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Escrow, funds are only released once the buyer confirms that he received the shipment. If you have a ton of outstanding orders, you are going to have a lot of f
by codesuela 12y ago
Escrow, funds are only released once the buyer confirms that he received the shipment. If you have a ton of outstanding orders, you are going to have a lot of funds frozen in escrow.
- ForHackernews 12y agoI thought the whole point of bitcoin was that it was peer-to-peer with no chargebacks or centralized middlemen?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Karunamon 12y agoA side benefit, but I wouldn't say the whole point. There are some cases where middlemen are necessary - the difference being that they're a lot more avoidable with BTC than they are in meatspace. (Credit cards, authorities who rob people carrying large amounts of cash, and so on.)
- lhc- 12y agoI'm not positive that bitcoins offer much more protection from robbery than cash, given the situation here.
- aeykie 12y agoThey offered protection, though didn't they? Evolution had multiescrow, they wouldn't have gotten those funds would they have?
- res0nat0r 12y agoI'd much rather have someone charge up fraudulent charges on my credit card than Bitcoin, I would much more likely be getting that money back and letting the CC fraud department deal with it. That guarantee is a major selling point of why so many people use credit cards in the first place.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- forgottenpass 12y agoThe bitcoin model alone doesn't fit buying drugs online. The purpose of escrow is a mutually agreeable middleman to facilitate a transaction, especially when parties that do not trust each-other can not exchange goods and payment in person.
- fossuser 12y agoI still don't understand how this helps though - couldn't the person still get their shipment and claim they never received it in order to trick the middleman to return their funds? How does the middleman have any ability to investigate or know who to believe?
- forgottenpass 12y agoIn one model of escrow, the middleman receives both the goods and cash before distributing them to the other parties. Potentially doing some inspection of goods at the time too. In another model, more common on the internet, the middleman holds the money from the buyer while the seller ships the goods to the seller. They can't guarantee the buyer does not lie to the middleman, but it changes the incentive structure around fraud. Especially so when the middleman runs or has connections to the marketplace.
- DennisP 12y agoBitcoin allows transactions that only become valid once 2 of 3 people sign them. If the three people are buyer, seller, and arbitrator, you can have escrow without trusting a third party. There have already been commercial services along those lines. Seems to me that any dark service that doesn't do it that way probably shouldn't be trusted.
- superuser2 12y ago>arbitrator Is the arbitrator not a third party?
- towelguy 12y agoNot one that you need to trust.
- darkmighty 12y agoYou need to trust either the buyer or the arbitrator actually. In this case some money might have been lost due to malicious buyers (and the absent arbitrator).
- DennisP 12y agoYou have to trust the arbitrator to make fair decisions, but the arbitrator has no ability to steal the money. The transaction simply moves funds between buyer and seller. If buyer and seller both sign the transaction, it completes without the arbitrator's involvement. If buyer and seller dispute, then the one who hopes to complete the transaction signs it and contacts the arbitrator, who will either sign, or not sign, but either way never gets possession of the funds.
- leohutson 12y agoIf both the buyer and the arbitrator are anonymous, how do you know that they aren't the same person?