Topic: please delete - page 3. (Read 18351 times)

You can pay for the bitcoins with ripple and then settle the debt with your friend using cash.

You do know about the #bitcoin-otc channel on Freenode IRC network, don't you?

Right now people even mention exchange of bitcoins for fiat out in public there.

Maybe someday we'll need to know some secure, encrypted way to contact the people we learn to trust there, and knowing their GPG codes from back in these good old days we'll be able to know it is really them when we contact them through some crypted channel.

Thanks to #bitcoin-otc I do know a few people who use bitcoin and are willing to trade them.

I don't know anyone locally in meatspace but so far #bitcoin-otc has sufficed for my needs.

-MarkM-

Yes. Centralized trusted exchanges, similar to MtGox, Tradehill, or Bitcoin7, all susceptible to laws, regulations, errors, seizures, shutdowns, and being central targets for attack. The unsolved problem is p2p exchange. I fear that problem may not be solvable.


Friend to friend and trust (with a sword as an incentive). I do believe that system (like Ripple) will work, but my problem (and I'm sure it's one I share with others) is that I don't have any friends who use Ripple, and maybe one who uses Bitcoin. There's no Ripple network for me to hook into
Maybe eventually the network will be that of stores you can walk into who can exchange your fiat for BTC for you in person, with a proof of I'd and other things.

People exchange actual commodities for fiat regularly/constantly, it happens all the time.

So obviously the problem of how to deal with the reversibility of fiat has already been solved.

But, the solutions might not be very scale-able down to individuals who only occassionally sell something in return for fiat.

The suggestion users of Kijiji are given is only accept cash in person.

Basically being a seller in today's world is not very scale-able. If you aren't going to do enough trades to package your statistical losses from chargebacks into your price without thereby driving your price up above what people are willing to pay, you are likely to lose customers to a larger / higher volume merchant. So maybe commerce itself is not really very susceptible to decentralisation nowadays? Maybe if it ever was it was only because the technology had not arrived to allow really large operations?

On the other hand, there have been worldwide networks of money-changers and money-transmitters operating without regulation (other then by themselves / their network and their customers and how many troops / thugs their customers can raise up against them) for centuries. How did they do it? Maybe friend to friend, basically? Trust networks?

-MarkM-

Physical commodities are irreversible as well, just like Bitcoin. I guess if we use cash in envelope delivery for exchanges...

Fiat is just another commodity. So you might as well be thinking about how to exchange irreversible, blockchain-based currencies into in any commodity in general instead of worrying about fiat as if it is so special.

Besides, if you can convert it into alpaca socks you can in turn convert those into fiat. So solving the problem for "goods and services in general" is maybe where we should be looking when thinking about fiat. Instead of thinking lets convert into fiat so that we can buy "things in general", leave fiat out of it and just convert directly to "things in general". Then if you really, absolutely cannot live without fiat, convert some "things in general" into fiat.

-MarkM-

I think the only possibility for what you want is to have ripple in the middle.

Anyway, I still think that a decentralized exchange btc/usdCoin has many advantages. Even if you still have to convert usd into usdCoins.
For example, some people keep dollars in an exchange and only buy bitcoin when they're going to spend them to avoid price fluctuation risks.
But they have other risks by doing that. For example, the exchange gets hacked, the attacker sells all your usd for btc and they're gone. Fishing attacks, the exchange can easily manipulate the market by showing false data...
They could store the usdCoins on their computer and avoid all those risks and disadvantages. They can backup those dollars, etc.

So, yes, the idea of usdCoins and decentralized exchanges has value even if it's not the holy grail you're looking for.

Although I defended chain based usdCoins earlier, now I think that having a centralized there's not much added value in having decentralized accounting. An OT-like minter can do the accounting himself. If instead of the OT scheme, the coins were sent to public keys, you could have decentralized trades with bitcoin. Those coins would be as traceable as bitcoin (for the minter, much less for others) instead of "OT untraceable". I really think there's no difference, but fellowtraveler hasn't clarify that to me (or he didn't undesrtand me).
I have to rewrite it, but it could be something along these lines.
The idea is mostly inspired in the decentralized ripple protocol and open transactions, but with offers of trade of IOUs instead of credit lines (ripple) and without the so called "untraceable cash" (ot).

And not letting it happen without surveillance is a holy grail of despots, fascists, etc... oppressive/repressive governments/thugs in general.

Every over the radar / over the counter purportedly irreversible fiat-outlet other than person to person physical cash ends up reneging, basically.

DId Liberty Reserve renege yet? How about Pecunix? Egold tried not to and look where that got them.

So unless you want to mail paper money in unmarked envelopes or meet strangers in bars/cafes/alleys for hand to hand transfers friend to friend looks a pretty likely method of initially getting irreversible currency.

Maybe one could also consider saying outright heck I don't want your stupid fiat, how about accepting some of my cryptocoins instead of currency for whatever it is you do that people give you the fiat for in the first place...

...Which, if it turns out not worth buying, maybe just says even more about the fiat world: it pays people to do crap that shouldn't be done in the first place...

Okay that was uncalled for. What I mean is, don't come to me looking for bitcoins, ask your frickin' employer to pay you them.

-MarkM-

This comes right back to my original point that our main, used by most, currency is NOT blockchain based. Exchanging blockchain to blockchain is very trivial. Exchanging what most people use into blockchain is the holy grail of exchanges.

