It was great to see large companies like Overstock, Expedia and others to start accepting bitcoin. Now its time for the next step. Multi sig has been around for a while, and can be used with a 3rd party arbitrator. Traditionally credit cards will act as an arbitrator, think of credit cards as having 180 day escrow, the time limit for chargebacks.

most big companies use bitpay, and bitpay does some vetting to make sure the company provides good service. but bitpay still expects you to send direct.

while they companies are trust worthy, and will correct issues with product quality, they are getting people comfortable with sending direct, with no form of protection. new users who are just getting started have no awareness of the issue.

Many people like to support smaller businesses. and there are lots of great small businesses out there that will do everything they can to provide good products/services. But there are many fake small business scammers out there. Escrow can protect against this.

Sites big and small could get hacked, users could end up on the wrong site, and blindly send btc to the wrong address. and arbitrator might catch this.

arbitration is not perfect and can also have issues, or an arbitrator could be a scammer. Its important that arbitration be decentralized, not just one big company like bitpay, but lots of individuals.

When the consumer losses out due to scams the consumer is a direct victim. but it also hurts the crypto community, giving a bad image, and good businesses end up with customer base that has less money to put towards the good businesses that deserve it.

There are a few ways to go about using escrow with multisig. The first is direct wallets, with manual setup. Electrum and Copay/bitpay wallets are wallets that support multisig. the most popular way would be a 2 of 3 wallet. where 2 signers out of 3 people are needed to finalize a transaction. if everything goes well the buyer and seller are involved. if there is an issue the arbitrator will review evidence, and side with one or the other. Manual also allows for upto 10 signers) The other ways are a more automated way of doing the same thing. Bitrated is one of them. the buyer will select someone they will be buying off, and an arbitrator. it also allows you to link social media, and has a rating system based on your social media following/reputation, and your trades on platform. The other popular place is OpenBazaar. In OpenBazaar2 anyone can be an arbitrator, there is also a verified moderator, that has been checked by the OpenBazaar team to be a good crypto community member. also altcoins can be used in OpenBazaar2. Bithalo is similar to openbazaar but with double escrow, this gives both buyer and seller more incentive to be serious and honest. I meant to play with it more, but i was inspired to start writing and get this out.

Bisq is an exchange, one of the only ones where you have the keys. currently the developer serves as the arbitrator, but hopefully in future releases it will be opened up to members of the community. Bisq is software that runs on mac/win/linux for exchanging fiat to/from btc or btc to/from altscoins. All other exchanges you don't have the keys, and should not be trusted as much as people do. Binance is looking to become more like bisq, but currently binance is centralized and has the key. as far as I know, no other exchange is working towards this for bitcoin. there are some other decentralized exchanges- forkdelta for eth tokens only. bitshares, and maybe a few others I haven't spend much time on, like nem, waves, neo, maybe eos- the smart contract coins.

Manual Multisig is good for private, and one time use, or long term agreements where the wallets can be left active. Bitrated is good for checking reputation, and setting one time offers. OpenBazaar is good for the seller to list items for sale. The seller will choose various acceptable arbitrators, and from that list the buyer can choose an arbitrator. Have a significant number of arbitrators to choose from (manual may be difficult to find).

An additional advantage to utilizing multisig for crypto enthusiasts is more people will be hodling potentially for a few hours, days or even weeks. This can drive the btc price up.

an additional issue, especially for projects that may take weeks or months is price volatility. you'll have to agree on if you are strictly priced in btc, or if you are using a fiat exchange rate at the start of the transaction, or at the end of the transaction. or you might give the option to be whatever is more advantages to the business or customer.

This opens up some spaces for new companies to become arbitrators, and certain people may like a well established arbitrator, while others might like the small individual arbitrator. Anyone of the parties could even set themselves up to hedge the exchange rate to make more interesting offers.

I would hope that those who are true believers will start using escrow soon, and get people in the habit of transacting safely. Overstock seems to be a crypto ally so I hope to see them start sooner. Expedia seems like they just care about customer demand and the profit, so I don't expect as much from. There are many other examples, I just didn't want to spend the time to go through everything. There's lots of people already on bitrated, and openbazaar, that maybe need a little reminder, just how important their part is in escrow, and keeping the crypto community strong

https://www.bitrated.com/opticbit

OpenBazaar Verified Moderator ob2: QmcscQDiCuTSGxBeMD9qyXwRMcbLU5m9P1kupojYJdFdoh (Me)

https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@opticbit/localbitcoins-ad-limits-hurting-the-community

Local Bitcoins Ad limits are not getting adjusted. Many of their limits are btc based. Some of them get adjusted when the price of BTC moves significantly. For a long time the minimum deposit to have an ad show up was 0.4 BTC. Its been adjusted down to 0.1 BTC and needs to go lower for many of the new traders. The ad limits Have not been adjusted. Each user can have 5 ads as a base. Then 1 new ad for every 1btc traded in a month. When BTC was $500 this was a resonable limit. Now that btc is over $5k it makes it difficult for many traders to maintain the trade volume to keep ads up. To buy and sell in one category it takes 4 ads if you use the trust system. Trusted ads are only shown to people that have been marked trusted. Many use it to offer trades with higher limits, and better prices to people they have verified as a good trade partner.

