please delete

[gusti]

A truly descentralized exchange cannot rely upon any existing company or centralized point, as Dwolla, Mtgox and the likes. So, how will you move fiat currency across different jurisdictions and players ?

Maybe implementing the electronic version of the well known Hawala system ?
Though it was made illegal in some juristictions after 9/11.

More thoughts on this implementation (in spanish) :
http://bitacora.lasindias.com/hawala-descripcion-y-funcionalidades/

Also consider a descentralized implementation of Ripplepay.
http://ripplepay.com/faq/

[Rassah]

Also consider a descentralized implementation of Ripplepay.
http://ripplepay.com/faq/

What's the difference between getting money into Bitcoin and getting money into Ripple?

[gusti]

Also consider a descentralized implementation of Ripplepay.
http://ripplepay.com/faq/

What's the difference between getting money into Bitcoin and getting money into Ripple?

The main difference (as I understand) is that with ripple you do NOT need any exchange entity to manage the fiat money.
All the fiat in and out transactions are made between ripple participants, and settled by trust relationships.
So, all needed is a descentralized btc-fiat ripplepay, and we have the beloved P2P exchange.   

[Rassah]

Also consider a descentralized implementation of Ripplepay.
http://ripplepay.com/faq/

What's the difference between getting money into Bitcoin and getting money into Ripple?

The main difference (as I understand) is that with ripple you do NOT need any exchange entity to manage the fiat money.
All the fiat in and out transactions are made between ripple participants, and settled by trust relationships.
So, all needed is a descentralized btc-fiat ripplepay, and we have the beloved P2P exchange.  

Could you walk me through the steps of how I would get $100 cash I'm holding in my hands, into BTC, using that system?

[gusti]

Also consider a descentralized implementation of Ripplepay.
http://ripplepay.com/faq/

What's the difference between getting money into Bitcoin and getting money into Ripple?

The main difference (as I understand) is that with ripple you do NOT need any exchange entity to manage the fiat money.
All the fiat in and out transactions are made between ripple participants, and settled by trust relationships.
So, all needed is a descentralized btc-fiat ripplepay, and we have the beloved P2P exchange.  

Could you walk me through the steps of how I would get $100 cash I'm holding in my hands, into BTC, using that system?

Each participant of the ripple network "trusts" one or more participants with a certain amount.
System will find one or more participants nearby who will give you USD 100.
In the future, you will settle your debt with one or more different trustees, using either USD or BTC.

Please see video for an example :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=f9KqSgRZYgg

[EnergyVampire]

Why not simply focus on the Cryptocurrencies and avoid Fiat trades? Traders can use their own Fiat exit of choice once the cryptocurrency is in their own wallet. (this could possibly avoid govt regulations since its simply Virtual Goods trades)

It would be nice to have the network act as escrow (8+ nodes as so) confirming the terms of the trade.
Orderbook, trade history and escrow is the bare minimum, in my opinion.
So a trader submits a Limit order wanting to buy Bitcoins with Namecoins, the network takes the bitcoins and places it into an escrow account, then waits for a matching order. Partial fills okay, Fill-or-Kills, and time limits enforced.

Oh, and the network collects the fees for acting as escrow.

Just thinking out loud.

[btc_artist]

Seller: Enter Dwolla login information. (It will be stored using encryption.)
Trader Bot: Logs into your Dwolla account and retrieves all necessary information such as your account balance and displays it inside P2P Exchange.

Um, no.

First off, my original post detailing the p2p exchange was more speculative than a definitive method. I was asking people to put forth their constructive criticisms and helpful ideas. "Um, no." is neither a constructive criticism nor a helpful idea. Things have changed considerably since my original posting thanks to people who gave their helpful ideas. I will either substantially edit or remove completely, the original thread in the days to come and post the new details.

Well, is there any solution to how to guarantee that both parties send what they need to send?  Because a bot logging into people's accounts and screenscraping is out of the question.

The answer is yes and you will be hearing about it in the near future after it's been tested.

Good. I am very curious as to what the solution is.

[Vanderbleek]

Watching.

[Rassah]

Mike, any updates on the tests or solutions?

[1QaZxSw2]

The trust problem does not have a mathematical solution at p2p level.

A realistic solution for the present could be a federated set of exchanges.

While the fears of a government take down of a handful of exchanges is credible, they will never be able to take down say, 10000 exchanges, especially if new ones keep popping every now and then. This would require the client to be able to gather the best bid/ask from a large set of exchanges but this is not that hard to have a few aggregating services that do it for us.

So you could place a bid at any exchange, but when you accept a bid, it goes directly to the exchange that has the best bid with the size that you want.

