I just wanted to pop in and say that the volume of bitcointalk account escrow requests I've gotten since SebastianJu was banned seems excessive to me.
I would like to see escrow agents stop providing escrow for bitcointalk accounts. Besides being incredibly annoying and problematic, it is basically just assisting scammers.
Not providing escrow for accounts will only assist scammers even more. Accounts will be sold regardless so it's better a third party can ensure a safe transaction.
This is my conclusion also, staff and moderators have the possibility to check the trades that went on on the forum. I think that was the conclusion the staff came to after the test of account trades being banned. They happened anyway, only without any way to find out what happened. Trades done over private messages are different at least.
Besides. An account trade involves alot of work for an escrow, which means alot of time goes into. For example only checking the safety of the account with this checklist:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1362297.msg13863985#msg13863985Then those trades are mostly only $50 to $100, which means practically no tip for the escrow at the end. Mostly the traders are newbie accounts anyway and vanish without tipping or promise to tip but never anything happens.
Means escrowing account trades is more an idealistic thing for providing safety and making the life of scammers harder.
Though OgNasty, I wonder what you mean with the many requests. From November till february the 15th I escrowed 9 account trades and 1 of it ended refunded. So in 3,5 months only 8 bitcointalk account trades. Maybe you mean accounts priced lower than $50? I think I have around 1 each 1 to 3 days that I deny because it is a lot of work and the risk is not comparable to the work amount. That you receive so many requests for bitcointalk forum account escrows is probably not because of my ban.
I think you overestimate the amount of escrow trades I handle too. What you wrote me some weeks ago let it look like you escrow way more than I do and often enough escrow requests to me end with you because you are online more often.
The only difference in the kind of trades that I accept is that I often leave the buyer the choice to accept a trade at all. I explain the risks and that I only can provide protection up to the point where I released the coins to the seller. If the buyer denies then he is safe because of knowledge gained, if he still agrees then it is his choice then. At least the protection given is higher than without an escrow. It's similar to escrowing an ICO. One could claim that it is useless. Once the issuer receives the bitcoins from escrow address he can vanish after dropping his coins. But in reality handling escrows led to, I think 2 ICO's being stopped because I hold the coins three days longer after the altcoins were spread and wallets given out. It turned out that issuers might be found scammy in the meanwhile, not properly burned coins or connected to a scamcoin. So most investors prefer an escrowed ICO, except with trustworthy members as issuers. And it gives some more protection in normal cases too.
Well, I guess you know that already.