Pro-traders, a badge given to traders that have high feedback, and meet certain criteria have been asking for LBC to adjust these limits for months now.

When the Bitcoin price rises significantly, it attracts scammers, for multiple reasons. News gets around, and scammers like to get in early on stuff. It turns good people into scammers, they might be somewhat of a gambler, and when the price moves against them they do a charge back to get out of the loss. Scammers tend to create new accounts, and concentrate on a certain type of scam.

When Pro-traders (very unlikely to scam, but it still happens) can’t make ads in other categories, scammers fill in the gaps. Leaving people no choice but to think the offers are good.

Writing this and posting in multiple places is the best way I know to pressure them to fix it. The real pressure is monetary, but for them its unrealized as they continue to make good money. However they’re reputation is dropping, as the scammers move towards outweighing the good traders. People are moving over to other platforms, or trading outside the provided escrow which is how they make their money.

Other things they have done has caused a large number of support tickets, slowing things down for them. The iTunes category is full of scammers. They need a warning on the iTunes pages. There is a ***Money.Club scam that has been going around, and they lock people’s accounts when they try to send to a known moneyclub bitcoin address. There is a thread in the forums about it, but it should be a sticky or on the side. They’ve also changed things so that profiles cannot be viewed unless you have trade history with that user, or they have ads up. It also prevents people from using the block option if someone says they are a scammer in the forums. If support doesn’t get to the ticket for 3-5days, that people are left unable to do anything about it. They also need a sticky in the forum, or a popup terms to agree to so that people know The forums are not intended for trading, you need to use that ad section to get escrow protection. Multiple scammers post trade offers in the forum section.

LBC has put people in a Catch22 situation. Need more ads to do more volume, need more volume to have more ads.

An additional problem is the formula used, it is based on monthly volume. If a trader takes a week off for vacation the volume drops user snowkeld has suggested a different formula which takes annual volume in consideration.
Preferable to do 1 ad per 0.25/BTC + 5
Higher of past 30 days or 12 months/10
I agree with the suggestion, or something similar.

It is possible to manipulate the volume and some have offered to do that, two people could trade 0.5 one way, and 0.5 back the other way. Each one would get an extra ad and it would cost each person 0.005 btc (1% escrow fee). Currently about $33 each per month per ad.

LBC is one of the longest running p2p escrowed bitcoin trading platforms. Hope to see them do well.
if you check coin.dance you can see the trade volume for LBC, Pax, and Bisq. It is possible LBC realizes they are the biggest, similar to how some mining pools have become greater than 51% and have intentionally limited themselves, however i doubt this is the case.

Before LBC was
BitcoinTalk forum trading, no escrow, and
IRC #Bitcoin-OTC also no escrow (although you could use multi sig and use a 3rd person for escrow.
The web of trust is a very good idea.

Since then other platforms have popped up
Paxful (web) is the next most popular for P2P,
After that i’m not sure of the order of popularity between
Bitquick(web),
WallofCoins (web),
Mycelium (android only. Shame on Apple),
Bisq (Win/Mac/Linux), and
Bitrated (web).

Some other sites are doing p2p with alt-coins,
LitecoinLocal,
Liberalcoins, (BTC, LTC, XMR, Dash)
localmonero,
LocalEthereum,
localbitcoincash,

A friend was up late, he made a few mistakes last night... Searched for mtgox, instead of type it in to URL Clicked on Google Ad, instead of correct link. Didn't see the difference between mtqcx and mtgox. Didn't have 2 step set authentication set up..

I contacted Mike H. At Google and he quickly took the ad down...

Not sure of other actions he took.
I got him to add two factor today after an expensive lesson

64btc stolen from MTGox acct, sitting here. 12U4EvYfcMQXJD6okRLUWBaaeq8h3GN8X3
Any suggestions on getting it back, or catching the guy?

Trying to get my team going again. http://opticbit.triplemining.com

Out of the 175 people in my team, no one is mining.

