Quote from: Ipsum on August 14, 2013, 11:25:55 PM

Quote from: Kluge on August 14, 2013, 11:15:15 PM

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.

Good to know, thanks!

The risk with John K is probably that he doesn't have an institution around him that can survive his passing. If he were to have a heart attack today and die (not wishing it on him!), is there a substantial chance that all the funds in his btc escrow account would remain there, possibly forever locked away? Does he have a contingency plan?

Hey,

I do have a dead-man's switch in place as all the addresses I use are cold wallets printed and stored physically in my safe. I regularly back my escrow list of transactions up to two off-site locations, and in the case of me and my family's incapacitation my family lawyer is authorized to release the funds accordingly with the list.

However, I still make it a point to not keep too much of escrow funds at once - I try to move through escrows as fast as possible to not have too much risk that I cannot cover using my own BTC funds at once. That's why escrows that might take longer (say, 2-3 weeks +) is charged a higher fee here. I don't hold more than 5k BTC in escrow at the moment, barring long term storage like the forum's funds (that I started to hold part of since I was a moderator).

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

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.

Well, the main function escrow is all about is to gain the minimal trust required to start trading - most users I've escrowed for (at 624th escrow now Wink

) eventually 'grow out' from using escrows to trade and start doing transactions of their own. As a long time Bitcoin user, I absolutely welcome this as this is the initial idea I had when I started offering escrow services. I was tired of users complaining to me that Bitcoin's system makes scams easy with the pseudo-anonymity allowed, and there wasn't a reliable infrastructure in place for people to trade safely and build up trust to ease transactions. PayPal is an altogether different beast in itself as there is still loopholes and bumps where scammers can still thrive. In Bitcoin, you can eliminate 3rd party risk altogether if you choose to use a 3-of-2 FA escrow implementation, where no single party can access the coin by himself. You'll just need to trust that the 3rd party isn't collaborating with the other party to scam you here.

(thanks again to Kluge for pointing me here! Cheesy

)