Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: Dread Pirate Roberts on January 09, 2012, 03:56 am
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- From it's humble beginnings, the Silk Road market was quickly populated with what has become a vibrant community full of interesting characters. From our superstar vendors and ever helpful mods to all of the active folks on the forum, the people here are truly awesome. Silk Road would not be what it is or possibly even exist without everyone who has stepped up along the way to point out security flaws, contribute their ideas, and take this experiment on as their own and stand with us.
It didn't take long before word got out. Our little hidden market got the attention of the media and soon the politicians and law enforcement. But Silk Road was never meant to be private and exclusive. It is meant to grow into a force to be reckoned with that can challenge the powers that be and at last give people the option to choose freedom over tyranny. We fundamentally believe that people can thrive and prosper under these conditions and so far tens of thousands have done so in the Silk Road market. A revolution has been born. So ideally, more participants means more prosperity. What we've found in practice is that if there is an opportunity to cheat, steal or lie for personal short-term gain, someone, somewhere will exploit it.
So, we've had two major challenges to face as Silk Road grows and evolves. One is making our systems tough enough and flexible enough to withstand and win a cyber-war with the most powerful organizations in the world, should they choose to start that war. This is always and ever a top priority. The other is making the market a place where people can quickly and easily buy and sell just about anything without worrying about being attacked by gun toting men in uniforms and thrown in a cage or worry about being ripped off by their trading partner.
I am proud to say we have been successful in achieving these goals up to this point. The site remains up and functioning (despite a few screw ups on our part, like not having a full capacity backup server ready to go when a live server went down, and a poorly executed url switch, just to name a few). And, over 99% of all transactions conducted within the escrow system are completed to the satisfaction of both both buyer and seller, or a mutually agreed upon resolution is found.
This success has in no way made us complacent however. New members are still being lured into trading outside of escrow by scammers and getting ripped off, and “finalizing early”, effectively cutting out the escrow process, is common practice. Still, I believe we can mitigate these risks and take our market to the next level in security, reliability, performance, and convenience for everyone involved.
First we must deal with trading out of escrow. Up to this point we have charged a flat 6.23% commission on all trades. This is much too high for transactions in the $300 and over range, making trading out of escrow for large transactions much more attractive than staying within the system. Now, instead of charging a flat commission, we will charge a higher amount for low priced items and a lower amount for high priced items, similar to how eBay does it.
We've worked hard to come up with a commission schedule that should work for everyone and will give scammers no excuse to make people send money outside of escrow. For some perspective, eBay and amazon charge the following rates:
eBay - $0.50 to list, 11% of the first $50, 6% of $50.01-1000, 2% of $1000.01+
amazon - $1.35 + 15% (for almost all items)
We also went to the Silk Road independent sellers to see what they thought an appropriate commission schedule would look like. The average response looked like this:
15% of the first $10
11% of $10 - $50
8.14% of $50 - $250
5.6% of $250 - $1000
3.7% of $1000 - $5000
We looked at past sales data and our current and future revenue needs and were able to bring these numbers down even further:
10% of the first $50
8.5% of $50 - 150
6% of $150 - 300
3% of $300 - 500
2% of $500 - 1000
1.5% for everything over $1000
With this change, there are no phoney excuses whatsoever for vendors to ask for out of escrow payment. Any request should be interpreted as a scam attempt and reported to the Silk Road support team via the “contact us” link on the main site. We are looking at several mechanisms for enforcing the ban on OOE transactions, from self-policing to bounties on offenders.
Together, we can beat the scammers and make the Silk Road market a place where you can buy with confidence and peace of mind. If we stay true to our principles of integrity, virtue, mutual respect and camaraderie that have guided us to this point, I believe our future is bright and this revolutionary experiment will be a success!
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CLARIFICATION: The new policy regarding out of escrow transactions stated in this address does not affect a vendor's ability to ask their customers to finalize their orders and release payment before shipment. We still strongly recommend that buyers avoid doing this at all costs because we will be unable to protect you in case of fraud.
CLARIFICATION: This new policy also does not affect vendors who use the market as a platform for Bitcoin exchange. They may continue to operate as usual, but again we strongly recommend that you purchase bitcoins through a non-anonymous vendor because the market is not set up to facilitate bitcoin exchange and your money can be stolen without recourse.
FURTHER COMMENTARY: http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=8539.0
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No that's absolute bullshit for guys like me perfect example I sell digital good the only way i make ANYTHING is by volume not by amount my current average price is .14 btc I am going to have to lower that to .07 and you want to take 15 % on top of that ? common that's a crock of shit and unless you want me to put up 4,000 listings for 4,000 different items so i can increase my front page time i can't have 15% it literally makes me as a seller pointless it's like im in china make shoes for a slave driver just to make my btc
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The math on the figures...