Its also a little hard to contact many of you, I forget who I joined under, and I would bet many of you forgot you joined under me, just in case, I listed my team below.

would anyone mine in my minipool to get me to concentrate my mining power at triplemining?
If I made the switch, would anyone from my mini pool start mining again?

I'm thinking of doing some type of contest...
i might split my mini pool rewards for the first month- 1/3 To random, 1/3 to the top contributor, 1/3 for me.
My MiniPool Estimated reward would have to hit 1BTC someone would win an ASICMinerUSB.
i'll use the hash of my Triplemining payments as the random number

Lets get this going again.

asmfuxer, shundsy, IrhamR, flamedance, Krillsh, SnowyT, tr1cks, dargenso, Grimmjow, dklacy, novunus, NickSlikk, keinelust0815, Sarah1992, videodrome, nhoclonton, airmikec, crmedia, jh1281, nayone, xherax, rassad, Artemius, ndhie, gokudog, aureliopuente, strikegold, jarbi, matt2544, theSaint, eonseth, luxde, reppik5, sensi, Xtan911, stienski, namastey, rastaman, GregorioB, diversitea76, nugold10, agmst10, 5mil, xie1995, 13ryCoe, wsod, chiefdome, swordmaster223, wverboom, paranoid99, mojo31, optimus321, thorireo, balaualex, jpmarxjp, Storme, crimsontiger, li18nxboy, dutchessofyork, aasheesh, spotfgleaf, ZpankR, miuies, jonkomees, casanofa, kalivos, amason49, tradetheday, ayotte741, swedger, chris, giant, dazedsoul, goldpot, lineone11, syurs, jozefmak666, Snake956, hahar, deathrocks, ice71, polyfiend, 1563123123, nispoh, sinhlaobenhtu, thefumb, Sentiasa, BoJankins, lvbtc, vsnaresakira, peopledcloth, jacksons, LNLgodsking, fluffy1992, GreyGoose, ktg214, hunter9981, El3k0n, TheUrg3, swedishmob, Dieche, merve10495, idrogu, leonardof131, jb2g23, businesscat, hunting, EnvyMe, danton721, spurls, lesquid, imgoodish, tape4022, AlternateTK, timetraveler420, blazesto, kholdstare666, texassassin, bl4dey, Fugu, Esquisito, kingsminion, kingkatari, poolercooler, Captain, gNOME42, LeoNM, zhzh, michalis435, endlesslogic, Fanfan, exiledbliss, Av3NGeR, SecretAgentX9, thegrayman, CsO6mxLp0X, obonic, radiohead669, BlackMaster7, opticdemo, spoid, Gamegoofs2, feeperkeeper, abhiver, RICKDAPRICK, makeitwork25, h2oBong, mokujin, Psychonaut, KrashKing, kaevur666, cliffy92, BitCoinTwitrust, corpsy, wishkatah, hobble87, gravedigger, melpuzon, PurpleRanger, efvbji123, cubemike99, owlz, Xaeonis, nuyoricanguy, captainbiffle, wylion, malenita2002, sharasdf, OmeGa3, unmanahi, jusan, spyder3, yrral86, macintosh264

Currently Manual, and Building reserves...

Selling gift Cards of all types

All cards will be Actual price +5% + Card Fee + $5 x (mtgox rate)

Numbers will be sent via e-mail and encrypted with your pgp key, unless you specify you want it sent in the clear, or some other way.
physical cards will be shipped for an additional $1

Cards available

Green Dot MoneyPak
GooglePlay
NetSpend
iTunes
Walmart
BestBuy
Shell Gas
And Others

Buying cards I'll have to take some time to write out the process..  will have to check OTC - WOT.

Currently Manual, and Building reserves...

Selling gift Cards of all types

All cards will be Actual price +5% + Card Fee + $5 x (mtgox rate)

Numbers will be sent via e-mail and encrypted with your pgp key, unless you specify you want it sent in the clear, or some other way.
physical cards will be shipped for an additional $1

Cards available

Green Dot MoneyPak
GooglePlay
NetSpend
iTunes
Walmart
BestBuy
Shell Gas
And Others

Buying cards I'll have to take some time to write out the process..  will have to check OTC - WOT.

Today my GreenDot refillable prepaid card was shut off.

It was turned off because I was using it for business purposes.
apparently some advertising purchase triggered this, but they won't tell me what one.

I cannot open a new account with them.

Keep this in mind when using your green dot cards.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=10202.0

I was going to post some of this here ^ but the thread is locked.

Was going through my spam box to get an activation code, and found I have some new scams, one of them got my attention for a second, then I kept reading for a laugh...

