This is the version of the explanation I wish somebody had given me, written down before I forget what confused me. It is about paying for it, and it is deliberately narrow — everything I am not confident about is marked as such.
What is actually established
The trade-off is reversibility against privacy and there is no option that gives you both. Card payments are reversible and disclose the most; crypto discloses least and is irreversible, which is precisely why pressure toward it is a warning sign when it comes from a seller rather than a buyer. Escrow only means anything where the escrow agent is independent of both parties, which is rarely the case in practice.
The condition it depends on
One detail people underrate: an irreversible payment removes your only leverage in a dispute, so it should be the last step rather than the first.
What I am not sure about
What I am trying to establish is how people are thinking about the trade-off between reversibility and privacy, because you cannot have both. Happy to be told the question itself is wrong.
CryptoCarl said:The trade-off is reversibility against privacy and there is no option that gives you both.
Agreed, with the usual condition: that holds for the average and this board is a collection of individuals. A population claim and a personal prediction are different things and get quoted interchangeably.
CryptoCarl said:The trade-off is reversibility against privacy and there is no option that gives you both.
This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. The objection nobody has made: this only works if the measurement is doing what we assume it is doing, and that assumption has not been tested here.
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Shop Reference StandardsThis one has a reasonably settled answer, so here it is. It helps to say which part of this you are uncertain about. A precise question gets a precise answer; a general one gets everybody’s favourite anecdote.
TirzTom said:Agreed, with the usual condition: that holds for the average and this board is a collection of individuals.
Mine went the same way, slower. I had assumed I was the exception until I read this.