Topic: BitBay |Decentralized Marketplace|Smart Contracts|IoT Tech|Markets Open - page 146. (Read 339485 times)

Not that I'm suggesting that BitBay will become SR3 or anything like that... but another possibility might be that a seller is selling something that he'd be perfectly fine making substantial escrow deposits simply because they want the transaction to be completely anonymous and will likely transact business with a buyer who is of a suspicious nature.  The reason the seller is fine with the escrow deposits is because they item they're selling actually costs almost nothing... despite having funds held during the escrow period - the funds themselves are all that is risked.

The other aspect that seems to be missed with many of these scenarios is that of time - which can be managed via contract as well.  If you (in unusualfacts30's example) are selling $10K worth of headphones - unless you are selling the whole lot at once - you may require more or you may require much less for the deposits.  For example say that $10K represents 2000 headphones... so your material risk per contract is $5 and you are charging $20 for them.  If you sold all of them in 2 weeks it might require as much as $40K in deposts!!!    However, on the other hand, if you average 10 sales per week... then you will only have $400 tied up at any given time... with returned deposits available for new sales regularly.

On the other hand you stand to make $30K in profits... for which you will not have to worry about charge-backs, deadbeat buyers, etc.  Sure you might have a couple losers in the group... and say that costs you $50 in material losses and $200 in deposit losses (assuming a 5% fraud rate).  You will still have paid less in those losses than you would have in merchant fees and other fraud.  Now you have $39.95K to buy more headphones... and you got $39.8K of your deposits back... (assuming worst-case scenario) so on the next round you are only risking profits from the last container of headphones (well $50 extra if you have another 10 deadbeats... but we'll call that a 'rounding error').

Not saying this is important to all the 'honest vendors' in the world - but there's also no centralized organization reporting to your government what your actual sales numbers look like at all.  So depending on what your tax laws and/or personal ethics dictate... it could be tax-free as well as fee-free and virtually risk-free on top of that.

Edit: fixed math fart

Addendum: In actuality I see far less problem with scalability of sales from a B2B standpoint than from a direct-sales standpoint.  It could be that the model will indeed prove too cumbersome for someone wanting to sell their car for quick cash... but it could be argued that those transactions are better handled elsewhere regardless.  Direct sales would require a large capital outlay on both sides... but this is commensurate with higher risk factors.  On the other hand if I am the manufacturer of those headphones and I'm selling a container of them for $10K... then I'm only interested in buyers for whom $20K is a reasonable deposit amount in order to guarantee the transaction completes.

There's a reason that Best Buy can charge $25 for a cable they buy in lots of 100K units and pay less than $.50 ea for... because no one shopping at Best Buy is interested in buying 100K cables, and because Best Buy has to offset the inventory/shrinkage/etc... on those units.  On the other hand, the company that made those 100K cables... spent less than $.25 on them - but they're fine only making 100% profit and not the 5,000% BB makes because they have almost no risk, limited inventory demands, and a single transaction to deal with.

I can certainly understand being skeptical about the future - however, if you are selling your coins at a loss, because a 2-week old coin might not turn into something... then I would advise not buying as much initially next time.

If you got all of them at less than 200 sats on a dip or are merely trolling... then disregard and proceed as planned (if you're actually holding coins at all that is).

Well i guess it would be nice to have some community brainstorming on that at this point, there are probably solutions to the problem, and it is probably better to think about it now than after the release...

There is a #BitBay channel on freenode in case the forum is not enough...

Another way is Fees.

Seller & Buyer both deposit fees in an escrow ($1-$1000) or 5% of value of an item they're trying to sell. Once transaction is succesful and buyer has the merchandise that fees will be returned to both buyer & seller.

If I'm putting $1000 in an escrow for an item that costs $1000 and transaction would be completed within 2 weeks. That means I'll have to be without $1000+product for 2 weeks. I'm not sure if any seller would be up to that risk when selling an item.

