"The Bitcoin protocol allows two parties to transact without any outside interference" ...other than the entire Bitcoin network, right? When last I checked th

"The Bitcoin protocol allows two parties to transact without any outside interference" ...other than the entire Bitcoin network, right? When last I checked the design of Bitcoin called for transactions to be checked by other Bitcoin users and then broadcast to the entire network. That is about as far as one can get from a two party transaction. If you want real two party transactions, you probably want this sort of thing: http://blog.koehntopp.de/uploads/chaum_fiat_naor_ecash.pdf http://blog.koehntopp.de/uploads/chaum_fiat_naor_ecash.pdf