AMOUNT CUMUL AMOUNT TOTAL %
10% of the first $50 $5 $5 10%
8.5% of $50 - 150 $8.50 $13.50 9%
6% of $150 - 300 $9 $22.50 7.5%
3% of $300 - 500 $6 $28.50 5.7%
2% of $500 - 1000 $10 $38.50 3.85%
1.5% for everything over $1000
So if you deal in amounts $300 and less, you'll definitely be paying more. Amounts $500 and over you're definitely paying less...
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warweed the only people buying your listings are scammers who want to pump up the stats for there new accounts and silk never said he was guna charge 15% he said 10% so get over it or u can always go somewhere else
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SR you continue to impress me. I support your change.
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You know what i wrote up a big angry letter but I made my point in my response SR make money good money now they are just trying to line there pockets ....
if you do this it will kill my business.
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The math on the figures...
AMOUNT CUMUL AMOUNT TOTAL %
10% of the first $50 $5 $5 10%
8.5% of $50 - 150 $8.50 $13.50 9%
6% of $150 - 300 $9 $22.50 7.5%
3% of $300 - 500 $6 $28.50 5.7%
2% of $500 - 1000 $10 $38.50 3.85%
1.5% for everything over $1000
So if you deal in amounts $300 and less, you'll definitely be paying more. Amounts $500 and over you're definitely paying less...
By my math, $417 is the cutoff if the old percentage was 6.23. If you buy something below $417, you're paying more than you were. Over $417 and it's less than you were.
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nice to hear of that SR. all that security changes sounds good. go on with that!
this is a real great place to be :) i like to be part of that kind of "revolution".
perhaps for the buyerstats there could also be an average price of the products listed there,
so the arguments against warweeds great service here aren't valid anymore ;)
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I have mixed feelings. Looks like bulk is going to be out of the picture on SR from now on.
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I think the bigger problem is the amount of scammer sellers. Especially scam LSD vendors. There needs to be a policy implemented for new sellers, so that they cannot do out of escrow or else they will be subject to deletion.
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I just received news about the fees increase. I have no problem with the fees increase HOWEVER if i MUST keep all my transactions in escrow, I am effectively out of business, I cannot afford to put that much money out of my pocket for a week some times ten days until the customer gets their packages! I would basically be able to sell for one day every two weeks and then I would have to wait for everyone to get their mail to finalize and I can reup and sell more. if we are really doing absolutely no out of escrows, im in the same boat as warweed but for diff reasons, I AM OUT OF BUSINESS!! Look at all my transactions so far, everyone has gotten their packages and most were done out of escrow and now I cant serve these same customers anymore!??!??! I believe it should be up to the buyer if they trust the vendor enough to finalizee early and, if not, to either agree to an escrow or just dont do business with that vendor!!! I thought this place was support to support the free market!! well, your killing my free market!! I HOPE THIS ISNT THE END OF WUMG00 ON SR!!! :'(
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I support SR. I support the site. And I support the ideas and principals in which it stands for. I love this this place and believe its for the best and more in line w/market conditions. Even if I pay more. SO WHAT!! I'M LUCKY TO BE HERE AT ALL!! I'll pay to play all day! Thank you. I'd like some more. THIS Kool Aid is good!
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im good with no more OOE stuff i just did that when ppl ask for it so i dont care. but just want to know how can ppl like BTC buddy and sugarmama stay open with the new OOE rule? i myself use BTC Buddy to sell bitcoin to cash out what i fell is a lot safer and faster then using the other ways i can. so i dont want to see them gone they help a lot with ppl getting bitcoin fast and for vendor to cash out.
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"we will also be implementing a zero tolerance policy toward out of escrow transactions"
I don't mind banning out of escrow necessarily, but a zero tolerance policy greatly bothers me. Someone could cross the line accidentally in the future who had no ill will and could be banned instantly. This is morally wrong imo. EVERYONE makes mistakes from time to time. There is no reason not to have a one strike policy.
Without a one strike policy I foresee honest vendors being banned in the future for stupid mistakes. It could be a legitimate mistake the vendor made, or it could be a misunderstanding. For example, I'm selling at bulk rate, but I do not have it listed under escrow. It is not that I'm not selling it via escrow, but I put up a private listing for every person who privately contacts me. While this does not break any rules, it makes me fearful that it could be misinterpreted as such.
Please SR. Put a one strike rule in place for vendors. I'm sure everyone here can agree to that.
