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Comment by jswny | Hacker News Reader

It is very useful when a seller has to sell directly to other users. If the seller can obtain the cryptocurrency from the user, said seller knows that he/she has the funds and that they can never be taken away. Then the seller can confidently provide the user with whatever product or service was requested. In contrast, if the seller used PayPal, the user can easily chargeback and get his/her money back after the seller has provided the product or service. Services like PayPal are seriously unreliable and become an extreme burden for some sellers who deal with intangible goods especially.

TLDR: Bitcoin makes it easy for sellers to obtain payment without the fear of PayPal account freezes or chargebacks.

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Or the seller can keep the funds, which can never be taken away, and not actually provide the user with any products or service. Chargebacks protect the buyer, at the expense of the seller (in case of buyer fraud). Lack of chargebacks protect the seller at the expense of the buyer (in case of seller fraud).

For most online marketplaces protecting the buyers at the expense of the sellers may be necessary. There are usually a lot of buyers, they are reluctant about buying things they cannot see or touch from people they don't know, and most are not in a position to absorb the fraud. Meanwhile the sellers are usually companies that can absorb some reasonable amount of fraud because they can spread the cost of the fraud over the much larger number of transactions.

That's not always the case, such as in situations where individuals are trying to occasionally sell items of value and they are not in a position to absorb the fraud. For those situations it may make sense to use an escrow mechanism, because non-reversible payment methods like Bitcoin may spook the buyers (and insufficient buyers may lower the overall prices, potentially beyond the cost of escrow).

None of this requires anonymous payments.

this is all accurate, but does not address the part about why its so important that it be anonymous.

"If you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear."

The same reason why GNU Taler is anonymous https://taler.net/

The EU can still suck taxes from the transactions of Taler but at least they have no idea what you bought. Why should the payment middleman have a complete itemized dossier of your personal purchasing history just you and the merchant should share the details of the purchase beyond the total amount paid.

> Why should.... merchant [] share the details of the purchase beyond the total amount paid

Because the government has a legitimate interest in taxing different goods at different rates.

They have an interest. Whether that interest is legitimate is at the very least debatable, and not beyond questioning.

Do you agree that taxation is a legitimate lever with which to effect economic and social policy? Vice taxes, for example, are much saner than outright bans for everyone involves, and tax incentives can drive the adoption of things like solar panels.

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