Lets see some good ones.

I'm not going to put a bounty up for a prize for a new competition, but if anyone else would like to I think it could be fun, maybe make it an anual thing or something. I'll post the things that I got in the next posts.

Would like to see what comes of this next week-
Muck Rock requests info under Freedom of Information Act

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/view/united-states-of-america/bitcoin-and-silk-road/1385/

they left out a number of Bitcoin market Tor adresses

All the released info i can think of
http://cryptome.org/2012/05/fbi-bitcoin.pdf

I have been in contact with some people in Phoenix who would like to set up a local currency in Phoenix, AZ and create a fork of Bitcoin to support it. 

What should we do on how the currency is set up... 21m coins, block time, reward per block and all that goes into it.

Geting it started- editing the code, and launch?

Getting more supports?

Local Business Suport?

I participated in "Resistance is Fertile" in Tempe, AZ today. (footage on Tempe ABC 15 10pm tonight livestream.com/occupyphoenix no BTC footage )

While there I went into the Tempe Farmer's Market a few time to get something cold.  I talked with some of the employees and one of the owners.  The first employee I spoke with is good with computers and linux/android.  I brought up Bitcoin, He mentioned they were interested in other currencies and he suggested I speak with the owner.  The owner was interested.

 I had a BitBill in my pocket and used it to help explain BTC.  I was about to go back in to get something else, but grabbed my Casascius coin to show him,  he got even more interested. and wondered if I'd be willing to part with it.  I told him it the value on it was 1BTC but it also cost a little for it and the shipping, And that the current exchange rate is about $5/BTC.  I told him i'd part with it for $6, He wants to keep it as a reminder, and to show his wife and kids. He will be looking into BTC, and might start accepting it as payment. 

I wanted to hold onto my Cassascius coin till the values went up again, but I am more than happy to part with it since he is interested in accepting it at his store.  I'm placing an order for a couple more Cassascius coins on monday.  And I'll be checking back at the store next week.

I did a couple searches on Google, and in here, and went through my post history, I know there was a thread somewhere with some people who had pledged some rewards for getting local places to accept btc.

if its still active heres my post for it so its date stamped.

I just started talking to Fair Trade Cafe in Phoenix off Central ave.  I might talk to some artists tomarrow too.

http://hyipbit.com/?ref=16wdZpQ53BzgncDs3xb8BMecoGVQQh73mK

found them on some hyip site, havent seen them anywhere in the btc communities.

minimum is 2btc, and i don't trust this one enough to take the risk.

the send addy doesn't change on refresh, or in private browse mode.  i also sent .01 btc and it went somewhere in 4.5hrs

I'm working on building a site and have someone who is doing a lot of the work.  I feel like some of it might be redundant, and would like to know some of the common resources used.  I also appreciate many of the sites that seam to have this no nonsense sign up and use process.

the site I'm working on will be a classified ad site, and bitcoin will be the primary payment option.  Also need to know bitcoin api integration and security practices for running the site's wallet.

is there a list some where of the basic opensource things to add when setting up a site?

things like openid, a captcha, social media share buttons?

also things like the auto geo location, and I'm sure I'm missing a lot of the nice little features.

I know some stuff has to be done by hand, but why go re-invend the wheel when its already done.

only places I currently check out on occasion are github, sourceforge and softpeida's scrips area.

i used to used to check it regularly before I sold my mining rig.  I was mining on multiple pools, and had plugged the api token into the site, now I can't remember what it is, and I have looked in all the places I can think of, is it still around?

I'm using win xp and the gui miner, got it running fine most of the bitcoin pools, also ran it on a namecoin pool, no problems.

I've tried to mine on IXCoin and IOCoin and SoildCoin and it keeps timeing out or some other error

For solid coin I tried on sc digbit and sc guild, and bitparking, can't remember any other pools I've tried.

Its an old MacBook so its an nvidia card that does about 5mhash,  I know shouldn't be mining on a laptop... I'm just playing with it for a little while.  Not sure what I'm missing,  I've found that the opencl miner works best on the normal bitcoin pools, is something else needed for these alternative chains?

I was remembering the discussion about BeerCoin and it mostly came out as a joke

I was thinking It might be good to have a separate chains for Basic Necessities, Productive things, and Entertainment. And maybe some other thing I haven't thought of.

This would complicate things, and its nowhere near time to do it.  NameCoin is still much less popular.  Are there any other Active chains?  I know theres SolidCoin and a few others but does anyone take them seriously?

what I am suggesting, would need wide spread adoption of bitcoin first, and the NecessitiesCoin would be something like FoodStamps/Welfare/HUD.