Isn't the obvious solution to have both currencies blockchain based?

I guess friend to friend is different from peer to peer, since peer to peer seems to mean neither person trusts the other.

It still seems most likely that the problem of converting reversible to non-reversible will be best handled on a friend to friend level.

Once you have irreversible currency of any denomination, converting to bitcoins is suddenly a whole lot easier.

I doubt if you can avoid some degree of centralisation, for example if you use some kind of web of trust it is likely that some people will emerge as more trusted than others. That is a degree of centralisation as they become more and more central the more their trust score outweighs others'.

How do you propose to secure an exchange with no trust without having both currencies being exchanged be blockchain based? Even if some kind of "smart property" is one side of an exchange can you really be sure the "smart property" has not been tampered with or will not be tampered with by the time you take delivery of it? Most likely the proof of ownership used for its smartness will be a blockchain?

-MarkM-

I am apparently still missing it, because the thread topic is on a P2P exchange, with the premise that Fiat <-> Cryptocoin centralized exchanges are vulnerable and bad, and he brought up the idea to bypass those exchanges using cryptoUSD. If his whole point was "this currency backed by... something... and maintaining dollar parity is more stable and useful," then he's post is totally off-topic. If his point was that a stable BitUSD will make exchanging into Bitcoin easier, then I just don't get it.
Regarding borrowing $30 for Christmas example, frankly, based on how pegged currencies have performed historically, I'd take my chances with floating feat But that's a totally different topic.

I think you are still missing it.

It is IRREVERSIBLE DOLLARS.  The same irreversibly, decentralized, and peer to peer aspects of Bitcoin but for a "semi-stable" dollar equivalent crypto-coin.

He is pointing out the irreversibility not because it is somehow superior to Bitcoin or that you would need it to get Bitcoins but it is superior than Paypal, credit cards, ACH, checks, etc.

Okay, here is a scenario for you.

You ask around your dorm to see if anyone has any cryptocoins for sale so you can try them out.

One guy says "sure, I can sell you bitcoins, only $30 each, grab them while they're cheap, they'll be $100 each by Christmas".

Another guy says "sure, I can sell you DigiBucks, only a buck each, they're just a digital token representing bucks".

You buy $30 worth of each, try them out. You decide the stupid clients are too complicated, the offline wallet abilities are too complicated, the whole darn thing is too complicated. You really try mind you, heck you try all summer and fall.

Finally it is time to go home for Christmas. You tell both buddies you tried your best but cryptocoins are not for you, so you want your money back.

One of them says "are you crazy, have you looked at the price lately? That bitcoin is worth no-where near what you paid for it, no way I am giving you your money back, I got Christmas presents to buy."

The other says "no problem, how many you wanna sell me? Oh 30 was it? No prob, send them to this address. Thanks. Here's thirty bucks. Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year."

-MarkM-

I was questioning the difference in the act of exchange. Regardless of the value, I can buy BitUSD at 1:1 ratio, transfer BitUSD to my wallet, then do a charge back to get my original USD back. The only difference between this and Bitcoin is I have stolen $1 worth of BitUSD instead of $5 worth of Bitcoin. I.e. reversible to irreversible exchange can not be solved by calling Bitcoin by another name, or by pegging its value. So I was wondering why cunicula kept pushing it.

The difference between the two is obvious.  In the former the value of your digital holdings is tied to value of USD.  The value of your holdings in the later is independent of USD.

Then you should give a look at Jtorchat
It's the Java client with the same protocol

Some clients have been leaning toward Torchat as a transport mechanism, or as sample code for how to set up connections. Apparently Tor itself normally only takes about three hops to connect to stuff, whereas with Torchat both parties reach out three ore more hops to set up rendez-vous. If that actually does provide better security maybe it is worth looking into.

There are gosh knows how many chatbots floating around so maybe one could be adapted to do a ripple type credit system on a friend to friend basis. I do not know whether ripple's basic concept - that friends can be trusted to settle up in a reasonable timeframe - actually works, but if it does it seems better to set it up on an actual friend-to-friend basis than to have "servers" per se.

I actually already suggested earlier that maybe if you aren't in a hurry you might be able to "exchange" simply by offering a higher exchange rate for the currency you want and a lower rate for the one you are trying to "sell", and basically all be running friend to friend trading-bots. Your friends' bots will notice you have raised your offers for the currency you want, and presumably "arbitrage" it with their friends and so on. Of course if each hop involved fees that might stifle exchange a lot over multiple hops...

-MarkM-

Where is the "trader bot" running?

@Rassah

1) Having "fiatcoins" is a great advantage over centralized markets the way they're now:
The server can know all your trades and balances, get hacked exposing that data, etc...
There's many advantages that bitcoin has over bank balances apart from having a fixed monetary supply.
You still have to trust mtgox  (or whatever) as the issuer. As the ones that hold your fiat. You still have to pay them the fiat through regular banks unless they accept cash, ripple credits or something else, but the irreversible fiat would still be very useful.

2) With Ripple you can pay for bitcoins if there's a trust path between you and the seller.
In the same way, you can sell fiat for ripple credits and viceversa.
Making atomic trades between bitcoin and ripple would be great.
Feel free to ask anything about ripple.