Use case 1:

A places a bid to buy 1 BTC at $5 at a random exchange X1.
  Fiat Money is transferred from A's bank/dwolla account to his exchange account at X1
  A bitcoin wallet is created for A in X1 if needed.

After some time, A's bid becomes the best bid.

B accepts the Bid.
  Client software sends BTC to X1 and Fiat account info.
  X1 removes the bid and moves $5 into B's fiat account
  X1 moves 1BTC to A's account.

This could be made a bit faster I suppose but the trust problem would be moved from user level to exchange level. A user always has the option of choosing a small set of trustworthy exchange or splitting his transactions among several exchanges to reduce risk of any one bad exchange.

[Rassah]

There's still a problem of someone setting up an exchange just to steal money (how will the federation work?), and an even worse problem of Dwolla (example) downloading the client, monitoring all available exchanges, and shutting down accounts of anyone who shows up on that public exchange list.
Don't mean to shut you down, but this problem is tough to crack.

[1QaZxSw2]

There's still a problem of someone setting up an exchange just to steal money (how will the federation work?), and an even worse problem of Dwolla (example) downloading the client, monitoring all available exchanges, and shutting down accounts of anyone who shows up on that public exchange list.
Don't mean to shut you down, but this problem is tough to crack.

Federation in this case only means that they are all sharing parts of the same workload and they all export their order books in the same format and have the same trading API. In a sense peers is probably a more accurate term. They wouldnt even need to exchange any information with each other since the actual trade takes place completely in one exchange.

Probably the mistake we are making is considering merchants like Dwolla. USD also needs to be stored in anonymous devices such as visa giftcards or single use credit cards. This would imply that exchanges need a merchant account and this would probably bring down the number of exchanges to say, 1000. Not very high, but not low enough to crush simultaneously.

Can someone set up an exchange to steal money? sure. But they wouldnt get very far since they would be labelled scamsters. If they wait until they have enough customers before stealing money it wouldnt make sense anymore since  its far more profitable to take transaction fees on millions of transactions than to steal a few thousand dollars.

The exchanges wouldnt actually hold the user's money but only charge the visa when filling a transaction. This means they dont need to register as a financial service.

[BrBoy]

Take a look at this post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66274.msg769090#msg769090

[Rassah]

Take a look at this post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66274.msg769090#msg769090

That's already a fairly easy thing to do with multi signature transactions. And cryptocurrencies aren't a problem that we're trying to solve. A cryptocurrency exchange is not subject to banking regulations, does not require bank accounts, and in worst case scenario can be run from a completely secret Tor .onion site. Being able to make fiat currencies like USD or Euro work in a distributed fashion is the difficult problem that needs to be solved.

[Vernon715]

Great concept. It would be very useful/awesom.

[Mike3574]

Mike, any updates on the tests or solutions?

Cryptocoin to Cryptocoin trades are not too difficult. Fiat is the hard part obviously. I have what might actually be a workable method for fiat but am doing a lot of careful consideration and fine tuning of the idea. Where there are potentially large sums of money at stake one can't be careless. I will post it if I feel that it is worthy. Keep sharing your ideas. I have been following and analyzing all of them.

All Best,

Michael

[narayan]

marked. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

[lakeluke]

I think the Trust problem/part can be solved by a variation of the ripple network : http://ripplepay.com/faq/

But you will need to create a more anonymised version of Ripple so that relationships are not known to all parties; maybe announce 2nd or third degree relations. The full chain of relations is on an encrypted system-specific-blockchain.

After a trade/exchange is confirmed, the system will send out alerts to participants asking for fiat to be passed along the network to eventually reach the trade partners. The system will calculate the most optimised route with least steps. Failure by Ripple participants to carry out an exchange to a trusted node, will result in a penalty to them.

A series of IOU's can also be established to minimise the amount of actual physical transfers needed to carry out the transaction.

An IOU can be purchased by members wanting to join the network-they "announce" to the system that they are willing to contribute $50 FIAT; the next time a transaction can be completed by passing through this "new member" the system will ask this new participant to pass the $50 to the next link (who would be a friend of theirs) and hence gaining the person a $50 credit in the system. {this section about IOU's needs more thinking and eloboration- their are probably gaps)

But basically I think that the Ripple system has a lot to offer.

 

[cunicula]

The central sticking point with all of this is establishing a cryptocurrency which has a fixed exchange rate vis-a-vis the USD. This can be done with
a) some centralization, but b) without any direct interaction with the fiat system whatsoever

[stochastic]

It seems for now there is a necessity to change from a local currency to bitcoin because we don't have enough things to purchase with bitcoins.  Once enough products and services are willing to be exchanged for bitcoins and/or people are paid with bitcoins the use of exchanges won't be a central issue.

Why not just have the P2P exchange allow for trading on the central exchanges (Mtgox, Intersango, ect) using their API?