Quote from: Itoo on May 09, 2016, 09:31:05 PM

So, I think what you're saying is that you, or some fine young entrepreneur should offer an arbitration service and try to create a market for it within the bitcoin space? Bitcoin isn't broken and doesn't need fixing. It was capable of arbitration before ethereum was thought of. All it needs is a service provider, and willing, paying customers. So if you believe in it, go out and do it with bitcoin as it is, and make consumer protection better (if you can find the customers).

If you're not talking about service providers being aribiters, then who would be this arbiter? Please answer this question if I've made a mistake in assessing the situation.

EDIT: changed 'private entity' to 'service providers'. There doesn't ever need to be one arbiter, and the arbiters should be market participants subject to competition, not some form of government, as seems to be implied. If that's what you're after, go somewhere else. Go do something with Ethereum, as you're keen to mention.

There are many ways of doing it. OTC Exchanges (Localbitcoins, BitBargain) and marketplaces have the model where the service provider is also the arbitrator. Bitrated and Openbazaar has the model where the arbitrators are separate.

In OP I write about moving away from governments

> Many in the bitcoin community are libertarians who want to stop relying on the police and courts. Moving away from using the legal infrastructure of the state doesn't have to be for political reasons, it's also much cheaper to avoid lawyers and legal processes.

Bitcoin's script is perfectly capable of implementing consumer protection with multisig and time-locked opcodes, there's no need for altcoins.

Quote from: Itoo on May 09, 2016, 09:31:05 PM

EDIT Again: After reading your comments above about the arbiter being a merchant, that's fine. Is your main point that wallets should provide for this service? That's fine too. Is this post geared toward merchants? It sounds like it's calling out a problem with bitcoin, when it's actually just calling out a potential service within the market. That service has it's place, but it will likely not get much business soon.

I'm calling out the entire ecosystem. Consumer protection would have to be implemented in wallets, payment processors, marketplaces and most other services. I'm guessing it would look like something along the lines of the bip70 payment protocol.

Quote from: Chris! on May 10, 2016, 03:15:51 AM

I was trying to think of the solution to the whole 'no chargeback' Protocol when I started using Bitcoins. I find that I never really spend any significant amount of Bitcoins and one of the reasons is if I get a bad deal I can't do anything (if I'm dealing with someone sketchy). If I'm looking for cheap electronics on eBay and I'm assuming a few cords won't work when I get them, I don't have to worry about their 97% feedback, I'll just say "2/10 of the cords don't work, send 2 more" and 2 more are sent. I find that if I were to deal with someone on bitcointalk and they have 97% reputation I would just avoid them entirely and not waste time/effort. I know people use a lot of escrow services on here, but what do you do in real life? "Go to bitcointalk.org, set up an account and send this guy $350 in BTC then I'll ship it out to you". It seems just as sketchy if not more sketchy to a random person and the deal is over before it starts.

Yes that's right. Your actions are a natural consequence of no consumer protection.

It should be built into wallets, payment processors and marketplaces so it's effortless.

But note with bitcoin you'd be able to choose your arbitrator, unlike with credit cards where the payment network and arbitrator are locked together.

If by "real life" you mean meeting up in person, then you don't need consumer protection there because the delivery and settlement generally happen at the same time, plus you can examine what you're buying beforehand.