Offering Free Escrow Service

[johnniewalker]

I am offering free escrow service. I have been a bitcointalk member for a while. My trade history is very solid. I'd like to help facilitate more transactions-so I'm doing this for free. Of course, tips are accepted, but not mandatory ; ). Don't pay .01 BTC or any amount for that matter, its silly. Usually members charging that are ones you should probably look twice at, anyways.

[Dabs]

What if my transaction is only about 2.5 BTC? (I'm supposed to buy some bitcoins from some guy with cash, bank deposit.) If it were a personal meet up, then there would be no issue.

[xenigma]

I currently have a balance between 2k and 3k USD on Bitfloor. As an international user, I cannot withdraw USD. I retrieved my BTC but have learned that Internationals are being put at the end of the list of priorities. Could an escrow service help me in any way? Bitfloor makes deposits via ACH to US bank accounts.

Thanks

[mobodick]

I am offering free escrow service. I have been a bitcointalk member for a while. My trade history is very solid. I'd like to help facilitate more transactions-so I'm doing this for free. Of course, tips are accepted, but not mandatory ; ). Don't pay .01 BTC or any amount for that matter, its silly. Usually members charging that are ones you should probably look twice at, anyways.

How reliable is a service i did not pay for?
And are you suggesting that proper escrow doesn't take any effort and should always be free of charge?

[John (John K.)]

I am offering free escrow service. I have been a bitcointalk member for a while. My trade history is very solid. I'd like to help facilitate more transactions-so I'm doing this for free. Of course, tips are accepted, but not mandatory ; ). Don't pay .01 BTC or any amount for that matter, its silly. Usually members charging that are ones you should probably look twice at, anyways.

How reliable is a service i did not pay for?
And are you suggesting that proper escrow doesn't take any effort and should always be free of charge?

Well, here's my take on fully free escrows. Note that I run an escrow myself, but I'm phasing out the free part for bigger deals. You get cold feet when you realize that you've been holding amounts nearing (and sometimes exceeding) your reserve amount of coins - what if the coins get lost? Even cold wallets/fully offline Armory isn't much reassuring when you exceed a couple thousand of BTC held. The fees act as a sort of insurance fee for precisely such situations.

As a rule of thumb, NEVER pay for escrow services. Tipping someone doing it voluntarily is something different. If someone wants to be paid (usually a small amount), don't you think they'd be happy to take your "escrowed" funds as an additional form of "payment"? I say escrow ONLY w/mods or users with an extensive blemish free-trade history. I've posted somewhere else, but I will volunteer my escrow services. Do your due-diligence on me before you take me up on it though

I do require a fee for more substantial trades now (50+BTC) to deal with the extended risk. An escrow that requires no fees for bigger deals is either someone who's really good(as he is effectively looking at negative ROI with the risk) or someone who will run if any problems arises. (getting hacked etc)

[wangxinxi]

If you need escrow service to pay your workers, you can also have a look at my site http://BitTask.com

[Dabs]

I attempted to offer escrow for high value bitcoin based transactions. No one has contacted me yet.

Is there a market for large escrow transactions? 10k or 100k BTC?

With those amounts, it certainly can not be free. Thus I offer additional services (which will taken from me fee.) I also offer a personal guarantee that everyone will be satisfied with the transaction. Or else, it won't happen.

[BitshireHashaway]

It's interesting. However, I can see people [not necessarily you] offering it for free, and then when you have a few thousand bit coins on your hand, and have spent a few hours setting it up, realize it is very tempting to take 1btc for your efforts, regardless of whether or not it was pre-agreed to.

[Dabs]

It's interesting. However, I can see people [not necessarily you] offering it for free, and then when you have a few thousand bit coins on your hand, and have spent a few hours setting it up, realize it is very tempting to take 1btc for your efforts, regardless of whether or not it was pre-agreed to.

That would defeat the whole point of escrow, which is acting as a trusted third party who will only do what is agreed upon, per the escrow contract. If I wanted 1 BTC, I would factor that into my fees. A 1.5% to 2.5% fee for escrow is reasonable.