Yes, more security & more safer but not possible to work with if double deposit is required everytime I sell something. It would defeat the purpose of selling an item. Majority of people sell items because they need money. 

I can tell you what will happen simply, Vendors will end by overcharging price of items to take in account the escrow they have to keep immobilized or they will bypass the escrow by asking the buyer to FE (Finalize Early) his transaction before the item is shipped, meaning the system will become quite useless because it is too expensive to bear for a lot of Buyers and Vendors

On a business model, for a Vendor that ship items that are received in about 2 weeks let's say, bear the escrow and the guarantee fund is enormous for 2 weeks...it is not really business friendly...only a Vendor starting with a large amount of cash for escrow will be able to do business constantly...And let's not speak about the issue to grow your business, the situation is even worse regarding the requirements for growing the business.

In the end i think the system will destroy itself in its current state because the only options for Vendors will be to price items expensive or to bypass the escrow, and yet it is not very confortable for them.

As another user said there is also the problem of scalability, for little items it is fine to make an escrow of a few dollars, but not all the buyers will have 2 times the money of what they are buying when we speaks of thousands $, for a company it will be also a hell for accounting, i don't see small companies having enough money to adopt the system either...

My point is that it will be hard to put the system mainstream in these conditions for sure.

As i suppose the moderation or arbitration of transaction is not an option seeing the FAQ, there are perhaps others way to explore, community votes or supervision in case of dispute on a transaction, possibility of modification or configuration of the escrow to free only a part of it as it is done in business when you pay an advance on an order and pay the rest after, to be able to negotiate between parties if needed.

So for me the current system is friendly to absolutely no one, Buyers will have to have 2 times the money needed to buy, filtering minimum 90 % of Buyers probably, Vendors will need an enormous amount of money to just keep the business running or to hope to be able to grow it a little...

It makes sense if you're making small sells but if you're talking about $5-$50k there is no way most people can come up with same amount of money to put in an escrow. It's really not possible for anyone to come up with that much money unless you're already balling (that means majority of people would have to have thick bank balance if they're trying to sell big items in the marketplace)

For example: If you're trying to start home business by selling earphones in marketplace. You come up with $10k for the merchanise that means you'll require another 10k if you want to sell those in bitbay marketplace. It can be a huge turn off for newbie sellers who don't have much capital to begin with.

If buyer come up with double of whatever seller deposit in an escrow then it makes sense otherwise I'm not sure how marketplace can attract a teenager who doesn't have a job and he is trying to sell his old Nintendo so he can have spare change in his pocket. I mean that's the whole point of buying/selling. You need money..you sell something. If I have the money then I wouldn't need to sell it. You know what I mean?

It seems like it would attract only certain kind of people if double deposit works the way you mentioned.

the price is declining ,what happened to the project?
still OK for that?

Well, I've seen the exact same thing constantly (referring to either BTC or LTC usually) in the trollbox at BTC-E since the day it opened basically.  I'm sure if it the actual stock market exchanges had a trollbox/forum you'd see that said about everything from SLV to AAPL.

Of course, if you consider BTC, LTC, DRK, XMR, etc. to be 'sh*tcoins' - then I understand and agree with your point - I've seen it said with all of them at some point in the past year.  


Well, I guess I'm more conservative a 'spender' than many - but as a buyer I would consider myself not able to afford something I couldn't deposit the same amount for, and I definitely wouldn't want to deal with a seller that had nothing to their name but the item itself.  On the other hand, there's nothing to say you can't offer something without double-deposit escrow... it's just that you will then be accepting 100% of the risk yourself.

I could easily see that happening in cases of repeat business... i.e. if you do $1000 of 'good trades' you're given access to my "special customer offerings" which are presented as non-escrow'd contracts, but restricted to specific addresses.  Not sure if that's possible initially, but I could easily see it being possible eventually.

