Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

Tired of sending coins without knowing if you will one day see them again ?
Tired of being scammed ?

I have the solution : an automatic escrow service !

Due to lack of users, bot is closed forever.

How does it work ?

Suppose Bob wants to sell 1000 YAC to the highest bidder.
Alice offers 25.5 LTC and tell Bob to send YAC coins to YMUCQGqCijZppG4mbeJQuN7hp17LBrQunA.
The deal is accepted by Bob and he asks Alice to send first 25.5 LTC to LS4oikyhtZCdMzGsqjDSidfvhmkgcrRxyV.

Alice is conservative and think Bob is maybe a scammer, so she decides to secure this transaction using the bot.
Alice simply sends a private message to bot describing the transaction she wants to make with Bob :

The last word of the subject must contains forum nickname of the user you want to trade with.
The first line must be what you will send, and the second line must be what you will receive.

The bot will generate two new addresses (LTC and YAC in this example) to secure the transaction. Each address will be send as a private message to Alice and Bob.
If one of the two users didn't send coins within 15 min, the bot will automatically cancel the transaction and send back coins to original owners as soon as they provide a refund address. Scam is over !

FAQ

Why I didn't receive an answer after sending a message to bot ?

If you don't receive an answer from bot within 2 minutes, it maybe means :
- transaction is under minimum amount. Current minimum amount to send/receive is 1.00 for Litecoin based altcoin, and 0.01 for Bitcoin based altcoin.
- altcoins your want to trade is not yet supported. Please check supported coins in FAQ.
- you made a mistake in your transaction description and the bot didn't understand it. Please follow example in section "How does it work".
- the bot is under maintenance. Please check bot status on topic title : OFFLINE or ONLINE.
- a bug occurred in bot. Please send me a PM with what you wrote to bot.

I paid/canceled transaction but received NOTHING AT ALL from bot since 1 hour !? What's going on ?!

First, please relax, calm down. Your coins are not lost and you were not scammed. It's probably a bug in bot.
Please send me a private message with the transaction ID of bot, txid of coins you sent to bot and description of what happened.
After some verifications, I will manually make a refund to you and fix the bug as soon as possible.

What kind of messages should I expect to receive from bot ?

You will only receive one message when you create a new transaction.
When you reply to bot, cancel a transaction (refund) or if an error/success happens, you will not receive any message from bot.

The reason is simple : the bot is limited by forum rules and especially "flood/spam rules". It was not designed to be a verbose bot.

How much time required to execute transaction once both users paid to temporary wallet ?

Currently the bot waits 2 confirmations on each side before executing transaction.
So if you used, for example, Bitcoin, it will requires around 20 minutes (10 * 2) to get your coins.

Can I trust the bot ?

Like any new service, it is always difficult to trust it. If you do not, you can always exchange coins as before.
Once the service will be used by a large number of users, the issue of trust will not arise !

Any fee for each transaction ?

During the beta testing there will be 0% fee. Once service is fully open, 1% fee may be possible.
Also even if there is currently 0% fee, there will always be a "txfee" of 0.1 (Litecoin based) or 0.001 (Bitcoin based) used to resend your coins instantly.

When the service will be launched ?

It's now open in beta testing since May 18, 2013.

How many coins are supported ?

BTC, LTC, YAC, RYC, FRK, PWC, GLD and WDC are supported. Each new altcoin will be very quickly integrated into the bot if you request it on this topic.

How much time coins are supported ?

As soon as altcoins reach an official exchange (mtgox, btc-e, bter, ...) they will be removed from bot.

Reserved.

This is such a great idea.  You just eliminated a lot of fraud right there with that concept! :)

This is an awesome concept!

But you should consider making the trade time like 5 minutes, no one wants to have their coin stuck with the bot for 1 hour if the other guy is a scammer or troll.

The trade time can be lower if many users think it's better. ;)

Watching this closely. I'm interested to see how well this works out.

I was thinking about the exact same thing yesterday, a website or some sort of irc bot that does escrow for you. Good work!

I think the benefit here is adding newer alt coins well in advance of exchanges, perhaps around/replacing google docs

Great idea, just be sure to include the flavor of the hour coins.

RoyalCoin support, cool  8)

i thought you offer other kind of escrow service with bitcoin....

awesome, keep up the good work
then do we need the exchange? lol

This sounds like a great idea. Hope you succeed.

This would be supremely helpful for the new alt-currencies.  If you manage to get it up and running then you're halfway to running your own exchagne too.

