The shipping carrier will have weight of the parcel. Perhaps the seller takes extra steps before shipping so that he can prove to the arbiter shoudl there be an issue that he sent the device.
That wouldn't be hard to weigh up something the same weight as the item would it? Or the buyer placing something of that weight in the package and win the decision saying the seller sent it. Also easy for the seller to take a photo of the so called item before taking it out the box ready to ship. Arbs in the above would be less useful than useless, always on the side of the
seller scammer because the provided
proof that was really hard to fake. Sounds like a play ground for scammers.
Double escrow minimizes risk for vendors or buyers being scammers but introduces higher upfront business costs as a result, faking documentation or proof is what every system of arbitration handles today including paypal, and it always sides on the on the sellers side unless the buyer can provide adequate proof without sellers response to that proof that the seller is in error. In the end its always still going to be buyer beware even though they have some of the piece of mind of an arbitration process that may work in their favour should the otherside be scammy. I think the tradeoff of an arbitration process outweighs higher upfront costs to try to achieve network affect.
I just popped by to play devils advocate pal. I totally understand the plus and negative of the trade off. As you must know it is always going to be hard if not impossible for a system that is fair for all. You touched upon the upfront deposit, I agree they will be a pain for medium to big sellers to begin with but after x amount of successful trades the big seller who has proven himself legit will not have to pay high deposits if any? S/he will also have the incentive to carry on the honest dealing to keep his feedback at a level where he gets the benefit of the lower deposit.
Does amount of deposit required for vendor adjust according to reputation?
You are making this assumption that its an "up front cost" but its not. The deposits would be similar to your daily/weekly volume. If you did 1000 dollars of business a week, then im sure you have at least 1000 dollars around for deposits.
Also of course you CAN set custom deposits. Why do you think it has to be 1:1? If you have a 100 dollar item, followed by a 50 dollar deposit, then you still lose 50 dollars if you try to cheat the system which should be significant enough to prevent you.
Using arbiters is a terrible idea. Bitcoin is anonymous you have no accountability for arbiters. What is to prevent an arbiter from colluding with himself in the deal? Example: Arbiter is ALSO the buyer or seller in secret. Thus he has 2 keys of the 2/3. Guess what? He can just steal escrows out-right. And coins are anonymous so there is no stopping people from doing that.
Why is it that when we make extremely significant steps forward, people are still trying to force everything backwards? Third parties are the thing we are trying to avoid?
How the hell does an arbiter know who is lying? We have been over this time and time again. I'm not sure who you talked to in the industry that gave you that bad advice but I know we have talked at length about it.. I really hope you change your mind and stop trying to move society backwards?
What next? BitLAWYERS? BitJUDGE? BitJAIL? BitJURY?
Please, thats the old violence based society double deposit is trying to rid the world of.
The whole point of double deposit is to make an agreement or contract that obviates the need to use a "gun" to enforce contracts.
Arbiters are not wise, they don't know who is telling the truth and people will take advantage of that and then nobody will want to use crypto. Then explain to me why not use Ebay?? Bitbay/BitHalo/BlackHalo have the extreme advantage that you don't have to trust a third party to "judge" your deal. Ebay is fraught with scams, true they don't happen all the time but even I've run into them.
But the debate is much deeper than Ebay. Its about International business International law.
Tell me, if I sent a wire transfer to buy Bitcoin to someone in Nigeria how will this all seeing all knowing arbiter going to know if I sent the money or not?? He wont.
THAT is why we use two party escrow. Because its the FIRST time in history contracts have been International, Trustless, no third parties, no lawyers, no judges, no bullshit!!! No more need to threaten a person with a "gun" if they hurt you in a contract because the penalty is already built in!! Its the worlds first PEACEFUL contract.
And yes there is a reputation system, so we can track how many deals youve done successfully. Trust comes when you know a person, if they have a good reputation then you may choose not to use a deposit at all! Or make it like 10% of escrow value. Even 10% is still a loss to anyone trying to default. (and if we trust them, those odds are very low)
