It would be great to see a cash option in bitsquare since people do like privacy and cash has more privacy than SEPA.
I really like the way how localbitcoins handles cash transactions.
It works like this.
The bitcoin buyer doesn’t actually need a smartphone or an internet connection to finalize an open trade (which means that both parties save time). As soon as the bitcoin seller receives the cash, he will confirm receiving the cash to localbitcoins which initiates the release of the coins to the buyer. Also, the bitcoin seller receives a special transaction code which the bitcoin buyer receives in advance when the bitcoin seller funded the transaction. As soon as the seller articulates this transaction code to the buyer he knows that the bitcoins got released to his account.
Cash exchange needs a tighter geographic framing. Localbtc does it by city. Further the parties agree on a meeting point/time/means of communication in advance. Alone the description of the meeting point is rather individualistic. If someone is willing to publish this information within a payment option ‘cash’ it weakens his privacy!! But that could be matched against other ‘cash’ info. Interesting thought.
I think cash may be good too but your analysis of the privacy angle is interesting. On LocalBitcoins I say cash is the best privacy option really but with Bitsquare I think it is different.
People would also have to be very careful using a cash exchange on an exchange which doesn’t have the reputation system of LocalBitcoins because it may be easy for somebody to rob you and take both coin and cash.
Face to face trade has very different requirements as Bitsquare provides (as said reputation). I never used LBTC for F2F so I have no experience but in our case the arbitrator need to have a tamperproof evidence of the fiat transfer. WIth F2F I cannot imagine how that can work. If they have a trust releationship then they can simply exchange both Fiat and BTC so the exchange platform is not needed anymore. To act as a pure rendevouz platfrom might work, similar as the famous “Satoshi squares” (that from where the name got inspired), but I think that only might work in areas where fraud risk is very low.
Anyway Bitsquare will not be perfect for all use cases. Hard enough to be really good in that what we want to do now. So first get that well done!
My main concern atm is that liquidity is still low. There is a lot of attention from media but people seem to be still in waiting phase. We need to assure that the main currencies (EUR, USD) have always sufficient good offers so if new people come that they don’t get a bad impression.
Any ideas how we can improve that?
As a matter of fact, bitsquare itself just by nature will increase dramatically number of transactions. But as I retweeted today from Bitcoin News: Blocks are fuller than ever. Confirmations are taking longer than expected and that’s triggering fee inflation as the race for getting confs soon has started. Not sure we can really attract loads of offers (which will have automatically the effect your asking for) under current landscape?
Inflation means increasing the money supply with the consequence of rising prices and has a negative taste. Trying to qualify it with putting fee in front that has as well a negative note without mentioning the service you receive raises the question what do you want to achieve? (we have seen Governments/Regulators etc. inventing fees without actual providing any service but here?!)
All resources are limited, prices express the scarcity of those limited resources and bring supply and demand in balance. In this understanding the available space for transactions is a limited resource. Certainly it could be easily increased but so also is the amount of circulating fiat money!
What do you get for your fee? A stable decentralized network that follows the protocol, without that network Bitsquare wouldn’t be possible. The protocal gives you a taste of free market.
‘The race for getting confs soon has started" appears as another negative note. Its a market. You do not need to take part you can stay at the sidelines and watch or use other means. If you want a transaction done you take care of it with the the right fee (fyi https://bitcoinfees.21.co/) Also full blocks doesn’t mean all transactions included do pay!
Btw, transacting with BTC is still much much much cheaper than in fiat! Fiat exchanges have this massive order volume despite high fees and a ‘inflating’/expropriating feature of the underlying! Other Fiat-BTC exchanges let one group of their clients take advantage to the disadvantage of other client just for the appearance of high volumes … Clients do not know anything else. Schools teach this structure as normal/optimal!
Please keep spreading the word about Bitsquare! As long as people know about the available options they can decide for themselves, applying their own financial situation, knowledge and circumstances. Bitsquares’ features are unique and distinctive to any other exchange. Privacy, p2p interaction only, no registration/identification/verification, no min. activity, no third party surveillance, reducing transfer cost, …
To me, the best solution is to use/install another client other than Core (Unlimited, Classic, XT …), to promote the block size increase, or sell your bitcoins.
