Topic: Bitcointalk Escrows - Trade Safely! - page 23. (Read 108569 times)

I turn down probably 4 times as many escrow requests as I accept.  Most of the denied requests are for paypal transfers, gift cards, altcoin IPOs, signature campaigns, and account sales.  There is definitely a slowdown in legitimate trading, but I think it is because most people have been purchasing new S7s and the resale market is exhausted of supply.  I suspect once BitFury chips start finding their way into miners on the market, there will be a pickup in activity.  As for the Casascius re-seller market...  There are so many copycats like myself releasing our own versions of physical coins that we pretty much soak up most of the excess juice in that marketplace nowadays.

I think it is actually a good time to be quitting the escrow business, or at least taking a break.  I know that I have been giving it some serious thought as I watch the Core/Classic situation develop.  With some luck any potential forking will be smooth...  For now though, I'm happy to do my part to help add a little safety to this place and keep legitimate trading here as free flowing as possible.  One coin.  One love. 

Would you feel safe with that newer guy if you are one of the participant of that campaign ? Nowadays someone could easily buy a Hero or even legendary and gain a point or two then pull of some coins in a month.To avoid this you need someone old or rather with more history here.

Well, most campaigns have managers these days. I think most of the managers are trusted enough to handle the weekly payments. Take luckybtc for instance...their manager is relatively unknown and yet handles the payments. My only role is to hold 4BTC in case either the manager or casino stops paying. I see no reason why this setup does not work out well? A newer guy can earn some trust while doing the weekly payments and after a while likely not need someone like me.

I still see 12 people on this list (removing devscrow, as it's not yet updated as of this post.)

If I'm still getting 1 or 2 contracts a week, then I'm pretty sure the others are probably getting a little bit more.

The problem with signature campaign escrows is often that escrow doesn't want to be the one making payments (like in your case), but when people want
to start their own escrow services, and don't have the problem in doing the work around payments - they get blasted out until they retreat from the idea.

I agree as it does not really effect me at all. I am sure someone will step up and offer their services. I do not mind escrowing signature campaigns so long as they make the payments and I just hold emergency funds.

There is a need for signature campaigns ,many other deals in the currency exchange section requires escrow if none of the buyer/seller is untrusted or is new,even people trade altcoins now and then which might require an escrow.Your point is valid only to the older/trusted ones dealing but the typical trades still need one much active and trusted escrow IMO.

OgNasty is the only really active one of the remaining 3. To me it feels like trading on this forum has slowed down a lot anyways. Most of the people trading physical coins here have been around so long they all rarely need escrows anymore. I think the neediest are account traders and no one wants to deal with those...

Yeah, it will remain only one !

Now we have the Big 3 rather than the Big 5   

devthedev is closing his escrow service after almost 2 years.

Below here is the quoted message from his escrow service thread:

I think you did not try being an escrow. If an escrow is really lucky the he has to send only a couple of pm's. Which already translates to at least a quarter hour of work. But if you have much to explain or having to check for your own safety, for example to check forum accounts and such, then you easily take hours. And that is not seldom. If you are unlucky and a free escrow then no tip comes through too.

And what you forget too is that an escrow is always at risk of being scammed or forgetting to do something to protect the buyer. Then it might be needed to pay the loss to protect your trust in the community.

I see where you come from but as far as i know this is a long ongoing discussion. At one point in time selling really was forbidden. The result was that it still happened without a change. The difference was, nobody except the traders would know about the deal.

So in order to having at least the chance to see when fishy things are happening it is a good things that mods have all the pm's in the forum to see what happened with an account. And the escrow can maybe recognize accounts when they are used in a wrong way afterwards.

Saying that, i would not touch an account on default trust. I'm not sure if i'm wrong with that since it means i don't get to know the name of that account, which is sold then anyway. The difference would be a possibly unknown account was sold and nobody trustworthy knows about.

What DannyHamilton said.
What Blazed said.


Free market dude. No worries. No problem.

You want a watch that tells time, you buy a Casio.

You want jewelry, then you can pay for a Rolex.

I don't sell watches. Sorry.

My last contract was for about 6 BTC, so I got 0.06 as my fee. Not worth it in my opinion, but I did it for all the reasons the other two guys above me already mentioned.

When bitcoins become more regulated, either I'm outta the business or I'm running some semi-automated thing.

Attitudes like yours are why some of the best and most trustworthy escrow providers are either quitting offering escrow services, raising their minimum amount escrowed, or setting higher fees.

If people took the time to think about how valuable the service is that well run and trustworthy escrow provides, and then compensated the escrow provider appropriately for the value provided then people like Blazed and myself wouldn't have stopped.

Unfortunately when everything goes smoothly, like it does 99% of the time, nobody even thinks about how much the security and peace of mind were really worth.  They tip nothing at all or less than $2 worth of bitcoins.

When I held escrows, all escrow-ed funds were held on single use paper wallets that were generated on a permanently offline computer and that were stored in a secure location.  I wrote up custom escrow agreements that laid out exactly how the transaction was expected to progress as well as laying out exactly what would happen in a variety of common situations.  I acted as mediator for disagreements between transaction participants and made a significant effort to remain fair and impartial. If I was going to be unavailable for release at any time, all parties involved were informed ahead of time. I made sure that all parties were provided with multiple ways to contact me if bitcointalk became unavailable (phone number, email address, and frequently a U.S.P.S. mailing address). All of this time and effort for between 0 BTC and 0.01 BTC most of the time.  I could earn more running a lemonade stand on a cold day in the middle of nowhere.

In the beginning I did it because I wanted to make it easier for users of the forum that didn't have any way of trusting each other to be able to engage in transactions.  I was motivated largely because there weren't many merchants or exchanges available, and if bitcoin was going to be useful, then this forum was going to be where that usefulness was proven.  Since then there are several well trusted exchanges and many large public merchants that accept bitcoin as payment.  Additionally there were several new escrow providers that I found to be sloppy and uncommunicative, yet users were flocking to them for some reason.  At that point it just didn't make sense anymore to spend time and effort for a service that clearly wasn't desired.

0.03 bitcoin for a few minutes work is too expensive. That is why people are not interested in your service.

What the escrow does is not i am speaking about.But yes most of the trades on forum only require a couple of minutes to check & in your free time.
Give me one reason why in the world someone would come to a forum to escrow any amount which might require guns.
Do you think holding .25 until the buyer receives the product/goods is a biggie ?

If you are charging 0.03 btc for something that can be checked in a few minutes of time and proceed whenever you are free and have some spare time to throw away then obviously people will try & find a cheap way.