https://etherscan.io/address/0x70faa28a6b8d6829a4b1e649d26ec9a2a39ba413#comments

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/shapeshift.io

https://www.mywot.com/scorecard/Shapeshift.io

https://www.phishtank.com/phish_detail.php?phish_id=5743325

https://domain.opendns.com/shapeshift.io

Don't sent your crypto anywhere without escrow.

Not sure if it'll get deleted


https://www.reddit.com/r/shapeshiftio/comments/95jx4y/shapeshift_selective_scamming_or_incompetent/

I haven't lost any coins on changelly like I have shapeshift.  But I avoid both now.  Bisq has escrow, you aways have some control.

My coins have been held for 9 days now.

Going to wait till shapeshift shows what they are upto.

Its been said not to send coins when there is no incentive to act on the promise- use escrow.  There is no escrow with shapeshift.

There is no escrow with most exchanges. Make sure you have the keys.

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)

Just saw this on Twitter..

I guess xrp has competition now?

I'll read a little.

Also hq is bycicle distance away from 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,

Yes, waiting for investment tokens

been waiting a week for my withdraw.

and a few days since i put in a ticket with no response.

KarenInSF is a reputable trader.

I Have completed multiple trades on multiple trading platforms with her.

Double check for bitrated link though.. above account is not the same as this one

https://www.bitrated.com/karenminsf/

I think new account is from forgotten password or something.

Got a link this thread in a message from her in a private chat. Waiting on verification from other accounts that that chat account wasn't hacked.

everything went smooth.

i didnt have to do anything, which is how it should be for the escrow agent.

I'm on there

https://liberalcoins.com/user/opticbit

Deposit and withdraw works.

completed a couple trades.

Hope to see ETH on there.

https://www.opendns.com/

will let you set up some filters.

My stomach wasn't feeling the greatest,  So I skipped the free alcohol and got a water, and a lap dance.

we spoke about the plans, they are open to everything, and welcome any questions.
only exception is that there will Be a famous DJ, but its not signed yet, so cant say who.

Links to Legends will be on the Centerfold's Site Soon (before launch day) to give them validity.

They also have package deals setup with hotels, limos, and jets.

They do a podcast mondays at the Palms by the sportsbook 3-5pm  I'm not sure how available i can make myself, but I will try to stop in.   If anyone has some questions they'd like me to ask let me know.  And can be found at the Gym Near Town Square.

I often goto Town Square, and have been to the gym.  Only reason I went to the gym was to check out the Mike Tyson BTM a while ago.  I do need to goto the gym more often I might start.

other connections are also being made for improving the adult entertainment to bitcoin/blockchain connection.

i tried to get a panorama of the member only vip area and bar, but one of the spots was in use.


BTM with legens logo
3 private members only vip rooms like this

I'm back home.

Tuxavant was there and got some pictures.

Peter was there and still might be there a little longer.

I think it was Steven that was going to show up around 12:30-2.

I got a couple pics too.  Not of the main area, that's going to get renovated anyway.

I'm at the club.

I noticed spearmint at the bottom of the page.

Part of spearmint Rhino?

I spoke with Brian from Spearmint Rhino a couple years ago. Got them set up with Bitpay and coinbase.  VIP/bottle service only for bitcoin, not for small value purchases.

I sent him a text to see if he has any connection.

Just drove by. Used to be called club paradise I think.  Now it's centerfolds.  Don't see anything about legends.

I'm. Not feeling great, but I'll try to stop in later tonight.

this is getting to be a popular thing.

Could there be a template that is more cash sized.

maybe something that looks like some of the paper wallets

Dr. Evil paper wallet
https://evilwallet.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/example1.jpg?w=917&h=488

found it, i was tired, wasn't used to the new layout.