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Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

openbazaar.org

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Re: Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

#61

Post by jstanley »

peterhunt wrote: post #54
jstanley wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, there are absolutely no illegal drugs currently being sold on OpenBazaar. It's almost exclusively novelty items at the moment. Secondly, if Alice wants to sell crack, and Bob wants to buy it, I don't see why you or I or anybody else has the right to stand in the middle and say that's not allowed. I accept that you think it's not good for Alice and Bob to be able to transact however they like, but you must ac…

Does the same logic apply if Alice wants to sell Bob a human being?

That's somewhat of a strawman argument: if you think dealing crack is the same as dealing human beings, where do you even draw the line? Is it not OK to deal in anything, on the basis that it could be a human being if you changed it to a human being?

The difference when dealing a human being is it's no longer a transaction between only Alice and Bob. There's now a third person involved who has every right to object to the transaction. Decentralised marketplace or not.

Re: Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

#62

Post by acover »

jstanley wrote: post #38
acover wrote: post #21

How does this work? Where is the store list stored?

It is distributed over a peer-to-peer network.

They mention ipfs. Ipfs doesn't have a method of multiple people writing to one key.

How do they tackle this problem?

Edit: thanks in advance. I reached my time cap trying to find out

Re: Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

#63

Post by hughw »

jstanley wrote: post #42
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes VCs fund things they want to exist independently of whether they'll make a profit. $4M is spare change for a fund. I'm not sure that's the case here, but "no obvious way to make money" isn't exclusionary when it comes to the VC funding model.

An added bonus is that once the software is written, it can continue to work without the involvement of OB1, even if they run out of money and disappear, and even if they turn rogue and start trying to extract fees from every transaction. It's an open source, decentralised, peer-to-peer system. As long as the peers want to keep using it, they can keep using it.

Who's going to maintain the software? Open source projects abandoned by founding companies don't have a stellar track record.

Re: Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

#64

Post by jstanley »

avaer wrote: post #55
ddon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TX fees are paid to miners. Currency conversions are probably done using ShapeShift https://shapeshift.io/

Hm, if that's indeed the case then this is free, feeless and decentralized only to the depth of its landing page.

What part of it do you think is not decentralised?

And how would you propose they implement the system in such a way that Bitcoin miners are incentivised to include fee-less transactions?

In terms of fee structure, it is quite clearly an improvement over centralised marketplaces. OpenBazaar is not charging any fees.

Re: Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

#65

Post by vectorpush »

jstanley wrote: post #40
vectorpush wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who buy drugs "in the streets" generally aren't versed in how to acquire and manage cryptocurrency. Most people buying drugs have a personal relationship with a dealer and don't do transactions "in the streets". Additionally, actually acquiring cryptocurrency requires a bank account in good standing and a ton of invasive KYC paperwork which will raise suspicions and alienate "street buyers". Finally, in my per…

> Additionally, actually acquiring cryptocurrency requires a bank account in good standing and a ton of invasive KYC paperwork which will raise suspicions and alienate "street buyers". This is false. You can acquire cryptocurrency just as easily as you can acquire cash: sell things for it, exchange currency with friends, exchange currency with people you find on LocalBitcoins, steal it, run a business taking payment…

> You can acquire cryptocurrency just as easily as you can acquire cash:

This is obviously untrue. Cash is ubiquitous throughout every corner of society, while cryptocurrency is extremely niche to the point of practical obscurity.

> sell things for it

The overwhelming majority of potential buyers will not have even heard of crypto.

> exchange currency with friends

Very few people have friends who dabble in cryptocurrency.

> exchange currency with people you find on LocalBitcoins

Risky, time-consuming and impractical, especially for someone that's only looking to buy some weed. Additionally, localbitcoins puts you back "in the streets", you're better off just exchanging cash for drugs in the streets rather than exchanging cash for crypto in the streets so you can go back online to buy the drugs.

> steal it, run a business taking payment in it, ...

That is absurd. You're not making a very convincing case.

Re: Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

#66

Post by jstanley »

hughw wrote: post #63
jstanley wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An added bonus is that once the software is written, it can continue to work without the involvement of OB1, even if they run out of money and disappear, and even if they turn rogue and start trying to extract fees from every transaction. It's an open source, decentralised, peer-to-peer system. As long as the peers want to keep using it, they can keep using it.

Who's going to maintain the software? Open source projects abandoned by founding companies don't have a stellar track record.

Open source projects abandoned by founding companies have a better track record than SaaS projects abandoned by founding companies.

Anybody who is interested can maintain it. If it has a large number of people actively using it to conduct business on a daily basis, somebody will maintain it. If it's big enough that lack of maintenance would be a problem, it won't be a problem.

Re: Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

#67

Post by k__ »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #49
jstanley wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, there are absolutely no illegal drugs currently being sold on OpenBazaar. It's almost exclusively novelty items at the moment. Secondly, if Alice wants to sell crack, and Bob wants to buy it, I don't see why you or I or anybody else has the right to stand in the middle and say that's not allowed. I accept that you think it's not good for Alice and Bob to be able to transact however they like, but you must ac…

No one is arguing that Alice and Bob should be prevented from engaging in good ol' American trade. We're arguing that when drugs are ubiquitous -- as easy to access as pushing a button -- you'll spawn far more addicts than would have otherwise been created. When an addict's life is destroyed by these horrific tools of pleasure we've created, are they going to take solace in the fact that they were able to use technol…

I thought it was known today that drugs aren't a problem, but people to whom drugs are the only relieve and the criminalisation of those.

Re: Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

#68

Post by sillysaurus3 »

jstanley wrote: post #52
StavrosK wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of wondering why that is. Since darknet markets are getting busted one after another, why hasn't everyone migrated to OpenBazaar? It would seem like a prime opportunity.

I think there are 2 reasons: 1.) Lack of anonymity - AFAIK it doesn't yet have integration with tor-or-similar, although this is coming soon 2.) Network effects - hardly anyone is buying or selling anything on OpenBazaar, so there's not much motivation for anyone new to move there. I hope this changes. I use eBay for almost all of my online purchases, and I would love to see the day where OpenBazaar replaces eBay for…

#1 is false since February: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go/pull/342

Re: Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

#69

Post by avip »

jstanley wrote: post #45
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are getting crack from it, does it matter what type of market it is? People are saying this is where the drug trade might migrate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828864 I think it's scary that (a) these markets are here to stay, and (b) anyone with a computer and the most basic technology skills will be able to get any hard drug they can imagine delivered right to their doorstep. Again, there's noth…

Firstly, there are absolutely no illegal drugs currently being sold on OpenBazaar. It's almost exclusively novelty items at the moment. Secondly, if Alice wants to sell crack, and Bob wants to buy it, I don't see why you or I or anybody else has the right to stand in the middle and say that's not allowed. I accept that you think it's not good for Alice and Bob to be able to transact however they like, but you must ac…

Does the same logic apply if Bob is your 11 YO son?

Re: Open Bazaar – decentralized Bitcoin marketplace

#70

Post by peterhunt »

jstanley wrote: post #61
peterhunt wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the same logic apply if Alice wants to sell Bob a human being?

That's somewhat of a strawman argument: if you think dealing crack is the same as dealing human beings, where do you even draw the line? Is it not OK to deal in anything, on the basis that it could be a human being if you changed it to a human being? The difference when dealing a human being is it's no longer a transaction between only Alice and Bob. There's now a third person involved who has every right to object t…

Law enforcement needs the same set of tools to solve both of these problems. You are proposing that these tools should go away, right?
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