Well, we don't know if it's a scammer / Darknet dealer / criminal or even a hacker himself who's going to sell it instead of an innocent person.
That's kind of my point. Looking at the history of the coins being sold doesn't tell you anything about the person selling them.
Yes, we don't know but to have another "part of the puzzle" can help us to find it out. Because when meeting a stranger, every point is important to evaluate. And if he's selling Bitcoin outright from a hack or stolen BTC, we can conclude for sure that the seller is not innocent.
We have had such a story just recently on our local board, where someone's wallet was hacked. And unfortunately, P2P is well suited for hackers to get rid of their stolen or hacked BTC.
Because he's owner of the coins.
Do you know the history of every satoshi you own? I very much doubt anyone knows this.
Of course I don't know but I'm sure no one of my coins is from an outright hack.
It shouldn't be any issue because if purchased, the buyer could "spy"* as well, because he'll get to know the address anyways.
Yes, but that's different. If someone is trading with me, then of course they will see the address I sent coins from (although those coins will be either mixed or coinjoined, so they will learn nothing anyway). But someone who I might not be trading with asking me to reveal to them my address(es) so they can perform some kind of rudimentary blockchain analysis on them and then maybe not trade with me at all? I've just lost some privacy for absolutely no benefit to me.
But it's beneficial for the buyer. If he's feeling safer to get more trust, this could be helpful for the face-to-face meeting.
So I would pass and find a different buyer.
Of course, everyone can decide if / under which conditions to sell or not.
* I wouldn't call it "spying", "spying" sounds more like with bad intentions, while the buyer can be 100% friendly, without any sinister intent.
But that's exactly what it is. He wants to spy on the coins he is going to receive to see if they are "good enough" for him.
But he doesn't want to "spy", he just want to find out if his trading partner is trying to sell him hacked our stolen coins or not.
If you are that worried about the history of coins you buy P2P, then just mix or coinjoin everything you receive. Simple.
But that's also some effort and requires a fee.
However, I believe P2P is still a very important market but due to the crime, I can well understand the buyer's concern.
* I wouldn't call it "spying", "spying" sounds more like with bad intentions, while the buyer can be 100% friendly, without any sinister intent.
The intentions really don't matter. If you don't treat bitcoin as fungible currency that it is, you're doing equal harm, regardless of intentions.
Sorry, but that take is straight out bullshit.
Of course, intention does matter. If a legitimate buyer wants to purchase Bitcoin legitimately, what he'll receive anyways, of course he is entitled to request this sort of information.
And of course, a potential seller could deny him such sort of information. But maybe why he could deny it? Maybe he's a hacker and a criminal who's trying to get rid of stolen and hacked coins? In our local board, someone got hacked recently (yes, it's his fault) but of course, it's legitimate that buyers don't want to get dumped with such stolen or hacked coins. Blockchain is public and that's simply how Bitcoin works.
Blaming me, that I would "do harm" just by using the Blockchain, how it is designed, is not doing any harm to anyone.
But thanks for the input everyone, the topic wasn't intended to lead to a discussion of "best face to face P2P practices 101".
I just wanted to see if there are similar sites like oxt.me.