Bitcoin Forum

Involving a third party in a btc transaction defeats the purpose  of decentralization and bitcoin itself.

As we see more and more btc users are getting their bank account shut down without notice and exchanges dealing with fiat have to comply with regulation and ask btc users for private info.These centralized exchange could get hacked,you money and private informations stolen so they are no better than banks or credit card companies in my book.


Devs out there need to find easy ways to buy bitcoin without a third party, decentralized exchanges are a good start but needs to be more accessible and user friendly,but there is still this issue that the bank could shut your account down if they notice the transaction is bitcoin related.

ATM are also good as long as they don't require to scan your id but i can see this issue coming in the future...most atm already do require it.


so i had an idea about  an interactive map where buyers and sellers would be represented by a dot (say green for buyer,red for sellers) and so people would just use this to find the nearest person selling or  buying bitcoin.

Buyers and sellers would broadcast themself on the map at will when they are available to trade.

Buyers and sellers would have a reputation system with reviews etc..to avoid scams, users could deal a very small amount first say 5$ see if all goes well,since transactions are almost instant people could do like a 100$ trade in 5 times if they don't trust each other ,this would just take 5 more minutes or so, send transac ->give cash _>send transac --> give cash etc...and could be done in a public place


My idea was that there is no site/owner holding any btc coz this will inevitably be a point of failure, so its just a map with a rep system to find in real time people to deal with and a messaging system

I know you can do that with localbitcoins for example but this site is centralized and it takes time to arrange a meeting etcc.i thought an interactive map where u could see the nearest bitcoin vendor/buyer is a lot more efficient and u dont have to trust a site to hold your coins.

This would also allow more human interactions which seems to be in decline in our current society..sadly

Let me know what do you think?

You should check bitsquare project:

https://bitsquare.io/


It solves all the problems you've mentioned.

They're trying to raise funds through crowdfunding:

https://bitsquare.io/crowdfunding/

As for now, the project raised 39% of the 120 BTC goal, campaign ends tomorrow, but hopefully they'll extend it and try to get more attention (I wasn't even aware of that until yesterday).

Says its a decenralized exchange. A tl;dr of its features? How does it compare to, say, BitShares?

It's a P2P software therefore decentralised. If you're interested in its features just read the whitepaper:

https://bitsquare.io/bitsquare.pdf

I don't use BitShares, so can't compare these 2.

I thought we already have that. Check out Hive Android which is basically a wallet where you can search for Hive users nearby and interact with them whether to sell or buy the coins. I presume that is decentralized enough according to your definition.

But how do you know the person selling you isn't a fed setting a honeypot?
unless you do the transaction p2p IRL there is a chance that you are getting scammed.

Because they have source code: https://github.com/bitsquare/bitsquare

Of course, that still is not 100% guarantee they will do what they promised, but it shows they are actually doing something.

Thanks, didn't know about that, i will look into it.

Thanks, bitsquare project looks very promising .

You don't. Same as you don't when selling IRL for cash.

From whitepaper:

So if buying/selling bitcoins is illegal in your jurisdiction it will not guarantee you're 100% safe.


The are mechanisms protecting from scams. Check the whitepaper (https://bitsquare.io/bitsquare.pdf). I don't know how will this work out in practice and how secure will it be. We'll just have to wait and see.

So what happens if it becomes ilegal everywhere? thats scary, they could ruin bitcoin like this.
Even if its legal, im sure they could find some sort of law loophole to set traps.

The fact personal information are shared between parties before the transaction happens solves nothing. So easy to get fake ID's these days..

This just becomes a problem for people who either buy bitcoin with cash or people who sell bitcoin for cash at an exchange. I've used localbitcoin many times before. I've also used exchanges. There are many ways you can buy bitcoin without being traced but I've got nothing to hide and just using bitcoin because its useful, exciting and interesting.

How would you scam anyone with fake ID? Why would buyer/seller need your ID at all?

Government and bank people could do stings through this method.

The thing that needs to be done is for people to be freed from excessive regulation regarding Bitcoin.

Cash transactions DO have a third party. The third party is the most often, very silent, Federal Reserve Bank, that prints the cash.

:)

lol
Yeah, because the FED can't use fake id.

There are already multisig applications and even support built into the core protocol itself! It's beautiful, it's like cash that returns to the spender if the deal breaks. Let's hope we can overcome the insecure aspects of cash, I think those are the ones that are hindering Bitcoin's mass adoption!