Quote from: User705 on August 14, 2013, 06:36:49 AM

Quote from: Kluge on July 18, 2013, 02:21:32 AM

Quote from: mdopro1 on July 18, 2013, 02:12:57 AM

Some of these threads are scaring me a bit.. But then someone has to be trusted at one point. Are group buys safer?

I'd simply suggest to use escrow from a very high-trust person like John K, who I think will even do m-of-n escrow transactions to almost eliminate third-party-risk.

Another great security is to ensure you do business with people relatively local in case you need to collect through the legal system or appeal to relatives of the person -- at the very least, people within the same jurisdiction as you (and confirming ID is great -- a rather ghetto way of doing this, without relying on scanned gov't IDs, as example, would be to send a postcard with a code on it to the person's alleged address and have them relay the code to you when they receive it).

There are plenty of places to gather an idea of someone's trustworthiness, from WoT to the forum's rep system. Bitcoin (as an "ecosystem") has tons of functionality for determining trustworthiness and doing low-trust or no-trust transactions, but you need to be diligent. Even the largest-by-volume exchange, MtGox, has a terrible habit of fiat withdrawal blackouts of weeks, or in the current case, over a month - so certainly any company or individual can fail to meet advertisements, and that's why it's a great idea to get paranoid.

I've used John K but I've not understood this forums huge drive towards escrowing everything with him. It seems like the easy way out of doing any sort of due diligence. Seems to be the exact opposite of what bitcoin is all about. It's like John K became PayPal of this bitcoin forum.

Unlike Paypal, John doesn't have a history of abuse, doesn't blanket ban transaction types, and you deal with the same level-headed guy every time. Until there's reason to doubt him, I'd never suggest someone not use someone who's had the opportunity to steal millions of $ in BTC and never takes it. There are plenty of alternatives, but when introducing third-party risk, you want them to have a long and spotless history -- nobody fills that as well as John (speaking as someone who offers free escrow).

With all that - John IS an easy choice, so there aren't going to be many alternatives. Competition's always good, but nobody can out-compete him AFAIK, largely because he has such an established history, and asking less in fees than him is practically impossible. So while it's not decentralized - if you're serious about securing contracts, you can't do better than having the PM page for John bookmarked.

It's for the same reason I wouldn't recommend someone use a new wallet from a team nobody's ever heard of over the established and reviewed wallet software which's been out for years. Trust and reputation's worth a fortune when conventional legal systems are too cumbersome.