Depending on what is going on with the economy Entertainment or Doing productive things could be more or less valuable, but could fluctuate more independently from each other.

Just something fun to think about

I was remembering the discussion about BeerCoin and it mostly came out as a joke

I was thinking It might be good to have a separate chains for Basic Necessities, Productive things, and Entertainment. And maybe some other thing I haven't thought of.

This would complicate things, and its nowhere near time to do it.  NameCoin is still much less popular.  Are there any other Active chains?

what I am suggesting, would need wide spread adoption of bitcoin first, and the NecessitiesCoin would be something like FoodStamps/Welfare/HUD.

Depending on what is going on with the economy Entertainment or Doing productive things could be more or less valuable, but could fluctuate more independently from each other.

Just something fun to think about

I'm thinking of doing a trip around the World in the next few months, for fun, experience, networking, and helping people.

If there is intrest and support from the Bitcoin community I'll only use Bitcoins (BitBills when internet is not available).
I will blog all major activities and transactions.  If a TOR blog shows up, it must be a stalker .

I'll be hitting every continent (except Antarctica).  And staying for about a week in major cities (or outlying) in the major countries along the way.  I expect this to be longer than a month (probably more than 3 months) and less than a year.  There is no set plan, and will not be one.

Biggest challenge I can think of will be getting over the ocean.
I've worked on Yachts and Planes so i have some useful experience with them.
Buddy Passes on Airlines/Cruiselines, for bitcoins anyone?  I used to know a few Ground/Flight Crew members.
or if value goes up enough, it might be a lot easier.

I'll do independent work along the way, and only accept BTC as payment.

I'll try to wear only Bitcoin branded clothing. (sponsors?) Medium size usually fits.  And maybe a few other communities like Reddit.
 
Might try to hand out bitcoin swag, if someone can provide something in bulk that is small light and cheap, or can quickly ship to whatever country I'm in.

I'm not very good at foreign languages, but its not too hard to get your point across using gestures, and it shouldn't be too hard to find someone who speaks english as a second language.

A friend was a tour guide who has been mostly to Australia, but also through Asia and Europe.  So I can contact him if I need to.  One of his friend's said I could couch surf in Australia any time I'm there.

I'd like to have one of my website ideas well up and running generating income for me be for I go,  I'm starting to meet some good programers, that will work cheap in the start up phase, but most are on their own projects. I might meet someone on the trip that has time and can work cheap.  Sometimes a Language Barrier and face to face makes things work better.

Anyone Know any good Trade Routes? (No Silk Road .onion type items) Just simple stuff thats cheap in one country and expensive in some other.  I used to do baggage inspection, sometimes I would see stuff going to other countries and one of the bags would be full of toothpaste or candy or something random.  Sometimes I'd see chocolate, not my responsibility so not allowed to do anything, wanted to let them know that customs would take it.  Also My dad's friends have a Convenience store/Gas Station in Costa Rica they bring different Candy down there all the time. Laptops seemed to sell for a good profit in Venezuela.  Everything was cheaper down there except electronics.

Any Suggestions on Activities?  I'm PADI advanced SCUBA certified, Student Pilot.  

Suggestions, Requests, Feedback, Other?

Edit: As suggested Wiki
http://opticbit.com/phpwiki/index.php?title=Bitcoin_Trip_Around_The_World
it is mediawiki not phpwiki

also the blog. 
http://opticbit.com/active/blog.html

Looking for some help with coding (I cant code much past hello world).

For now the service is Manual.

The problem: You have bitcions in an account, but not enough to trigger a dispersal. And the difficulty has gotten to high for it to attempt with your old GPU or cpu

you could have the small amount trapped in a mining pool, an exchange or some other site.

I will point my miner to your worker long enough to generate enough shares for a pay out.

you will need to provide a miner login and pass for me to mine on.  and either escrow the amount I need to mine, plus 10% of what I'm recovering, or give full access to your account (only works if pay out addy is not locked) and I will send you 90% of what was in there before I start mining.  API token would be helpful too.  OTC ratings might be used too.
Please keep your security comments to constructive criticism, I'm guessing if a person would use this service, they givin up on a mining account.

fee is 10% of what you are attempting to recover.  I keep whatever I generate.

currently I have about 1ghash/s available.

if I see enough interest I might set up a pool (useing the pool mining pool thats open sourced) for people to join that will work on recovering peoples small amounts, and reward the miners with a percentage of the recoveries.

opticbit.com currently has none of this service on it, depending on interest It will be on there, in the coming weeks/months.