Considering that too many buyers today don't even have the exact amount needed for their purchase but rely on credit cards, I am wondering how it could be possible using smart contracts for third parties to provide financial services of covering the extra amount needed for a fee.

For example, I want to buy a $200 cell phone, but I don't have the extra $200 needed for double proxy. Could it be possible to use a credit service which will put down the extra $200 at a fee? Just thinking out loud here. The double proxy idea sure changes A LOT we know in current paradigm.

Right but when it comes to an object that costs around 5k. There is less likely possibility that you'll have even 50% of that for escrow or even buyer for that matter. It seems like they would have to decide on their own how much money they want to put in an escrow and it doesn't have to be same amount as the merchandise you're trying to sell?

I guess it depends on seller & buyer and they can do it however they want. So, if seller wants he can put $100 in escrow if they both agree to it. It makes sense. Obviously, the more money you're able to put in an escrow as a seller more chances of getting more buyers.

Ouch. Don't tell me this is going to turn into a "Thanks for the cheap coins" coin.

This phrase is rapidly attaining infamy on Bitcointalk as the epitaph of choice for sh*tcoins which showed some notional promise but never made it in the markets.

To me it's more of a case of asking if vendors would prefer deposits (which are refunded on all successful contracts) at a risk of loss in cases of fraud, or would prefer to pay ~15% (of revenue, not just profits) in fees and ancillary charges on every successful sale, and only hopefully get those refunded in the case of fraud - in which they still are out their items.

For a specific example:

I have something to sell for $100.  With smart contracts I require $100 in cash/BAY and my object... for a sale I require a buyer with $200.  My potential loss is $200, but so is theirs... so while possible for something smaller... it's less and less likely someone is going to pay $200 just to get a $100 item and screw me over - as they will still risk being blacklisted (non-whitelisted if you prefer).  If everything does go well... I sell my item and get my $100 back - plus I get to keep all $100 from the sale.  If my margin is 50% I'm actually only risking that someone would rather pay $200 to make me lose $150... which could happen, but not very often unless people that hate money are more prevalent than I believe.  My potential profit in the sale is $50, so I only have to make 3 successful sales to compensate for each incident of fraud.

On ebay I list the same item.  Now I'm going to have to pay around $11 for the sale itself (assuming only 'value pak' listing upgrades)... and another $3.20 if using PayPal (possibly up to $5 if using a regular CC processor).  In this case the risk is less for me - I'm basically just risking $50 per sale (my overhead).  However my profit margin is reduced by $14.20... so I'm making $35.80 per successful sale... which would still require 2 sales to 'survive' one complete loss.  This is better, but the risk that fraud represents to the buyer is almost nothing - they damage their reputation, but they can also simply create another account and start over.

In order to be as profitable on ebay, I would need to list my items for around 20% more than I would on BitBay... in order to make the same amout of profit.  This should result in lower priced goods on BitBay than the same items sold via other means.  Although the volume of buyers initially would make this a non-issue for most vendors, as the marketplace grows it should even out and potentially shift to BitBay's favor.

Regardless, in order to get 'free' stuff via BitBay the fraudster will lose 100% of the value of the item every time... vs losing nothing but their 'reputation' somewhere else.  If someone scams me for my item on ebay... they can literally turn around and sell it via another account and make ~$85 in pure profit.  That's a big incentive to commit the fraud - especially if you have 1000 fake accounts for doing this.

With smart contracts even if the item were 'flipped', the best they could hope for is a 66% loss... but to even get that, they'd have to put up an additional $100 of their own money.  So they'd essentially be paying $300 of their own money for each $100 of someone else's they received.  I consistently underestimate human stupidity... but I'm pretty sure that won't last very long even if there are a few bad seeds to begin with.

looks revolutionary but I don't see a use of that if I'm buying something small like "ear phone" that costs $10. It seems like this will be more attractive to buyers/sellers who deal with big amount of money. Too much work is involved.