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"we will also be implementing a zero tolerance policy toward out of escrow transactions"
I don't mind banning out of escrow necessarily, but a zero tolerance policy greatly bothers me. Someone could cross the line accidentally in the future who had no ill will and could be banned instantly. This is morally wrong imo. EVERYONE makes mistakes from time to time. There is no reason not to have a one strike policy.
Without a one strike policy I foresee honest vendors being banned in the future for stupid mistakes. It could be a legitimate mistake the vendor made, or it could be a misunderstanding. For example, I'm selling at bulk rate, but I do not have it listed under escrow. It is not that I'm not selling it via escrow, but I put up a private listing for every person who privately contacts me. While this does not break any rules, it makes me fearful that it could be misinterpreted as such.
Please SR. Put a one strike rule in place for vendors. I'm sure everyone here can agree to that.
I don't see that quote on his post... where did you get that quote? He never said that...
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"we will also be implementing a zero tolerance policy toward out of escrow transactions"
I don't mind banning out of escrow necessarily, but a zero tolerance policy greatly bothers me. Someone could cross the line accidentally in the future who had no ill will and could be banned instantly. This is morally wrong imo. EVERYONE makes mistakes from time to time. There is no reason not to have a one strike policy.
Without a one strike policy I foresee honest vendors being banned in the future for stupid mistakes. It could be a legitimate mistake the vendor made, or it could be a misunderstanding. For example, I'm selling at bulk rate, but I do not have it listed under escrow. It is not that I'm not selling it via escrow, but I put up a private listing for every person who privately contacts me. While this does not break any rules, it makes me fearful that it could be misinterpreted as such.
Please SR. Put a one strike rule in place for vendors. I'm sure everyone here can agree to that.
I don't see that quote on his post... where did you get that quote? He never said that...
form a message SR sent out to vendors
"Once this new schedule goes into effect, we will also be implementing a zero tolerance policy toward out of escrow transactions. If you currently offer alternative payment methods, out of escrow direct payments, instruct your customers to contact you directly for other products or offers, or in anyway do business outside of the escrow system with Silk Road customers, you MUST cease immediately. Consider this your only warning. Your account will be terminated without if you don't comply. You may post back up contact details where your customers can contact you in case of site outage, but you may not instruct them to contact you there for any other reason."
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Maybe this is dumb but others might be thinking this... Are "out of escrow" and "finalizing early" necessarily the same thing?
I interpreted this as SR trying to stop transactions from happening OUTSIDE the SR payment system altogether (which would remove SR's cut and profit). When buyers finalize early, SR still gets their cut, and the vendor at some point is still held responsible for that delivery and WILL get a rating and review from that transaction.
To me it makes sense to allow buyers to finalize early, but to ban vendors from requesting direct BTC wallet to BTC wallet transfers for product listed on SR.
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How about a protocol for scam bitcoin exchanges? Currently there is zero protection. SR is this something you have in the pipeline? Getting this under control will make SR an even better place!
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"we will also be implementing a zero tolerance policy toward out of escrow transactions"
I don't mind banning out of escrow necessarily, but a zero tolerance policy greatly bothers me. Someone could cross the line accidentally in the future who had no ill will and could be banned instantly. This is morally wrong imo. EVERYONE makes mistakes from time to time. There is no reason not to have a one strike policy.
Without a one strike policy I foresee honest vendors being banned in the future for stupid mistakes. It could be a legitimate mistake the vendor made, or it could be a misunderstanding. For example, I'm selling at bulk rate, but I do not have it listed under escrow. It is not that I'm not selling it via escrow, but I put up a private listing for every person who privately contacts me. While this does not break any rules, it makes me fearful that it could be misinterpreted as such.
Please SR. Put a one strike rule in place for vendors. I'm sure everyone here can agree to that.
I don't see that quote on his post... where did you get that quote? He never said that...
form a message SR sent out to vendors
"Once this new schedule goes into effect, we will also be implementing a zero tolerance policy toward out of escrow transactions. If you currently offer alternative payment methods, out of escrow direct payments, instruct your customers to contact you directly for other products or offers, or in anyway do business outside of the escrow system with Silk Road customers, you MUST cease immediately. Consider this your only warning. Your account will be terminated without if you don't comply. You may post back up contact details where your customers can contact you in case of site outage, but you may not instruct them to contact you there for any other reason."
Wow. That's... interesting...
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I like no more OOE, that is great.
The price to pay is...well people like me who are buying personal amounts of bud and other drugs (most of the time no more than 300) we will be getting the short end of the stick. I haven't done the math, so I cannot say if the pros are worth the cons.
I don't know. I am kind of uneasy about it. I will have to see how this affect my favorite vendors and how it will change prices. I really do hope it all works out, in theory it sounds like a wonderful idea. I think there are still a few kinks to work out, though.
