Topic: [SOLD] 100 BTC for $1365 USD paid by bank wire to US account (Read 1522 times)

I've thought about possibilities in this arena as well. Essentially, having a website where you can put in bid and ask orders, and it will match you up when someone fills the order. Then the cash side will mail the money/bankwire/etc the money and the bitcoin side will sent the coins by escrow.

There are two things that an exchange facilitates here, though. The first is casual anonymity. Mt Gox may be able to identify you to the government because of their AML process, but this process requires the cash receiver to reveal some information about where they are. This is less than ideal.

The second is applying trust by proxy. In my system, you need to trust that the bitcoin seller honestly reports receiving the cash. Other mechanisms outside of cash by mail have the same AML issues as centralization. Even outside of that, you need to trust that the bid/ask wasn't just fishing, or applied on a lark, or that it won't be withheld when the price changes overnight. When you have an exchange you don't have to trust any of these things because the bitcoins are in the same place at the same time. I can see why you would want to incorporate Ripple because it also applies trust by proxy. Frankly I've never found the Ripple system to be that practical, but maybe I need to see it in action to get it.

+1  Yes, centralized exchanges are vulnerable to attack and anything that can be done to reduce this centralization would be great. Interested to see what you come up with.

I agree with annette to an extent: in place of "exchanges" I submit that it's the orderbook component that performs the critical function.  This could be decentralized.  The ideas circulating around the topic of Ripple might help fill that need.  The idea that an exchange needs to handle your money in the first place is what I'm effectively questioning.

One useful property of exchanges that doesn't exist on the OTC orderbook is that you can show up at an exchange with a wad of money and instantly satisfy a large range of bids and asks.  Using "I sent bitcoins" as a trigger for transactions brings much of that same ability to an OTC orderbook: someone can construct a big transaction to satisfy numerous offers and release it atomically.

I am in the process of building an escrow tool to help make that work.  In fact, I already have it functioning (the preliminary code is on github), now I just need to polish it so it doesn't have potholes... as well as properly document how it works in the Wiki.

Exchanges are good for efficiently finding the market price as well as regularly moving a lot of coins into fiat. I feel that exchanges are pretty much necessary for a business to accept bitcoin right now. However, for individual transactions, I agree that exchanges are not necessary, or even preferential.

Am I understanding correctly?

The blockchain enables empirically verified transactions.

Why do we need exchanges? All we really need to do is measure the historical community trust of individuals.  Isn't the bottleneck always trust from individuals on ebay, or even the exchanges themselves?

Just as an additional thing to consider, I don't think I would have participated in this, because my feeling is the value will be much higher pretty soon (we'll hit $14 by next week). I would rather be buying bitcoin right now than selling.

Missing one step.  Verify that this key belongs to the real casascius by looking at his ratings.  Someone could have (for example) created a user called casascuis and if you didn't catch the intentional typo you'd get a good signature, but from an impostor.

OK, it's been taken, and I have been contacted by someone who says they took it.  I will follow up with more information as deemed appropriate (depending on how much privacy the buyer wants).

No incentive to part with 100 BTC at this point.   The slow process is getting back into BTC while not losing on the exchange rate.   You asking a lock-in at basically the high price. 

If the price falls to 13.51485 or lower we will fill it but I imagine someone will fill it first.

Can't figure out how to do this on a Mac using gpgtools...

Mike

I'd trade with you in a second and accept the bank wire.  I'm just out of stock right now.  If you don't get this filled let me know.  Hopefully I'll have more coin later this week.

Thx.

Silly question.  Obviously it would become more appealing to those who are wanting to cash out more than 50 BTC and less than 100 BTC.  And if the mtGox exchange rate changes sufficiently, the arbitrage opportunity is ten times as large with a sale of 1000 BTC as it is with 100 BTC.

To be honest, I'm surprised that nobody has taken you up on the offer yet.  I assumed that there would be a few people who were looking to cash out 100BTC and would appreciate the opportunity to engage in a very fast and simple transaction with a very trusted individual.  I'm beginning to think that the only way anyone will take up the offer is if the current exchange rate provides a significant arbitrage opportunity.

Just so there is no confusion about the meaning:  If there is no activity, then nobody has accepted it.  If there is a transaction for 100 BTC, then it has been accepted.  Thus far, nobody has accepted it (if USD/BTC drops, I bet that might change).

Also I am curious: If I were to change it such that my offer was good for any amount between 50 and 1000 BTC (same price per bitcoin), rather than just a fixed 100 BTC, would that make it more appealing?

Thanks!

there you go Trader Steve:

http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewgpg.php?nick=casascius

... and in bash:
$ gpg --import /path/to/casascius/key
$ gpg --verify



the digital signature should be verified now.

Dumb noob question: How do I verify your signature? I believe I need your Public Key, correct? Where may I find it?

Interesting grammar question, but I think the intent is clear.  I'm not sure that a question about the choice of the word "somebody" versus the choice of the word "nobody" contributes much to the discussion about the experiment.

I'm not sure about the answer to the grammar question either.  If I was saying it, I'd probably say it the way Casascius did, but the usage that sounds correct to me could easily be wrong in this case.

should that read "that indicates nobody else has accepted it"?

Yes I will refund anything I am not buying, other than dust spam.