What is Escrow for beginners

[LearningGuy]

Hi all,

I’ve been looking through the marketplace and got really excited when I saw there was a second hand gpu market and I could procure some cards from people. Through this process I have found it very interesting in the views of scammers etc etc.

The one common denominator that I found was that using escrow was a trusted route, when searching the forum I couldn’t actually find a thread that informed me of what escrow actually is, so now I know I need to use it to buy, but have no idea what it actually means and how to go about it.

Please could you share what this is and how is noobs can use this service. If anything it will enable a greater market for you older guys as we noobs will actually have more trust and allow us to part with our precious currencies.

Many thanks

[bill gator]

Be extremely careful, most sellers in the GPU/Computer hardware section are fake or scams. See philipma's post : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2907919.0

If you are interested in learning more about escrows and how they work you can do so here :
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=133931.0

Within that thread there is also a link to all the active, trusted escrows that everyone on the forum uses when they are serious about a transaction.

Escrow List : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2439910.0

Escrows act as a middle-man, a trusted and unbiased party that only has the interest in making sure the deal goes down without a scam taking place, making sure both parties are satisfied. You can set terms depending on your particular trade, but essentially escrows help ensure security and a smooth trade by holding both parties to their end of the deal.

For example, if you were to use an escrow when you wanted to exchange your BTC to Ethereum with another user, then you would have a few options; User 1 sends their funds to the escrow, once escrow confirms they have the funds the 2nd user sends their funds directly to User 1 and once that transaction can be confirmed the escrow will release funds to the User 2. Something like that.

[LearningGuy]

Thank you Bill, scholar and a gentleman Sir! Will start reading ASAP.

[MintDice]

Basically, escrow is when a third party acts as a guarantor. The funds or assets are held by an escrow agent. This party controls the whole process and makes sure the commitments are fulfilled so nobody gets screwed over. If you want to use an escrow service, you'd choose the one you want and create and "escrow transaction" and the other party would get an email inviting them to escrow. You two make some agreements, all the while the escrow agent is monitoring. When the buyer receives the funds, they look it over and if everything is good to go, it's completed.

Hope this helps