I'm more of tactile learner so it might make more sense to me once smart contract & marketplace is released. It might be easier than it looks once you start using it.

Good point but I think main competitor of BitBay is Alibaba. Most people on that site are big vendors and they won't care about putting money in escrow.

If BitBay targets small sellers/buyers then price will never hit $1 EVER.

You're right and as a small  seller who wants to sell an iPhone in marketplace I might be turned off when I find out that I have to put money in escrow. What do you suggest as a solution? I'm sure BitBay team will look into it.

Personally, I think escrow would keep scammers/abuse away because no one can use your account to put a bid on something like it happens on Ebay all the time. It also means that you'll get bid from serious buyers only because if you're placing a bid you'll have to show that you have the money by putting it in escrow. Anyone putting a bid will have to money in escrow and anyone who isn't serious enough wouldn't even try.

Small sellers might get turned off but marketplace will be more safer and secure than Ebay so that's a positive factor and it'll attract more sellers.

On a second thought. I think this is very confusing at this point. If I'm a seller selling $100k worth of seeds in marketplace. Does that mean I have to come up with $100k to put in escrow? That can be tricky. Hoping more clarification on this from BitBay (whenever they have time).



Q: Please explain how the escrow system will protect buyers & sellers in BitBay transactions.

A: The system is the revolutionary double deposit escrow. Both Buyer and Seller place deposits into a shared account. There is no need for an escrow agent. The deposits serve as the incentive to perform. Therefore theft and deception is impossible in these escrows. If those actions occur, the parties will not agree, the escrow will expire and they both lose. BitBay takes the profit out of theft.

Its cold here, time to cover with some baycoins. 

You can elaborate a lot of scenarii in my point of view.

Competition is one of the things that could be a problem, big Vendors with a good amount of money would be able to kill little Vendors pretty easily.

Once again theorically it is okay but you seem to not suspect how twisted are some people in these Markets activities.

So okay the buyer will lost money but perhaps he can afford that and not the other party...We don't live in a world of equity and egality...

As i said first the issue is the need to put 2 times the money in escrow for the buyer, if i want to buy an item at 1000 $ i have to own more money for the escrow, clearly not possible for everyone...

Then for Vendor, so if i want to sell an item because i need some money....first i need to have some money to put in escrow...If i want to sell an item at 1000 $ i have to own money and keep the money immobilized for some time...clearly not possible for everyone.

And now let's assume these points are achieved by both parties the problem stays competition....Let's take the example of the guitar given earlier, There is a large Vendor of guitars and you want to start a little shop yourself.

Well, it seems pretty easy to shut you down in 2-3 transactions abuse and it won't cost so much to a well established Vendor...Sure he willl pay two times the item price, but he still got the item and the poor little Vendor on the other side got nothing and lost his item...And I don't think he will try ever again to sell something on BitBay after that...

What do you mean by " markets that are subject to scammers on both sides" ? With the double escrow they'd lose a ton of money.

I'm really waiting to see how the double escrow will work...For the moment it seems to me a little simple and not really taking in count the reality of these markets that are subject to scammers on both sides...

I'm also a little worried by a system that ask to have 2 times the value of what you buy i must say, It seems to be a major limitation to me for both Vendors and Buyers business...

Vendors have a limitation on their business due to the need of putting funds in escrow and Buyers have to make a provision for each item bought, not really easy for someone with limited funds to buy or start selling, and on expensive items it would be just impossible to do for majority of people probably...

Well i know that I clearly don't have always 2 times the money needed for what i'm buying...

And as far as I know, the various Vendors, especially individuals don't always have as much money as the value of the item they are selling to put in escrow...

I don't know if the business model of trade requiring so much funds immobilized on both side is really viable to compete with centralized systems, for sure it will be hard to attract buyers and Vendors to the system, as far as i know eBay, or even DarkNetMarkets are not asking to invest 2 times the value of what you buy...

back up again now. 

it s down