Bitcoin Forum

What do you think about a site allows users to attach identity to a bitcoin address? It allows users to trade anonymity for trust. One could verify different pieces of identity such as email, phone, facebook account, physical address, id, etc... and earn a score for what they verify. The information would be kept secret while the score could be looked up by anyone. A buyer could see that "oh, this btc address has verified their home address with this third party, so I can find out where he or she lives should I get ripped off." Would you use this service to look up btc addresses? Or use it to verify your address if it allowed you access to better rates or trusted merchants? What about if you earned some BTC for each point of identity attached?

Theres parts of this I like and dislike.

What happens when someone claims they have been scammed?
Who decides if they have actually been scammed?

Are peoples details released/not released ? What sort of security could or would this provide?

I do feel in essence it may have some positive qualities though.

 

If someone claims to be scammed by a verified address then the victim has a legal recourse to subpoena the account details. The courts decide if there was actually wrong doing. Private account details would never be released without following the law. In the future, disputes over small matters between two verified parties might be able to take place through mediated arbitration outside of the court system.

The security you gain is that if you get scammed by a verified address you have a much better chance of finding the person who scammed you. Thus, people with verified addresses are less likely to scam in the first place. They can be held accountable for their actions. It also saves us from having to send a copy of our ID's and utility bills to 10 different web sites and it saves those sites the trouble of dealing with that information.

It has pros and cons, it's been done in other sectors and it is used by some big players as well. Biggest con I see is that it will become mandatory over time just like the "insurance scam", it's a self enforcing system. Second con who is gone pay for verification, in the end it's always gone be consumer so ...

http://www.fcsonline.com.au/Solution0055.html?id=11
http://www.gb.co.uk/gbgroup/what-we-do/verify-your-customer

Thanks for the feedback. I was aware of others doing similar things. It's certainly not a unique approach.

Maybe governments who are into all that should simply provide one of those log in anywhere things so any website can say like log in using Yahoo, sorry cannot conduct transactions if you do, log in using your national identity server if you want to conduct transactions...

(In other words, let the govt pay for the crap that they require...)

-MarkM-

That's a good point about regulations making in impossible for small business to enter the market.

Well I am not sure I'd believe a nation is serious about wanting websites to identify its citizens if it cannot even be bothered to provide such a simple standard tool as a login-anywere system...

-MarkM-

A part of the concept of colored coins that is being discussed in different threads https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106373.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106373.0), was to define also colored bitcoins that have different values based on the "social connectivity" of the profile, I.E -
Twitcoin.net http://twitcoin.net (http://twitcoin.net) connects your address to a twitter account, if twitcoins were also colored bitcoins then you could actually have a different "price" for twitcoins than for bitcoins, you would prefer to transact with user which you can see their social graph and transaction history. The same Dan easily be done for Facebook etc', offer services only to Facebook colored bitcoin ( bitcoin address that connected to verified Facebook accounts ).

In general KYC ( know you customer ) is a very serious and significant element of financial regulation today, it would make sense to have verified bitcoin address and services too.

I think this concept is referred to as "Identity Escrow". You can google that phrase to read other peoples' ideas about such systems.

Identity Escrow -- brilliant! Thanks again.

I was just thinking of something like this myself. I think it would be a great idea but you're right, exactly how much information to release and who to would be the big issue. Maybe the receiving user would choose to allow their information to be divulged to the sending user before the transfer by use of the UI.

The information that is verified would remain secret. Simply the fact that they have shared that information AND that it was verified would be shared. Big difference.