You must have had that happy feeling (happiest of all when it’s still a day or two to payday and you know that your balance is paper-thin) when you’re withdrawing money from a cash machine and, even though you’re still nervously watching the ATM screen telling you that your request is being processed, you hear the motors in the cash dispensing machinery start to spin up.
That means, even before any banknotes get counted out or the display tells you the final verdict, that [a] you’ve got enough funds, [b] the transaction has been approved, [c] the machine is working properly, and [d] you’re about to get the money.
Well, imagine that if you hit the [Cancel] button at exactly the right moment between the mechanism firing up and the money being counted out…
…and if your timing was spot on, then your card would stay in the machine, your account wouldn’t get debited, and you’d be asked if you wanted to try again, BUT YOU’D GET THE CASH FROM THE CANCELLED TRANSACTION ANYWAY!?!!?
And imagine that, as long as you kept pressing that magic button at just the right moment, you could loop back on yourself and layer ghost withdrawal on ghost withdrawal…
…until the machine finally ran out of money, or hit some internal software limit on recursive withdrawals, or you decided to quit while you were ahead and get clear of the ATM before an alarm went off.
Blockchain Bubble or Revolution: The Future of Bitcoin, Blockchains, and Cryptocurrencies
