How does this compare to other p2p services such as conffeine or openbazaar? I've been waiting for ages the day I can properly buy bitcoin through p2p without intermediaries, hopefully without getting scammed..
Basically, Bitmarkets is based on two party escrow and focused on privacy. Other markets rely 2of3 multisig and escrow agents but 1) agents have no means of fairly resolving disputes (as they only have one person's word vs another) and 2) 2of3 exposes the user to exit scams as both other signers may be the same party (this has happened many times in dark markets using 2of3).
This is covered in this slide deck:
https://voluntary.net/bitmarkets/slides/Bitmarkets.pdfIt's possible to use this system to exchange cash for cryptocurrencies by physically mailing the cash while being confident the other party will sign the payment once the cash is received as they will otherwise lose their deposit part of the transaction.