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Good thing ALL my transactions are within escrow. What do we do about those pesky btc traders and there 0.00 listings? Now they're are all going to be .01 listings. How do these new rules affect them and other digital good traders? Kind of cramping there style and budgets. I guess its for the best. Growing pains. I want to be grandfathered in under a better rate for being an AWESOME vendor. HA!
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The commissions should apply to whole orders, not just individual products; all of my items are under $50 but most of the orders I get are larger, I shouldn't have to pay a 10% flat tax.
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I am nothing but in agreement with this policy because it has been mine from the very first day I started here.
I have never asked anyone whoever to finalize early and I never will.
While I know this place isn't as secure as ovdb I know that they r trying and I really do appreciate the anonymity .
I appreciate it and I am willing to pay for it. My policy has been from day one to split the cost of the commission with the buyer.
I am more than happy to do this because I am a business woman. It's all included in the cost of doing business with the peace of mind that
I receive here.
I grow everything I sell so maybe I have less to lose than those that buy and resell. WTF Quit crying!!!
This is long overdue from what I can tell. I read al kinds of posts that decry "SCAMMER".
I have recently gone to the trouble of totally changing my os to linux - a completely foreign os to me.
I am in the process of learning this os ( just because of this site) to be safer. As soon as i figure it out ima switch to virtual.
It isn't fun for me and ima pulling my hair out but wtf - u hear me crying? NO!!!
This is a business - don't like it? GTFO......
Cheers SR and btw nice set of balls. :)
All my love to the crybaby's;
<3 Christy
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Like I said I have mixed feelings. I've been here longer than most, and while I don't think that deserves any special treatment, it's shitty that new sellers sucking in customers and ripping them off cuts into my existing business model.
I'll still be around, but my prices are going to have to go up because my float is going to be tied up that much more, I will not be able to sell any more bulk product, and my current group-buy will unfortunately be my last :(
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Wow. There are good reasons why I require my customers with less then 5 transactions, high refund rates or international to finalize early...
This is to much power given to the buyers.. Now you just going to put the vendors out of business. This is NOT a good idea on banning the vendors right to require a customer to finalize early. You might be effectively removing the scammer vendors, now we'll just have a huge problem with scamming buyers... which will be worst... what happens when all the vendors go out of business?
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Maybe this is dumb but others might be thinking this... Are "out of escrow" and "finalizing early" necessarily the same thing?
No they are different. Out of escrow means out of SR or direct bitcoin to bitcoin. Finalizing early means through SR (commission and all) but the buyer pays fully before the item is shipped.
If finalizing early becomes banned I will just not sell to new users, which is something to think about as I'm sure a lot of sellers here would do the same thing after being ripped off.
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I am too sleepy right now to fully grasp this right now.... so I am off to have a nap and come back to this. First glance and gut reaction is pretty that this is going to have an affect on my sales. :/ This might keep people from buying buølk from me unless they go over the cut off for when they will actually will benefit from the change... Dangit....
-Amush
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Maybe this is dumb but others might be thinking this... Are "out of escrow" and "finalizing early" necessarily the same thing?
No they are different. Out of escrow means out of SR or direct bitcoin to bitcoin. Finalizing early means through SR (commission and all) but the buyer pays fully before the item is shipped.
If finalizing early becomes banned I will just not sell to new users, which is something to think about as I'm sure a lot of sellers here would do the same thing after being ripped off.
or in anyway do business outside of the escrow system
I was under the impression that this covered early finalization, you are getting paid before the buyer receives the product therefore you are foregoing escrow.
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I'm very happy with the new commission schedule. I'm not sure what anarcho47 is harping about because the new schedule is a big improvement for bulk transactions. I've been doing many, many $1000+ transactions and the $6 fee was a bummer. If he's been avoiding fees by doing all bulk transactions in private well shame on him because without Silk Road where would any of us be?
I do think there should be an exemption for BTC<-->CASH transactions. These transactions facilitate the real transactions occurring and offer extra security for both buyers and sellers. It's in the interest of Silk Road to encourage them as much as possible. Plus I don't see how you could charge a fee on transactions where people are buying BTC and paying with other methods. Maybe you should make the money category free of fees altogether or if you charge anything it could be something like 0.5% commensurate with the major exchanges. I still don't see how BTC sellers would be able to work through the escrow system so it would really be in the best interest of everyone to allow them to continue operating as they are.
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Fortunately, there are other options to SR with more becoming available each and every day.
Are there?
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I don't have a problem with the changes, but I am curious what the BTC vendors are gonna do. I guess the vendors just pay the commission on exchange. I do think the escrow is the only way to protect vendors from getting ripped off though. Hopefully, it will keep everyone honest and chase the trolls away.
