Maximum allowed trade period for bank transfer trades

Trading
1

This week I got hit by some trader who likes to donate bitcoin by making/taking trades he isn’t paying for. This has the large inconvenience of holding my bitcoin for 8 days during the whole trade period until a dispute can be open to solve the issue. 8 days is a very long time…

It seems to me that the maximum allowed trade period must be reworked. After some discussion, I believe that 1 day after getting the blockchain confirmation is enough for a trader to issue the bank transfer. Then, 3 days are enough for the slowest of bank transfers to arrive, other than SWIFT international transfers. If there is any delay because of weekends or holidays, that should be clarified in a dispute.

Please discuss and let us know if you agree with these limits or propose your own so we can achieve a solution that works for our users.

2

Don’t know. Some trade offs have to be made. A week sounds fine to me, I guess it should be customizable. If the user feels like some spamers have been busy lately, he can adjust.

3

do you trade often?
if you get your funds locked up for a week, that is fine to you?

4

Yes I agree for the buyer 1 day should be enough time. Even on holiday he can start the payment (beside cash deposit).
For the seller 3 days might be not enough if there is a long weekend/holiday. I remember a trade by myself over xmas which took 7-8 days because of that. But I think we can relax that by defining standard is 4 days in total and if there are holidays/long weekends etc. then the arbitrator will take care of that. This way we don’t apply the worst case to all and handle those more flexible.
Sepa can take 2-3 days in my experience. Depends on the banks but as you don’t have influence over that we cannot go lower than 4 days.

Beside that I have prepared in the data structure that he trade period and trade limits could be customized as well.
That is not implemented UI-wise because it is not clear to me that it is required and to add 100s of features makes it more complicate for the user to understand and user the app.
But if we see in future the need for it we can make that customizable for the offer maker.

Beside that ,the security deposit will be given to the other peer if one fails in the protocol. That is already now executed that way. The arbitrator never receives the deposit. I even removed the possibility that the arbitrator can be a receiver of any of the funds. He will get paid by the DAO.

The height of the sec. deposit can be set by the maker.
That gives another protection against slow traders or such who wait for price movements in their direction.
We will exercise the rules more strict with that.
One can see the trade as an option trade with that new feature.
The buyer has the option to cancel the trade (not paying) in a certain time window. For that he risks his security deposit. Waiting too long, might make him a loser as well if the banks are slow.
The deposit for the seller will be fixed (0.01 BTC) as he has no way to cancel the trade.

5

Ok, I understood for the whole trade. Buyer of BTC should be able to start the payment the same day if I understand the system correctly.
@riclas Wasn’t really saying it was fine :smiley: just perhaps a necessary tradeoff for not rushing traders to much. It is fine by me if you think it is a better idea.

6

I am grateful for the long duration. Bisq gives me 6 days with sepa and that is good.

The first time I bought bitcoin, this was on Local Bitcoins, to get the initial bitcoin to use Bisq. For this purchase my sepa payment took 6 days! This was not long ago, i’m talking about November. 6 days in spite of having paid a premium for expedited processing! ( I was really eager).

Six days for sepa is unusual, sure. Maybe it would have been 3 days if I had not paid for expedited processing, who knows :slight_smile: Maybe it was delayed because it was the first time I transferred to another country, I don’t know.

But from my point of view, why set a short period and go into arbitration over stuff like this when it is avoidable. All that explaining, chance the arbitrator will side with an impatient other party. This was on LocalBitcoins and I could just message with the seller, but on Bisq it would go into this scary arbitration where I can loose everything if don’t explain well.

Another time, i bought some bitcoin on Bisq. I think some in the morning and did the sepa payment. And some more later in the day. For the second payment, when I checked my sepa account I was short $120 but no worries, I transferred from my non-sepa account that has a lot more funds into the sepa account. But to my horror that transfer was delayed by Banking’s Winter: the weekend!

My local bank doesn’t work on the weekend. Now I’m counting nervously. Is my personal transfer going to arrive at the sepa account in time. Will the sepa transfer to the seller then arrive in time? If I don’t mark ‘payment started’ by monday, is he/she going to start arbitration early? (I am absolutely not going to lie that I started the payment when I didn’t). Will I have to go into arbitration? Can I explain this? Ultimately, my personal transfer arrived monday and the sepa to the seller I think the next day, not sure. But I was grateful for the 6 days. Had it been 4 days, I would not have slept at all that weekend.

Now I’m trying Bisq with my local bank account with bank transfer. Horror of horrors, bank transfer has only 4 days! The best bitcoin prices I have seen where on Fridays; the start of banking’s winter. Even if I start the transfer on friday, I know it’s not going anywhere until monday and that is already the 4th day. I will basically fall into arbitration for every Friday transaction!

But maybe the 4 day bank transfer duration won’t be such an issue for practical reasons: I made an offer to buy bitcoins by bank transfer from my local bank but no soul will touch it.

I get it, no one knows my country, people know sepa. It looks like I am stuck using sepa and always having to pre transfer funds, giving me extra bank fees (€30 - €35) and several days delay. No liquidity at all for me. I cannot do trading in the sense of speculating. Only buy and hold scenario for me.

But I took solace in knowing with 6 days there would always be enough time. Until now. If you make the duration shorter, I will likely start missing opportunities, just to avoid arbitration and avoid getting some kind of bad reputation, maybe even getting banned.

If you must make the duration shorter, please make the consideration of extra days for banking’s winter built in. I don’t want to stress out about having to explain to an arbiter that the bank was closed until monday. In the mean time, can bank transfer go to 6 days and be the same as sepa?

The world works better when multiple points of view are known, so that’s why I posted mine.

7

The arbitrators are flexible with cases when the bank needs longer or there are holidays. As long the initiation of the payment happens fast and the BTC buyer is not waiting a few days before starting payment there is no risk to lose the security deposit if the trade period runs out and the trade ends in a dispute.