Escrow is the only functional protection a buyer has, yes. However some of us (ahem ;) do offer out of escrow services. It has nothing to do with BTC value as far as heding goes (although it his a boon for me when customers do want to pay full pop + shipping and stick to the system), it's all about cashflow. I would rather take a small haircut and offer buyers a discount option to get my money rolled back into carrying stock than have to wait 20 days for an order to finalize. However I think I've earned the ability to do that. I consider my own integrity and adherence to the principles of anarcho-capitalism to be just as great an insurance against a scam as the escrow system. But that's something you have to earn, as opposed to holding a package hostage until funds are released.Whenever a new buyer messages me with inquiries, I always tell them to sign up for the forums and at least read through the rumor mill section for a bit so they can see what the community is saying in real time relative to the action going on over on the SR main site. Even if that means holding off doing business with me for a day or two. I would rather have an informed buyer know the process, know what to watch out for, and decide to come back to me. It's SR 101, guys, and ALL sellers should be telling their customers to sign up over here - there are something like 60k + users on SR and we are around the 5k mark here. I know there are probably a bunch of duplicate accounts and such but it's still an insane difference.