I only have a layman understanding of bitcoin, and I've never used a cheque in my life, but would it not be more like "someone wrote you a cheque and there's no guarantee it won't bounce when you try to cash it in"?
Which, again maybe showing my complete lack of knowledge of cheques, is how I thought they worked in the first place.
Personal check is a quasi-promissory note binded whose legal-teeth for recovery through law enforcement. “0-conf bitcoin” has no legal teeth for recovery … yet so there is no enforcement (except for the merchant to chase after the scofflaw). “Money is forthcoming”.
Bank cheque is a bank-guarantee binded by banker self-verification (almost always good) with no takeback (voiding) mechanism. “block-chain confirmed” is always a good transaction with no clawback mechanism so you must wait until it’s confirmed before receiving your merchandise.
> has no legal teeth for recovery … yet so there is no enforcement
In this case, Steam was selling a digital good that they could be fully revoke if the funds never arrived, so the check ability works very well.
It would have been even better on a smart contract platform where the game license would exist on the chain itself and couldn’t be purchased via a double spend, Chain re-orgs would also sort themselves out in a fully on-chain system.
Here in the UK we had "cheque guarantee cards" - essentially a debit card without a live connection to the bank. When you wrote the cheque the shop took your card details as well and that meant the bank guaranteed to cover the value of the cheque if it bounced (up to a maximum amount). If your cheque bounced your account went into an overdraft for that amount plus a hefty fee. It meant shops didn't need to worry about bounced cheques which customers could pay using them. It worked pretty well.
The US banks I worked with would just overdraw your account (up to an amount), then, overnight, reorder the transactions so the big ones came first and all the little ones came “after” the account went negative and hit you with hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees. I don’t miss the early 2000s.
That’s because a bank got sued for it, and lost. The banks must now always reorder or keep it in the order it was received. I only bank with the latter ones.
Which, again maybe showing my complete lack of knowledge of cheques, is how I thought they worked in the first place.