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Comment by gwern | Hacker News Reader

Keep in mind, a lot of people are hyping OpenBazaar more than it deserves or is helpful. The basic question about OB no one has answered is: assuming they get it up and running and with a good security model, why will the mass of black-market - or legal - users ever use it, when using Amazon or something is easier and more familiar?

You may say that they'll use it so they don't have to worry about police, except black-market users' revealed preferences are that they don't care: SR2 was doing millions a month without any escrow at all, and multisig usage is uncommon even on the markets which support it (vendors generally estimate <10%). The users seem to simply not care. Why are they going to use OB?

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The users that don't care are almost always the users buying the smallest (personal) amounts, and they usually don't care because they know if they get scammed or it gets lost they only lost $30. The customers who want larger quantities very much do care, and they're the ones who spend real cash.

Furthermore it's pretty common for a dealer who has a good enough reputation to start requiring early finalization. Most of the reason people still used SR2 is it was the easiest place to find their favorite vendor, and the lack of escrow didn't matter because you trust him and/or he requires FE no matter what the market.

As for why people will use OB (I have no idea if they will), cops aren't the only thing to worry about when buying drugs on the darknet (in fact they're close to the bottom of the list). Several marketplaces (including SR2) have been hacked and had all the users money stolen, and a couple have just disappeared with everyone's money. I suspect the selling point will be more like: "Hackers and corrupt admins won't be able to steal your money! Plus it's never down! Plus it's harder to get arrested!".

> The users that don't care are almost always the users buying the smallest (personal) amounts, and they usually don't care because they know if they get scammed or it gets lost they only lost $30. The customers who want larger quantities very much do care, and they're the ones who spend real cash.

No, you're just wrong. The multisig markets do little business, period. And lots of SR2 sales were for quite large amounts, see Judith Aldridge's paper on this topic - the larger quantities made up most of the revenue.

> I suspect the selling point will be more like: "Hackers and corrupt admins won't be able to steal your money! Plus it's never down! Plus it's harder to get arrested!".

And yet, none of that has made PGP or multisig standard.

It seems to me that what OpenBazaar is trying to do is to use software and the network to create a truly voluntary marketplace that offers many or most of the structural benefits that we get from centralized marketplaces but without the regulations and risks imposed by those who control such marketplaces. It is very much like what bitcoin does for currency, but applied to a different subject.

Sellers might prefer it

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