39. On Money Transfer Regulations

39

On Money Transfer Regulations

IN THIS POST, Satoshi suggests a service wherein buyers and sellers of bitcoins could meet in person to complete the purchase/sale of bitcoins and thereby avoid any sort of regulations. Both parties would bring a device capable of Internet access or meet at a place having public-access computers (e.g., a library or Internet café). The buyer would presumably pay in cash and would provide the seller his/her address so that the transfer could be completed. A service allowing buyers and sellers to find each other does exist today (see for example localbitcoins.com).

Re: Money Transfer Regulations

Satoshi Nakamoto March 03, 2010, 04:28:56 AM

When there’s enough scale, maybe there can be an exchange site that doesn’t do transfers, just matches up buyers and sellers to exchange with each other directly, similar to how e-bay works.

To make it safer, the exchange site could act as an escrow for the bitcoin side of the payment. The seller puts the bitcoin payment in escrow, and the buyer sends the conventional payment directlyto the seller. The exchange service doesn’t handle any real world money.

This would be a step better than e-bay. E-bay manages to work fine even though shipped goods can’t be recovered if payment falls through.