Maybe, you could have two different sellers accounts. One for goods and one for currency exchanges only. That way you could lower the commission for the currency exchanges. Just a thought.
Peace 8)
Libby
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I just received news about the fees increase. I have no problem with the fees increase HOWEVER if i MUST keep all my transactions in escrow, I am effectively out of business, I cannot afford to put that much money out of my pocket for a week some times ten days until the customer gets their packages! I would basically be able to sell for one day every two weeks and then I would have to wait for everyone to get their mail to finalize and I can reup and sell more. if we are really doing absolutely no out of escrows, im in the same boat as warweed but for diff reasons, I AM OUT OF BUSINESS!! Look at all my transactions so far, everyone has gotten their packages and most were done out of escrow and now I cant serve these same customers anymore!??!??! I believe it should be up to the buyer if they trust the vendor enough to finalizee early and, if not, to either agree to an escrow or just dont do business with that vendor!!! I thought this place was support to support the free market!! well, your killing my free market!! I HOPE THIS ISNT THE END OF WUMG00 ON SR!!! :'(
Just to be clear, no mention of banning finalizing early was made. We recognize the cash-flow needs of vendors and are working to address these needs while preventing scams arising from finalizing early. At this point though, while we advise buyers to avoid finalizing early at all costs, vendors are still free to request it.
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im good with no more OOE stuff i just did that when ppl ask for it so i dont care. but just want to know how can ppl like BTC buddy and sugarmama stay open with the new OOE rule? i myself use BTC Buddy to sell bitcoin to cash out what i fell is a lot safer and faster then using the other ways i can. so i dont want to see them gone they help a lot with ppl getting bitcoin fast and for vendor to cash out.
Another clarification. Bitcoin exchangers will still be able to operate. We are working to address the needs of the exchangers and prevent fraud on this front as well.
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Just to be clear, no mention of banning finalizing early was made. We recognize the cash-flow needs of vendors and are working to address these needs while preventing scams arising from finalizing early. At this point though, while we advise buyers to avoid finalizing early at all costs, vendors are still free to request it.
Don't pack up shop just yet vendors!
I don't think the cash flow situation should be a weight entirely on SR's shoulders, but the vendors should be accounting for this in their "business plan". Maybe some sort of compromise can be made between vendors and SR.
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I love how there's an new OVDB section in the forums while all this is going on haha
As far as the fees go I back warweed completely.
I'll be the first to admit I owe you some dues for a few quick transfers, and as a compromise I sent someone a fat gram of MXE to be payed when they receive, and when they receive by the weekend you can have 100% profit which will cover more than what I owe and interest.
SR... it's one thing to ban listings but terminating accounts for this kind of a violation is ridiculous and dictatorial. I won't be around here much longer if it's going to turn into the 4th Reich.
-RI
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SR cut the shit imo it is pretty obvious you are just looking for more money. Which is perfectly fine, running a site like SR is a full time job and it isn't worth it to do it for free. But you are going to do damage to the site by implementing this method of getting money. Because nobody is going to do bulk deals through the escrow system. I have seen deals for 10 grams of crystal LSD, hundreds of thousands of tablets, kilos of MDMA etc from legit vendors online, even on fairly well known drug forums. There is no way in fucking hell the people doing deals like that are going to risk losing to a reverse scammer. The risk has historically been on the customer and even though escrow is fine for small deals and really a good model, it ensures that there will never be bulk sellers. And many sellers with bulk don't want to be bothered changing to small orders either.
I suggest you tax big vendors on their orders, but don't make them risk losing out to reverse scammers.
BTW there is an open source bitcoin mix software being developed that is pretty cool, it decentralizes trust by requiring multiple nodes to sign off on the block chain (this is a little known feature built into the bitcoin spec, but that hasn't afaik been taken advantage of yet). This will allow for decentralized bitcoin mixes where no single mix operator can steal bitcoins from a client who uses it. It also uses blind signature mixing so protects from evil mix operators colluding together to deanonymize coin flows. It allows for mix nodes to charge a price for their services too. I think it will quickly turn into a commercial network of mixes when it is done and really be a great way to get truly anonymized bitcoins. But anyway the reason I bring this up is that apparently escrow can be decentralized and still in line with the bitcoin spec, because this software (Open Transactions...look it up) decentralizes trust with bitcoins in a mixing context. Soon I think people will automatically store their coins constantly mixing through a distributed trust network of mix nodes / addresses.
