Quote from: btc_artist on February 16, 2012, 03:59:19 AM

Quote from: Mike3574 on February 06, 2012, 10:43:55 PM

Seller: Enter Dwolla login information. (It will be stored using encryption.)
Trader Bot: Logs into your Dwolla account and retrieves all necessary information such as your account balance and displays it inside P2P Exchange.

Um, no.

First off, my original post detailing the p2p exchange was more speculative than a definitive method. I was asking people to put forth their constructive criticisms and helpful ideas. "Um, no." is neither a constructive criticism nor a helpful idea. Things have changed considerably since my original posting thanks to people who gave their helpful ideas. I will either substantially edit or remove completely, the original thread in the days to come and post the new details.

Quote from: allten on February 16, 2012, 05:17:53 AM

So, in real simple terms, what is the motive to create a P2P exchange?
The biggest bottlenecks right now are banks and payment processor. Recent events are good evidence of that (paxum, tradehill getting ripped off, banks freezing accounts without notice). If we rely on Dwolla, then there is still a central point of failure and it may reverse transactions (See there TOS).

I appreciate your work and your thoughts, but in my opinion, it appears to me you are trying to cut out the wrong man first (the exchange).
Figure out a way to do away with the banks and then you are talking seriously cool disruptive technology.

Regarding the motive to create a P2P Exchange; Bitcoin is a decentralized system. Bitcoin itself can never be destroyed. It would only die if everyone in the world decided to abandon it and stop mining. Other than that, it will last forever. But there are actually things that can weaken the strength of a decentralized system. I call them "external centralizations". Bitcoin is decentralized and you can't change that but you could create centralized aspects outside of Bitcoin such as exchanges or mining pools. At first they seem like good things but having too much power in one area is dangerous. If Bitcoin became outlawed one day and all the exchanges were forced to close down, it would take a serious chunk out of the Bitcoin economy. It probably wouldn't completely destroy Bitcoin but would probably just force it into the underground. It would then be much harder to buy Bitcoins. Mining Pools are probably the most potentially dangerous "external centralization" because it has to do with the actual infrastructure of Bitcoin. If one mining pool gathers too much power there is the possibility a 51% attack can be done. The owners of the pool might be honest but what if a hacker was able to gain unauthorized control of that pool? He can then attack the network. That's why we need decentralized mining as well and I'm happy to see that there are people working on that. I wish them the best!

Dwolla is only one payment gateway that can be used. There will be many others (Liberty Reserve, Paxum, PayPal, etc.). I only used Dwolla as an example in my description. Since this is an Open Source project, theoretically ANY payment gateway can be used if someone makes a module for it.

Since fiat currency is centralized, I doubt there would be any way to possibly cut out the banks, etc. It's just not possible in the electronic world. Cash on the other hand does allow for this but is restricted to local business dealings. I understand your concern about accounts being frozen etc. In the current system we have for P2P Exchange, there will be no way your account can be frozen as a result of Bitcoin trading. This is simply because you will merely be sending money to another person. There is no way for them to know why you are sending money to that person. Your guess is as good as mine as to why person A sent money to person B. There is no way they can associate the transaction with Bitcoin.

Quote from: Rassah on February 16, 2012, 02:58:30 PM

I think the point is that Paxum and other banks won't deal with centralized exchanges, but their business is to move money between individuals, and if you use this system, they won't know if you're trading Bitcoin or just sending someone money. There won't be a single point of failure, that being the exchange's bank account, since many accounts will be involved individually.
Chargebacks will still be a problem with some systems, and I'm not sure how to get around that (force PayPal to send as gift? Use services that don't do chargebacks?)

As for using something like ripple, how do you get your money into ripple? And if it's a hassle, why bother instead of getting it into Bitcoin more directly?

Thank you very much for your comment. I wonder if using PayPal's "send as gift" function would prevent chargebacks. I really don't know anything about this but will look into it. If anyone has anything to say about this I'd like to know. As for the ripple method, a bunch of people have told me about that and I will look into it. But if we are successful in our current design there will be no need for ripple or any other "trust" method. You will be able to get your money directly into Bitcoin.

There are some that doubt we can successfully create a scam-proof peer-to-peer trading system without any sort of "trust" method. I have reason to believe that it IS possible and I am very optimistic. I do realize that solving the "trust" problem in a peer-to-peer trading system is probably akin to Satoshi Nakamoto solving the double spending problem. That might sound daunting to some but I don't let it deter me in the least. I accept the challenge! I've been told that I should receive the Nobel Prize if I succeed in solving this. My response to them is "Thank you for your flattering remark but they can keep their stupid Nobel Prize!" lol

Rassah, thank you very much for the time you've put aside to write those suggestions you posted a few posts back. And thank you to everyone else that posted interesting suggestions. I will put some time aside to review them all.

Quote from: Clark on February 16, 2012, 04:28:53 PM

Picture of the GUI got me hooked.

I've seen another thread about Dark Exchange (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27055.0), but it would be good to get ideas going in both places.

Haha! Yea! I'm getting that from everyone. I'm glad you liked my design. I've recently just changed it a bit and added in a section for Trade History. I think it's looking even better now. I might post more pics down the line.

I admire the efforts of Dark Exchange. It's always good to see other ideas working. Then, at least if I don't succeed there is still hope in his idea.

I am still looking for coders for this project so if you are a coder and interested in helping out please send me a Private Message. We currently have only one coder so any help to push this project along quicker would be much appreciated.

All Best,

Michael