Should I trade on bisq?

I like the idea of decentralization, but unfortunately I can’t wail months to make a small trade. This is why I switched to paxful.

I suppose bisq is used primarily by miners because there are large amounts of btc being traded (starting from $200 or $300) for low fees set up by makers. I tried to sell about $80 worth btc with 10% or 15% fee for several days with no success. I can’t trade for 5% or so with my amounts. Maybe this is because I tried to sell exactly $80?

I’m living in that kind of country, where I can’t use most of payment options, so no SEPA, revolut, zelle, interac, etc… even bank transfer because my country’s currency is not popular. I can only take payments with perfect money or advcash, besides other unpopular methods. Sometimes I saw trade offers with advcash or perfect money payment showing up, though. But it happened too infrequently.

I think the answer is obvious, but anyway: should I trade on bisq now?

I tried to sell about $80 worth btc with 10% or 15% fee for several days with no success.

Can you clarify that? Do you mean 10% security deposit, distance from the market price or something else?

Depending on where you live 200-300$ may seem like a lot but I’d argue that it isn’t for the main fiat markets (EUR, USD, GBP). Efforts are being made to help localize payment methods so if you know of popular payment methods in your country with low risk of chargeback maybe you should consider joining the channel #payment-methods on Slack.

I meant distance from market price. I know this is huge for bisq but I had to choose it.

Did bringing in new payment methods really worked out for bisq secondary markets?

50% of my trades have gone to arbitration, both as the buyer and seller, and with different payment options. Seems like there are too many people trying to scam users. And now v1.2 goes to 2 of 2 instead of 2 of 3, so now they are MORE incentivized to scam people. I don’t think that was a good idea to take out the third party, now you have to TRUST that both parties are honest. I mean, if I have to trust someone, I’d rather use an exchange, at least if I get screwed, I have options. It’s really frustrating when a seller posts a trade, then I accept and pay within minutes, and the seller never acknowledges the payment. So now the trade is stuck for 4 days, and then it results into arbitration which takes a couple more days. IF the arbitrator sides with you, then you’ll get your trade after a week. This is slower than a bank transfer. It’s just a bad experience for me personally. I’d rather just stick with an exchange and deal with kyc. Bisq is not worth all the headaches.

The money isn’t locked in the 2of2 if the other party is uncooperative. There is a timelocked tx that can spend the 2of2 when you take the case to arbitration. The risk is probably less now, overall and for each involved party.

I see a problem though if you get 50% of trades going to disputes. That’s a horrible user experience and also unsustainable from a contributor side since it’s quite expensive to pay for mediators and arbitrators. Have the disputes been due to bad faith from your counterparties or due to bugs? We know there are a few bugs that we will try to squash in the next release which should make the trading better for everyone.

I too am very worried about 2 of 2. mainly due to the timelocked transaction going to some unknown/untrusted person who is elected via the DAO. I have done 100s of trades on Bisq and I’m almost ready to give up due to the new risks.

The incentive of this person to scam is huge. For only a $50,000 investment they could potentially steal 100-200 BTC or more.

Thx for your inputs, I appreciate it. My disputes were due to the other party not fulfilling their side of the trade. I have not experienced any bugs, so props to the developers. I guess I’ve had some poor participants for my trades. Hopefully this industry overall cleans out the scammers. I would like to see some sort of quick trader option where both parties can agree on having quicker time tables prior to entering the trade. This way we aren’t waiting a week to complete the trade.