You know what you really should work on though, SR? Implementing more systems to protect from the feds doing name flooding attacks. They already have the software to aid in name flooding attacks, where small teams of agents aim to control many personas online to maximize human inteligence 'surface area' in pseudonymous networked environments. This is scary. The feds could easily mass register accounts and I am sure that they are doing this. Charging for seller accounts at least puts a price tag on the attack instead of making it essentially free to engage in. However, the feds have a lot of money to spend on intelligence sources so this isn't perfect protection by any means.
I think you should go with somewhat of a vendor recruitment strategy. You don't need a trust rank system like OVDB although a decentralized web of trust would be nice. But what I have been thinking of recently is using a blind signature system to verify the presence of people on a public drug discussion forum prior to some date in time. The logic with this is that public drug discussion forums have very large amounts of registered users with many years of history, and I think that the feds only recently started fucking with persona management software and name flooding attacks. The chances that the DEA has a lot of registered nyms on bluelight that registered in 2011 is a lot higher than the probability that they have a lot of bluelight accounts from 2009, although they probably do have some I don't think they mass registered that early. Some sort of system that can verify a persons account on bluelight while giving them anonymous credentials would be nice.
The verification can be done automatically by having the user submit the hash of a message they havn't made yet to the verification server and then giving the verification server the message hash and link it to the thread it will be put into. Since only the person with the account will know what they are going to post before they post it, the verification server can verify that they own the account in question.
Then the server can issue them a blind signature certificate that can be redeemed for a 'verified' credential on SR. Only allow people who were on public drug forums from some point in time a prior to get verified status. Now a verified user can prove that they were a member on a public drug discussion forum at some point in time, but they will still have a large crowd size to blend into, particularly if enough people use the system. This means their verified name wont be linkable to their name on the public drug discussion forum. The main reason you want to use blind signatures like this to create unlinkability and a large crowd size is to protect from having IP address records from public forums used to deanonymize users. If this were done, verified users would be in the crowd of everyone who obtained a blind signature (to the verification server) or the crowd of all public drug forum users (to any other potential attacker).
Of course being verified status would narrow you down to someone on one of the forums that can get verified status in this way, but people on those forums are already probably targets already, talking about illegal drug use openly I hope they all use Tor but I doubt it. If they all used Tor all the time when using bluelight it would be much easier to recruit and give them verified status lol. Not just bluelight though but also forums like drugs-forum uk etc. Really you could even verify people had nyms on other popular forums in the same way, to increase potential crowd size substantially and probably protect even more from nym flooding attacks (after all I bet DEA has more nyms on bluelight than they do on some random popular forum, on the other hand I bet more silk road users have accounts on bluelight than any other forum too so it goes both ways).
I think protecting from human intelligence name flooding attacks in as many ways as possible is the most important thing that needs to be focused on right now, we are on the verge of making huge progess in the communications / computer security / product transfer - interception detection / financial anonymity etc departments but the one place we are always going to be weak is human intelligence. And human intelligence has a lot of potential to do a lot of damage because once an infiltration or compromise takes place ALL of the nodes networked to the malicious one via the postal system that get packages from it are at serious risk of being compromised, and in the mid-distant future this is going to be the only way the feds have to keep intelligence flows on the scene going (especially once undetected interceptions are a thing of the past).
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Yeah I agree with the concept but there has to be an exception for established vendors or something. As wumng00 pointed out, a lot of sellers tread on a thin profit margin and I don't think its fair cut off their out of escrow income. I say let the idiots that want to pay out of escrow get screwed out of their money. It won't matter in the long run that a few people got scammed but it will matter if good vendors are forced out of business by this.
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I love how there's an new OVDB section in the forums while all this is going on haha
As far as the fees go I back warweed completely.
I'll be the first to admit I owe you some dues for a few quick transfers, and as a compromise I sent someone a fat gram of MXE to be payed when they receive, and when they receive by the weekend you can have 100% profit which will cover more than what I owe and interest.
SR... it's one thing to ban listings but terminating accounts for this kind of a violation is ridiculous and dictatorial. I won't be around here much longer if it's going to turn into the 4th Reich.
-RI
Agreed
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[/quote]
Just to be clear, no mention of banning finalizing early was made. We recognize the cash-flow needs of vendors and are working to address these needs while preventing scams arising from finalizing early. At this point though, while we advise buyers to avoid finalizing early at all costs, vendors are still free to request it.
[/quote]
THANKS A LOT FOR CLEARING THAT UP SR!!! I APPRECIATE IT AS I WAS GETTING WORRIED, I LOVE THIS PLACE TOO MUCH TO WANNA EVER LEAVE!! AND NOW I WONT HAVE TOO! HELL YEAH!! 8)
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All my love to the crybaby's;
<3 Christy
T-bagging balls you must mean...
