3 ms·

Early on in 2009-2013 there was a lot of hype in the Bitcoin community over this. Lots of people (including myself) worked on Bitcoin marketplaces and most of t

Early on in 2009-2013 there was a lot of hype in the Bitcoin community over this. Lots of people (including myself) worked on Bitcoin marketplaces and most of them were marketed primarily to sellers because lots of Ebay sellers feel cheated by Ebay. But that is precisely the selling point of Ebay/Paypal. It's a buyer's market so Ebay/Paypal made the correct decision to be biased towards the buyers and that worked very well for them. My friends started buying on Ebay because everybody was assuring them that there was no risk to it. I took the leap as well precisely because of that reason. I don't think escrow is a better preposition even if it is nominally cheaper (there is of course more risk involved, it takes longer and is more complicated, but it is also more private; not sure if it would be overall cheaper when considering all the above). I'd be glad if someone finally managed to take on Ebay but I don't have high hopes. At most people have managed to fill in some niche where Ebay is doing a poor job, usually because it requires some specific knowledge of the merchandise being sold. Open Bazaar will probably follow suit and of course it will be that kind of merchandise.

hoffmabc 11y ago
Realistically there are only about 1 million bitcoin users in total worldwide. It is still very early days. We are aiming to make OpenBazaar a common ecommerce standard using Bitcoin that will allow people to build trustworthy marketplaces on top in many different ways. It's not just about overrunning eBay, it's about providing a global, user-driven and open-source network that will grow in scale as Bitcoin does. The escrow capability is certainly an experiment in many ways, but it also is being done in other countries successfully and we think it's one of the best ways to create a marketplace of trustworthy arbiters rather than have a centralized corporation with rigid policies that treat customers unfairly in most cases.

hoffmabc 11y ago

Realistically there are only about 1 million bitcoin users in total worldwide. It is still very early days. We are aiming to make OpenBazaar a common ecommerce standard using Bitcoin that will allow people to build trustworthy marketplaces on top in many different ways. It's not just about overrunning eBay, it's about providing a global, user-driven and open-source network that will grow in scale as Bitcoin does. The escrow capability is certainly an experiment in many ways, but it also is being done in other countries successfully and we think it's one of the best ways to create a marketplace of trustworthy arbiters rather than have a centralized corporation with rigid policies that treat customers unfairly in most cases.