This is a good way to give a signal to the market.
As long there is the block reward all seems fine but what happens after each halving?
Miners have to cover cost. At the moment there seems to be a very low cost basis for miners in China. At least the block reward covers it. But if the fees do not pay for the reducing block reward not profitable miners will leave the business and that weakens the network!!
So, how large is the fees part compared to the block reward just a few weeks before the second halving?
Btw, there is a third option to HostFat’s proposal list if you do not found your own conviction yet, wait for new information and see. This has the advantage of avoiding irreversible mistakes human society as seen so many with democratic decision making!!
“Blocks are fuller than ever.” - Good so Those who pay a sufficient fee are fine, the other need to learn (or spend more money on their spam attacks).
All in the green if you look at facts:
Here are good souces for actual fees.
I follow them since a while and it is more or less stable about 30-50 satoshi/byte.
We use about 70-90 sat/byte in the bitsquare wallet so no big risk to get long delays. Only risk is if a user make the funding with a very low fee. But that is outside our control and my previous approach to not accept funding tx with too low fees was not working well from usability point of view. So better to risk that 1 of a few 100 trades gets delayed and maybe trigger arbitration rather than to create a hassle for all users.
Until fee costs really becomes a poblem we will have other solutions (lightning, sidechains,…).
Let us keep the blocksize debate/civil war outside of Bitsquare. It has already created so much damage and wasted so much time!
IMO it is a an attack and a stragegy to divide the community.
Bitcoin fails to scale same as the internet failed to scale (like A. Antonopoulos said), but it fails gracefully and adopt and as we see it just do fine.
As long there are “many” transactions, than they (miners) will have many fees.
The sum of them will cover the cost of the miners, this is the way that was always thought to work on Bitcoin, and it worked on the past halving.
Now it is different because there isn’t space for other tx and their fees.
I see forcing users (by limiting the block size, so, without giving them a free choice) on using other channels as LN as way to really cut the fees that miners will get. (just to remember that LN hubs will take fees for them self)
I see this as a fork that change the economic rules and forces that have moved Bitcoin until today.
It seems that someone wants these sum of money that was initially disposed (on the original bitcoin logic) for the miners.
I hope that it will work, if not, it’s good that there are other coins that are waiting to take the place of Bitcoin.
It was always normal that some miners had to leave the business, some better ones will take their places.
cash and bitsquare don’t make sense together. you can simply use a message board for contact with traders for F2F trades, like bitcoin-otc or localbitcoins. Similarly, F2F trades usually disregard escrow, so they are quite simple to do with just a simple contact.
yeah bitcoin-otc is kinda dead, but still works.
I don’t know dedicated message boards, but setting up an account on localbitcoins is quite simple, just to make contact for F2F trades.
without cash f2f option, people will not need bitsquare, only exchangers will use it as one more option to get customers. bitsquare offers just what many websites already offers, just in a little different way.
people are not programmers and they don’t have such way of thinking: is it decentralized or not.
most BTC users care more: is it private or not?
only professional exchangers (speculators) use banks transfer to trade BTC. I am already sick of their fees, I need a platform where users can connect each with others without speculators.
considering bitsquare is not anonymous (SEPA and similar), I will not use it. and I don’t care is it decentralized if I must show ID to arbitrator. no chance to do it. somebody can even collect IDs in that way, I don’t give my ID even to paypal, I use it as unverified, and paypal is much more secure than some private arbitrator.
Bitsquare protects it’s users in many ways. The highest principles are decetranlization, privacy and security. Everyone is free to use it and there are already many options to choose from.
The differences to other exchanges are posted in many different locations. You can find out about the advantages on the website: https://bitsquare.io/philosophy/
Face to face trades bear a lot of risks that we can’t help to mitigate.
If it’s not for you, that’s ok. We can’t serve everyone.
Those who pay a sufficient fee are fine, the other need to learn (or spend more money on their spam attacks).