Nope if u got balls hitting u in the face while u swallow your buddies cock that's your prob.
What I meant is he has a set cause he is gonna have to put up with all the whiner's and just flat out bitches sniveling.
I hope he has a full bottle of Tylenol3's to deal. cause all this shit would give me a headache.
I am selling hash cause that's all i have that i have atm and i sell it for 3 dollars a gram under local club price. I : package it, use my time to answer all the questions , pay the SR commission and pay for the shipping at this rate and am still making money cause i make it myself. I am happy to do this because i make money at it and believe that the rest of the country deserves to be free and have the same option to buy medicinal's that i have ina medical state.
This place is great and so was ovdb rip.
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damn, its going to take SR all day just to read kmfkewm's post
How does one prove OOE? Any random dickhead with a tor connection could claim it without it ever happening and its not like someone's going to report a successful OOE in light of this. SR's own catch 22 in the works.
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Dont forget additional 4% "hidden" fee for hedging system!
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I might be off the mark or being a little simplistic, but couldn't the fees have stayed the same, but just have been capped at a maximum to prevent large transactions from being unviable?
I think banning out of escrow is fair enough, SR deserves their cut. Early finalization takes care of cash flow for trusted vendors...
However, if there is more money being made by SR then we would expect better customer service and a continuous improvement in security and functionality.
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This is going to hurt the vendors and buyers who mostly deal in smaller purchases like digital downloads and grams of weed. It's better for bulk so I don't understand the complaint there. I usually don't have hundreds to spend on an ounce of weed and often just buy small amounts. This seems like it will really kill the under $50 market.
How is this enforceable anyway? If buyer and seller communicate with PGP SR won't know what they're discussing. Transfer funds from one offsite btc wallet to another and OOE sales can continue undetected. Anonymity, bitcoins, and encryption can be used to thwart SR just as they're used to protect SR.
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i'm kinda disappointed in the rate increase, but would be more disappointed if SR wasn't making enough profit to keep this site up. I hope you make a ton of money SR, because you deserve it. Without you i'd be 95ing it at walmart or Arby's. I may even send you a donation, just to say thanks.
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Well i cleared some things up with sr and it isn't as terrible as i thought but still with that in mind i still loose a fair amount of money that up until now was mine Granted I will be creating a ass ton more listings thou to hopefully increase revenue with that said for me it's not as bad I lose money because of the small price increase and the unwillingness for users to buy but at the same time I personally am not looseing much because all my sales are completely automated but there still is some work i have to do but for people like DrawkwarD who fill orders by hand for bit pennys there is ALOT of work involved so any amount no matter how much it is honestly takes away from him and sure say on a .50 item sr only steals a nickel but it add's up quick .. especially with the volume of sales a digital goods vendor does
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There are some interesting time ahead of us all. Hope we work this out.
-ColdFrost
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I would hope to see ALOT more dev and investment into server and connection sr is just far to slow and i know it can be fast because i have seen it right after a reboot or when minimal people are on it's quick as shit
i wonder if sr could run in a cloud ?
anyways yeah if your going to take our money at least improve shit i mean i see little tweaks here and there but i mean for the money that is and is going to come in ...
yeah that's all
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Are you telling me that i can't accept Ukash payments anymore from customers?? >:(
You know how many are struggling with Bitcoins and prefer paying me trough other paying methods?
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This is the first time I kindof agree with the new system. It lets people stay in escrow and on average I wont pay more then I do now :D Of course it has its flaws but you cant make everyone happy :P
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Are you telling me that i can't accept Ukash payments anymore from customers?? >:(
You know how many are struggling with Bitcoins and prefer paying me trough other paying methods?
that's right. you can sell them bitcoins for ukash and then they can buy your item with bitcoins.
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that's right. you can sell them bitcoins for ukash and then they can buy your item with bitcoins.
Oke that sounds like an alternative than I can just put that on my profile:
if you need bitcoins.... for ukash to buy my products send me a PM.
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My suggestion would be to price the commission based on transaction volume per seller, rather than the price of each individual item. Look how MtGox does their trade fee. Set the fee based on a seller's 30-day trading volume, makes it more fair to sellers who do many small transactions instead of a few big ones.
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I hope this change doesn't affect the lower volume vendors that much, but I also recognize the need for it. I haven't been a victim of a scam myself, but I've read the horror stories, and if this change makes SR a more trustworthy place for vendors and buyers, then I'm okay with paying a tiny bit more for a smaller order.
Most of the established vendors here are incredibly friendly, interactive with the community, and already go out of their way to resolve problems and include a little extra. So supporting them is a no-brainer, but hopefully this change will mean that if I see a new vendor name pop up, it's also a safer bet than it was before.
