Dudeperfect, are you located in India? I've been wondering what the environment for Bitcoin in India so far, and the general public view of it in the cities and in the rural areas. As you said, trading online without escrow is extremely risky, and even for myself I would not trade outside of escrow unless it's an amount I'm willing to lose to a returning customer. I'd rather lose $25 to a returning customer rather than wait until later and lose $1,000 from that same person.
Yes, I am from India. I am extremely optimistic about future of bitcoin in India in near future.
Right now we have around 10,000+ bitcoin users which are far less than 0.001% of the overall population but since 65% population is of age below 35 the potential of acceptability is tremendous because of the young population.
I’m not sure about bitcoin’s popularity but we are now adopting cashless fiat transactions on larger levels using digital wallets (eg –freecharge, paytm etc) and that’s similar to bitcoin transactions so again, it’s an advantage for us.
Since PayPal has restrictions in India (we can’t send funds using PayPal unless credit card linked to the account and any balance we receive is auto withdrawn in the bank account associated with the account) so bitcoin could take place of PayPal.
At this moment not many businesses (other than bitcoin companies) accepting bitcoin in India, the awareness of cryptocurrencies is limited to IT sector employees and technology enthusiastic and some bloggers.