Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I would like to establish myself as a trusted personal escrow provider.

However, as you know, it takes a great deal of trust to use an escrow provider since it only makes sense to use them if you can trust the provider MORE than you trust the person you are dealing with. Since I have no history on this forum, this will be a difficult thing to accumulate. That's where I am asking for your support.

I am looking for people who would like to use me fee-free (tips accepted of course) to act as an Escrow Provider. I am hoping for VERY SMALL transactions that involve limited risk to you so that I can prove myself to the community early on.

I can provide personal references if requested via a PM.

The process will work like this:

1. You and the other party will provide and agree on an agreement to me.

2. I will take the payment of the buyer into an individually provided wallet and provide the address to both parties so that details can be followed on the blockchain.

3. Once the seller sees that the funds are in the wallet, he/she will provide the item agreed upon as previously determined.

4. Once the buyer confirms receipt of the item(s), the funds will be provided to the seller (minus minimum recommended fees)

Please keep in mind that I understand that I don't deserve your trust (yet!) and that I am offering this service free of charge so that you can recommend my service to future users. If all goes well, I will be able to set up a full site for this service. But we are starting with baby steps!

Thank you for your consideration!
-Jumpy

This would take off more if you waited until you were a regular Member or even a Full Member before offering an escrow service.

Not only that... this looks like one of those "I want a 1000 BTC loan so start loaning me 0.1 BTC, then 1 BTC, then 10 BTC... I'll be sure to pay them all back!" with the intention of scamming massive amounts once credibility is established.

I understand that it looks like a scam, which is why I am not asking for huge amounts of money.

I know its a long road to credibility, and I'm not asking you to trust me now because I am aware of how unreasonable that would be.

I'm looking for somebody that is making transactions denominated in SATs, uBTC, mBTC to take a flyer on me as a favor. Right now, I'm asking for something more than I'm offering something.

I know you want to have higher ratings and more rep, etc. but if nobody starts by risking a very small amount of BTC with me, I can never get there.


Finally, thank you for not being trolls and simply expressing your concerns/suggestions.

select John K.

Credibility and trustworthiness isn't something you can buy by handling cheap transactions honestly. Credibility and trustworthiness is something that takes time to earn. If you are an active participant in the community and strive to maintain a good reputation in everything you do, it will eventually become obvious that your "name" here at bitcointalk is more valuable than the transactions you escrow.  People then start trusting you with escrow, because they feel that you'd be giving up too much in a reputation that you've worked hard to establish to make it worthwhile to run off with the bitcoins.  You'll need to put in about a year of active participation in discussions, and effort to assist others before anyone but the most gullible will trust you with as much as a single bitcoin.  There is no fast and easy road to a real reputation.  Reputation is hard earned and easy lost.

DannyHamilton, I understand your points and agree with all of them. Thank you for taking the time to post.

I am not trying to do this quickly or easily. The fact is that I do not have another business interest apart from my brick and mortar business in BTC means that this reputation is not going to 'just come' to me through being upstanding in my normal transactions. This is why I am seeking transactions that may only be mBTCs or SATs, just so that I can find people that will give me the chance to earn this trust.

I am pursuing this through asking friends to use me as an escrow partner, but escrow is actually more secure if I don't deal with people I know. That's why I'm asking for the help of a stranger.

Once again, I DO NOT expect your trust to come free and understand that there is a long, hard road ahead of me before I could even ask for a fee for this. But I want a chance to show the community that there are upstanding, morally conscious people out there and they want to use their trustworthiness for the good of the community.

Yeah, wait a year or something. That's what I did. Go actually do some buy and sell as a buyer and as a customer of various goods and services. Buy bitcoins. Sell bitcoins. Buy miners. Sell miners. Make a little profit so it's worth something, don't just do tons of small "useless" transactions.

Sell whatever it is from your brick and mortar business.

And even if a lot of people trust and like you, a simple honest mistake can be costly. It's how you handle it then that people see what kind of person you are.