Topic: Personal details for escrow (Read 2038 times)

Yes, but it's not a normal script, so actually creating and spending that output would require some work.

Untested script:


This can be packed into a P2SH script, so sending money to the escrow contract would just be sending to an address starting with 3. Creating the P2SH address and spending money sent to it would be the difficult parts. (There's code floating around for doing this stuff, but I don't think there's even any CLI utility for it.)

Is this currently possible? This setup would allow people to significantly reduce the risk of the escrow running away/colluding to steal funds because various escrow agents could be selected whose locations are known to be in geographically diverse places in the world.

Yeah, that is a risk, but it should be pretty rare. A more secure escrow contract would be something like (payer AND payee) OR ((payer OR payee) AND 2-of(escrow1, escrow2, escrow3)).


A detailed tutorial would help. If people can just mechanically follow the tutorial without really understanding the steps, that'd be better than nothing, and it'd be the first step toward real understanding. Maybe someone needs to make a really nice escrow GUI in some wallet or other.


It might not be such a great idea, but I'd expect some to do it, since it's so easy. The escrow agent would just have to publish a public key and give their terms ("In case of a dispute, contact me here: ... If I have to decide your case, I will only sign transactions which assign me exactly 5% of the final amount as a fee. ....")

From the looks of it, master-P had used a number of his alts to have several people send BTC to master-P, as escrow, primarily regarding currency exchange deals, and then his alts would stop responding to the bitcoin sellers. In these cases, master-P would still be able to steal the funds if a 2-of-3 multi-sig was being used because he would have had 2 of the keys necessary to spend funds from the multi-sig address(es).

I would also question as to how effectively someone with little/no technical knowledge would be able to create multi-sig addresses, and spend funds from multi-sig addresses (remember there is a reason why wallet services like blockchain.info are so successful, and it is not because of their security record). 

I am not sure an escrow agent would want to even attempt, or be available to mediate a transaction if they have not previously acknowledged and understand the terms of a particular trade, as without these details, it would be difficult to mediate a dispute unless one party outright fails to deliver anything at all.

I don't have any interest in that. And it probably wouldn't help much anyway. Identity information is fairly easy to fake, and it doesn't even act as much of a deterrence. pirateat40's identity has always been known, and it neither prevented his scam nor has it helped his victims get their money back. It's looking like master-p will probably be located. And there are several others. It's actually a bit rare for scammers to be totally anonymous, since being totally anonymous is difficult. It's impossible to identify all long-term con men before they scam.

Sending all of the money to an escrow is ridiculous when you can do a Bitcoin smart contract. For example, it would make far more sense to do a 2-of-3 multisig among the payer, the payee, and the escrow agent. When the transaction goes well, the payer and payee will just both cooperate to release the money, and the escrow doesn't need to be involved at any point in the process. If the transaction goes poorly, the escrow can cooperate with either the payer or payee to send the money to that person. At no point can the escrow single-handedly steal the money. And since you might not even need to talk to the escrow agent at any point in a transaction, it should be quicker and less expensive. More complicated smart contracts than this are possible, but this m-of-n multisig is very basic and is supported by several wallets including Bitcoin Core. (Though Core still lacks a GUI for it.) Someone should make a detailed tutorial for all steps of this process in a number of wallets, and then we can sticky it somewhere.

Exactly. How does this give people more reassurance that they won't get scammed?

For the record, I don't think QS was going to go the way of Master-P and run away with escrowed funds.  He had a slower scam going, collecting a little bit at at time from people who thought there were actually 3 independent parties involved in each transaction.  I don't know which is worse.

that goes for any service offered here on the forums.

That is why I stopped escrowing. I think people way under value the escrows here and what they provide. I would spend way too much time and hardly ever get tipped. I noticed Mitchell also stopped offering for the same reason. The more honest guys that stop will lead to problems I am sure. I would never use some off forum website to escrow...

You can use External Escrow Services...
People provide Escrow to help others more than to earn from it!! No one is going to reveal their Personal information for this...

Mmmhhh no, personal identity to theymos ... this is insane !

Yeah, Quickseller was about to pull a Master-p scam but he got stopped, unfortunately there is no way to know if a trusted escrow is going to do it or get hacked. There has to be some other verification that can't be hacked or at least not at the same time.

who is theymos and why would people verify themselves to him ? He is no authority and he can't help people in any legal case.
Even after knowing the people behind the scams the authorities don't seem to be caring about bitcoins these days.It's of no use.

Thank you, I was going to say that I don't use those services either and OP might want to think twice before throwing all that personal info out there for all to see.  

And yep there are no foolproof methods to stop scammers.  I too think account sales should be banned.  Everywhere.  

Now in the other thread they're saying that Master-P might be a minor, which would be disturbing.  Yes, I agree that these companies who offer sig campaigns should know who they're dealing with.

Edit:  Holy Christ Quickseller, you should talk about escrows not wanting their identity to be known after your whole fucking "self-escrow" debacle.  I don't listen to a word you say about escrowing.

I don't think this is true. Back when John K. was having escrow problems (there was a several month delay in him releasing funds he was holding in escrow), no one seemed to know with 100% certainty what John K's identity is, and BadBear posted that theymos has not asked for his identity:


Moderators are given the option to either give sufficient personal details for theymos to complete a 1099 (a US tax doc) to report moderator earnings to the IRS, or to have 1/3 of their moderator fees be withheld and sent to the IRS. I would assume this is why OgNasty has given theymos his personal information/dox considering that he receives payment for holding the forum's money, and that other treasurers were given similar options.


I would however agree that the majority of escrows would not be willing to give up this information, and a good number of them probably do not even have any of the types of accounts listed in the OP. A major feature of Bitcoin is privacy and many people who use Bitcoin value their privacy. Plus even if an escrow's personal information is publicly known, money could still be stolen by such escrow if they were in need of money -- just look at MtGox, Mark's personal identity was public but that did not stop him from embezzling money from Gox customers.

What is this for? So I can send a bill when the escrow steals money from me.
How is someone suppose to verify this? All of the above are commonly traded on here and elsewhere. It is really not all that difficult to get a mailing (billing) address anon

No one would agree to this. The only people who verify to Theymos are people that hold funds for the forum. I do not see how it is the forums job to moderate escrows.

Its not about selling accounts its all about the escrow services. Most of what master-p scammed was from sig campaigns funds and driven the forum crazy because there was too many people got affected and he was being a trusted escrow of the forum so it is very alarming to trust people to escrow your money even he or she is trusted.

Yeah, I was meaning to make the "supposedly" sound skeptical of the account sale.


link

Maybe a special report sale of accounts button somewhere on the site. People can free report if they see a sale of accounts and ban the sellers also. Make it again a great community without the rotten apples.

anything can be sold, from email accounts, private keys, personal (official government issued) documents, you name it.
also, i think people havent gotten the update in that thread. theres more evidence pointing towards an exit scam rather than an account sale at this point, the claim of having the account sold is probably a cover up.

ban or not, account sales will continue offsite. just because heroin isnt legal doesnt mean people arent finding ways to buy it.