Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: cronus12 on August 07, 2011, 01:06 am
-
I have the understanding that the time from order completion to automatically finalizing is 18 days. This gives plenty of time for an item to reach a destination and then some. My suggestion is this: Allow sellers to select how much time until orders are auto finalized, for example allow the sellers to choose items to auto finalize in either 8 days, 13 days, or 18 days. Some sellers can take an order and have it arrive at the destination sooner than some so doing this would mean a seller could get coins out of escrow earlier in the event a buyer does not click finalize even though they got their item. Having coins held up in escrow for an extra week or two can't be too nice for a seller.
-
+1
-
Great idea.
-
Seems like a good idea, I would suggest no less than 7 days though. Anything less might be used bay scammers.
-
Yup, I concur!
-
Unless the delivery takes longer than 7 days, ie. International orders or we have had some vendors mark orders as in transit but not ship them for 2-4 days. Perhaps there is a way of negotiating the auto-finalize?
-
(EDIT: Here is an idea I had.I am not sure exactly how SR hedges their BTC fluctuation, so if what I am saying is how the hedging already works then I apologize for being repetitive.)
While I am not sure if this is possible, I would like to see the BTC held in escrow to be immediately converted into USD and then back to BTC later on when given to the seller. This would eliminate and risk of BTC fluctuation.
The problem with this is fairly obvious though - SR would have to actively sell BTC and then buy back BTC once the order is finalized.
i.e.
1) You buy substance X from someone for $100 worth of BTC.
2) Once the $100 USD worth of BTC is sitting in escrow, it is sold.
3) As soon as the order is finalized, the $100 is then used to buy back $100 USD worth of BTC.
Does that make sense?
-
@Fred Flintstone
This was discussed several times in the old forum. It lost favor during the MtGox outage but I still think it is a great idea.
-
@Fred Flintstone @Kind Bud-it has been suggested before, is still an EXCELLENT idea, and should be implemented to avoid having sellers get their earnings wiped out by a massive BTC devaluation. Like happened this week!
What's the quickest and most efficient way to get SR to take note of this and work towards implementing it? I've never seen (or maybe didn't pay attention to) the way that ideas from the forum get pushed up the ladder and get moved towards actual implementation. :)
-
Doing this would require a massive undertaking of buying and selling BTC by Silk Road. They would have to physically buy and sell BTC at an exchange like MtGox, and do so in a timely enough matter so as BTC change prices so quickly. They would have to do with for every single transaction in escrow, which would require a huge amount of manpower or a computer program - if that is even possible.
In doing this, there would be a large trail of BTC exchanges which could possibly put SR at risk. I am not sure how BTC can be tracked, but I know each and every transaction can be viewed by everyone. I am not nearly tech savvy enough to solve this problem but I'm sure someone on here with a better grasp on things could come up with some sort of answer.
Any ideas?
-
@fred: doing it automatically is pretty easy from a technical standpoint, the downside is that it centralizes the balance somewhere. Since it's being held as USD, it is no longer a decentralized currency, and thus it is vulnerable to any government confiscating it- all any LEO would have to do is make a purchase, and look at blockexplorer to see where the money goes, and this makes it easy to correlate silk to a USD account. As I understand it, Silk , by virtue of holding all of the money in one wallet, also acts as a basic bitcoin washer, making it harder to figure out which purchases, withdrawls and inputs are being done by who.
On the topic of seller finalizing: I have 100$ of merchandise that as sent to someone around two weeks ago; everyone received/finalized over a week ago, and this one person hasn't logged in for 8 days. Still 8 days left on auto finalize.......
-
If you were going to go down this path, why not use a currency that is a lot more stable, like the Swiss Franc, Canadian Dollar or Aussie Dollar. Just as much risk of the USD currency tanking as BTCs losing their value!! :P
-
It's a great idea, but I don't see how SR could do such transactions and keep themselves and everyone else protected. Like someone said, all transactions are visible. LE would love for them so implement something like this. Now, if there was a way to do it, maybe using a washing service, but that takes a day or two at best.
I have a feeling that hedging is the best SR can do at the moment. Unless, of course, there is way they can purchase/sell btc's without any trace to the site.
got a question regarding hedging. If a seller has the purchases hedged and has to refund the money, does it go both ways for the buyer like it does for the seller? if the seller has to refund the btc? lets say i have 50 dollars hedged and refunded it. would the buyer get the same 50 dollars? or do they just get the amount of bitcoin back that they used when they made the purchase?
-
How about a feature for the buyer, giving them the ability to ask when the product can be expect and if the seller agrees to that, if he does not, he should be able to proposed another timeframe which the buyer can either accept or cancel the deal? Less drastic then resolution center. A letter of mine took almost 5 weeks even thought the labeling was very good. One day more in resolution and I would have refunded...
-
i like the idea. but i could see this pissing certain people off, which we all know, equals bad rep feedback..
a good handful of silk road customers are very finicky and impatient. the littlest thing can happen and all of a sudden the seller is huge P.O.S (in their eyes)
i think that is why it is 18, just to play it extra safe.
does suck when your BTC is stuck in escrow for ages though..
-
How about a feature for the buyer, giving them the ability to ask when the product can be expect and if the seller agrees to that, if he does not, he should be able to proposed another timeframe which the buyer can either accept or cancel the deal? Less drastic then resolution center. A letter of mine took almost 5 weeks even thought the labeling was very good. One day more in resolution and I would have refunded...
A bit off topic...... But that would add too much back and forth to seal a deal.