Quote from: 3r197 on January 21, 2016, 11:47:04 AM

Quote from: pugilist555 on January 21, 2016, 12:08:18 AM

Quote from: Munti on January 20, 2016, 10:33:35 AM

Quote from: DeezCoinz on January 20, 2016, 06:55:41 AM

Hey.

I've been thinking about DDE. Often people sell things because they need the money. Suppose I came up short on cash to pay the rent. I have a pretty nice guitar that I decide to sell on the Bitbay Market. I want $1500 for my guitar. Someone likes my guitar and agrees to buy it for $1500. With DDE I have to deposit $1500 in escrow to make the transaction, correct? My problem is if I had $1500 to deposit, I'd probably use it to pay the rent and keep my guitar.

Is this a bad use case or am I missing something here?

Do you have the client installed? If so, try to use the sell coins template. On the first page it says "use recommended deposits and settings" You can change that to custom settings. If you do you get the option to define your DDE yourself both for you and the buyer. So if you want it to be zero, it's (almost) zero. There is a minimum of 5500 Bay for deposit.
So you can sell with (almost) no DDE. And if your buyer knows and trusts you, that might be fine. The real question is if a stranger would buy your guitar if it's listed amongst other guitars that offer DDE. I think not.

That makes sense. So as a seller if I have a good rep i can sell products with low DDE or zero? Glad you cleared that

I believe Munti meant '(almost) zero' because you still need some miner fees for bitmessage to process the item for sale and the transaction with the potential buyer. I think it's the same concept as bitcoin's anti-dust policy - and it helps fight against spam

If you are a seller, since the buyers money is advanced to escrow if you put zero the risk is still somewhat smaller for the buyer. 3r was saying that its close to zero but actually the guarantor contracts allow for zero deposits. Which is useful the new users of the markets. The buyer in a guarantor contract can then put a smaller deposit with the seller having zero or smaller deposits. In the end even with a small deposit, you don't want to lose money.

For example, seller is selling guitar worth $100 he doesnt have much to deposit so he deposits $10

buyer deposits $20

In the above case would seller forfeit $10?! Probably not, people don't throw money away for no reason. Although sure, there is a small risk he stops caring.

When the buyer receives the guitar and needs to sign for it does he want to forfeit the $20 deposit?
No why would he? Besides, he received the item, is he really willing to destroy 120 dollars not to pay for the item received?

So the idea of forfeit in a small deposit use case would still be illogical. Combine this with a reputation system like we have and i think the odds of default are still LOWER than the odds of getting scammed on E-Bay. (Because in e-bay there is a way to PROFIT from a scam whereas in the above scenarios its only a LOSS).

Besides, the hope is that honor and the "hand shake deal" will finally be restored to society. Back in the days before stupid laws and frivolous lawsuits, people used to use their word literally as their bond. Honoring your word meant everything. In this case we have the added bonus of a penalty built into any contract. Reinforcing trust.

And if crypto was to take off and be popular its hard for me to imagine business being done any other way.

Because if you use traditional escrow, on international contracts where laws vary from country to country there is literally nothing stopping people from default or theft. (Mt Gox)

Even laws in the most developed countries are not very effective and maybe its because there is no deterrent inherently built in to our contracts.

In any case, shouldnt there always be a small penalty or incentive built into every contract?!