Enable user to specify number of minutes, either on a web form or (preferably) with the coin itself, as a comment or such. The # of minutes the bot will wait should be the lower of the two numbers specified.

I could see some double scamming potential :)

Nice, clean and simple idea.  They're often the best.

Don't go too heavy with the fee though - this has the potential to become the norm for young traders, I'd think .5% from each side would be plenty.

Any progress on this? If you get it to work, my services would happily be made unnecessary.

Don't worry, it should start soon, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. I experienced some unexpected difficulties during development. :'(
For example, how do you refund coins if the transaction is canceled ? ???

It seems easy on paper, you just have to send back coins to the original sender address. But that's wrong. :-\
If the user sent coins using, for example, an online wallet, you will maybe refund someone else : the sender address can be "shared" between all users of the service...

So the new idea is simple : I let user decides when he wants to cancel transaction and on which address he wants to get a refund. ;)

Great idea, good luck with it!

The service is now OPEN. It is currently in beta testing, and as such, there is 0% fee (excepting txfee).

Feel free to report any bugs or coins you want to be added. ;)

How do we know the ebot account is not just a scam?  This was posted by a junior member

A scam ? To steal what ? 1000 altcoins ? ???
I think there is faster way to do that than coding a bot for few weeks and delay it few times because it's not yet ready. ;)

Hi Nadia,

Is their a link to this Escrow service and can you also add Goldcoin.

 

What do you mean by "link" ?
It's a service that works directly on this forum, by sending a PM to "eBot". You should read the first post. ;)

I will add GoldCoin soon. :)

Make this into an automated exchange that updates!  With escrow this would be killer!

Sweet.  Coming from a guy who got scammed twice.

Who wants to test this with me?  I can send you 5 WDC and you can send me whatever.  Once you give me the address, I will PM eBot.

tb

You mind if I add this to my thread as an escrow service? Looks top notch!

What a great idea! This looks very, very promising..

That would be great, thank you. But please add it's currently in beta testing.

I will be willing to test this with someone. I'll trade 40 WDC for 1 LTC, which is roughly the current 100 WDC/2.4 LTC rate.

Let me know.

50 WDC for 1 LTC and I'll give it a try. :)

I'll do 50 for 1.2 :)

how bout adding Powercoins?

Not the rate I like but I'll do it just to try the service.

My LTC address:  Li1burPu7J4VVjDNJYVqVtJJLFsmBaQJGF

My offer still stands if anyone else wants to give this a shot; I'll trade 40 WDC for 1 LTC, which is roughly the current 100 WDC/2.4 LTC rate.

If you act within next 10 minutes I will toss is two bonus WDC or 42 for 1 LTC :)

Powercoin was already added, but not activated yet. Now it is. :)

As long as people keep scamming for 1000 altcoin then people have their right to doubt escrow and bot service. In additional people are trading altcoin for BTC and LTC . So yes unless the bot is operated by bitcointalk admin, the risk is the same as using escrow service.

Please add BitBar

And how do we do that?What are the commands for cancel transaction and refund address.

Good idea anyway and i hope its not a scam.  ::)

Nah its not a scam it works. in the bottom of the msg it sais "to cancel send a msg named "Cancel 4 to (your address)" to cancel.

Just made a trade with Devianttwo and it was smooth as silk.  Devianttwo initiated the trade by PMing eBot and then I got the PM from eBot to send the coins to a temp address.  After a few minutes, I got his coins in my wallet.   ;D

So you won't be surprised, .1 was added to the total amount of the trade.  In essence, it's not totally free but it's minute so I didn't care.  Now if it was .1 BTC, that would be a different story.


tb

This is txfee. Bot can't resend your amount on network if it doesn't pay it. It's network fee : 0.001 for Bitcoin networks and 0.1 for Litecoin networks. ;)

Ok.  Thanks for the clarafication.

tb

No more coins to be added ?  :)

awesome idea, pls add BBQcoin :)

Sorry I will not add any coins that are already on an exchange (bter for BBQ). This kind of service is to allow safe trading when the altcoin it not yet on exchange. ;)

then why do you support LTC BTC YAC ?

Simply because LTC & BTC are not altcoins. They are usually default coins to exchange altcoins.
Regarding YAC, I will remove it as soon as the service is no more in beta test.

ehm LTC is a altcoin. everythng beside BTC is an altcoin :P just because of default dosnt meen its not an altcoin ;)
anyway, i think this is a awesome service so you should support as many coins you can (even those on exchanges)!

This is amazing! Good job.

You should consider BitBars as a trading option.