipping is FOB - freight on board, so the seller pays half of it. And so the seller typically doesn't do shit until the money is there.

And when it comes to trade between untrusted parties, it starts slow. To build trust.

Though crypto is great to making faster payments, that's sometimes an issue, and it can save the seller from the buyer's scam, but on the other hand completely exposes the buyer to the seller's scams. (Because cryptocurrency transfers are non-reversible usually [as in ever, except with a hard fork].)