I was skeptical at first and then I look a more in-depth view at the thread, and the discord information - and it does seem like you've established yourself quite well in the crypto scene.
I personally like the use of using discord channels/servers to go through this stuff. It's a great job to keep all your customers in a single spot, makes everything seem way more legit. You just need to make sure that no one can impersonate you, make a couple of announcements and pin messages for that I guess.
Thanks, many people are definitely quick to judge and I don't blame them in this space. Those who do research or just look a little bit deeper can find out pretty quickly if someone is legitimate or not. Currently, the only way for someone to "impersonate" me would be through DM'ing other users on discord (but discord bots do this all the time and most people usually check for the real person anyway). All escrows are done using the server-side chat room, therefore it's basically impossible to be impersonated when a trade is created since only I have access to those rooms.
I have discord nitro, an animated gif (that can be easily downloaded) and a unique discord tag that helps prevent impersonation. The best method of contact would always be through going to the real server and clicking on my name and DMing me there. I am happy to say that I have not been told by anyone that they have been scammed by impersonators (just people that did not use escrow). I have banned one person who had the same name + profile picture that refused to respond when called out, but no scam occurred.
Why are you conducting business over Discord, instead of Bitcointalk?
I don't personally like leaving the site to someone else's platform, because then they have too much authority. People can be silenced, and kicked off of discord servers.
Here, there will always be (mostly) fair, and unbiased users who can verify things through quotes.
I guess I just don't understand why there is a need for off site escrow.
I offer services through bitcointalk, discord, telegram. In my second post (
) in the services section, I advertise bitcointalk escrow services at the bottom of my post and since that post no one has DM'd me or approached me on this platform asking me to escrow for them. It's just the fact that no one trusts me on BTCT or is interested in using me on this platform over someone else that offers escrow. (One party may want to use my services but its usually the other party that disagrees and they end up using someone else). I'm simply just not willing to invest hundreds upon hundreds of hours to reach "legendary" or some insanely high rank here as the requirements have drastically increased from before with the merit changes, etc.