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Bitcoins suck (volatile exchange rate, takes too long to get them, etc), so I go out of escrow if I trust the seller. It might leave me as a buyer unprotected, but in the long both seller and buyer benefit (as neither has to account for the Bitcoin exchange rate and stuff like that). This new policy will change that sellers are going to keep their OOE deals a secret, but it will definitely not stop them from happening. You could tap in on PM's, but we'll just encrypt that even more.
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This is nothing more than a sizable rate increase under the guise of protecting the customers.
Let's all just be honest here. This isn't about protecting customers one bit, because vendors are still allowed to demand early finalization. I mean, for every transaction that is done entirely out of escrow, there are probably 100 that are done in escrow but finalized early.
The only difference is, SR gets paid for an early finalization, so there is no real motivation to end that practice.
While I don't agree with the price increase (I think the amount SR previously charged is fair, and with each rate increase they just hasten the arrival of competition), it is certainly SR's right to increase rates, and I do not begrudge them for doing so.
But don't treat us like fucking idiots and spin some fairytale about how this change is designed to do anything other than put more money in your pockets.
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Welcome to reality. You think SR is funded by bake sales???? I say let them do whatever the fuck they want, my purchases are 90% always over 1k so I will benefit from this. I say if you dislike the policy vend/consume on another site.
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WARNING: Warweed is a conman. His books amount to nothing to SR, and all he does here is making himself appear legit by a high number of sales which keep him safe but allow him to get false reputation which amounts to nothing. He scammed me out of more than $1100!!!
Looking back there were signs from the beginning as nothing he said really added up, all he wanted was to squeeze more money out of me. Some were blunt lies which grew with time, some are documented in the SR messaging system. He kept fabricating made up fantasy which shows he knows nothing about what he claims to know, just to drag more time so he could make some more money from his "ebooks business", until after a month he just gave me a fictitious "serial number" for the shipping. He then ran out of excuses and stopped communicating to me.
I know his real name and location. His real name is 4 googles away from his nick. A few skype calls revealed his current address, and his family members'.
Don't get me wrong, I WON'T SPARE MY MONEY which you scammed out of me. You'll pay one way or another.
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friendlyoutlaw seems to have the balls to say what most of us are probably thinking.
bravo
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TO SR:
thanks so far for SR plus forum etc, obviously admins/mods are putting in a lot of time and effort {don't know how they are rewarded as such..unless the increases are to cover their remuneration in which case perhaps this is going to a good cause...!? thanks anyways}
how about splitting the increase of 2% per fortnight (or 1 week), to give everyone the time to adjust? so within 30days its back to the 4% increase..?!
everyone:
for the record I don't believe sitting back and expecting SR to grow by more and more buyers -trading by numbers as discussed in the numerous threads this is
risky business and I imagine it becoming more difficult to trade which governments will make things if we don't start thinking more crafty.
my vision is more seller cooperation ++ on a much bigger scale and i'm thinking global and obviously which undermines LE etc which i'm 110% for.
if it means expanding on "services" irl and complicating the model then so be it.
obviously if there is something buyers should be doing to facilitate this then sure...why not {apart from paying more quicker which everyone i'm sure would want, the more i earn in my job the more i'll spend no problem..}
{a little off topic, but hey....there's a lot at stake here}
thanks
TWM
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lol, did this thread make the bitcoin exchange rate plumet?
seems 2 hours after SR started this thread, the value has taken a good beating.
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Welcome to reality. You think SR is funded by bake sales???? I say let them do whatever the fuck they want, my purchases are 90% always over 1k so I will benefit from this. I say if you dislike the policy vend/consume on another site.
You are so correct and very nicely put. Short ,sweet and to the point.
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This is nothing more than a sizable rate increase under the guise of protecting the customers.
Let's all just be honest here. This isn't about protecting customers one bit, because vendors are still allowed to demand early finalization. I mean, for every transaction that is done entirely out of escrow, there are probably 100 that are done in escrow but finalized early.
The only difference is, SR gets paid for an early finalization, so there is no real motivation to end that practice.
While I don't agree with the price increase (I think the amount SR previously charged is fair, and with each rate increase they just hasten the arrival of competition), it is certainly SR's right to increase rates, and I do not begrudge them for doing so.
But don't treat us like fucking idiots and spin some fairytale about how this change is designed to do anything other than put more money in your pockets.
Great post. In a way I welcome it because we will just pass on this NEW EXTRAORDINARY tax increase short-term. This provides just the motivation for similar boards to be established with reasonable and not greedy revenue based models in the long-term.
I was good with everything but the 40% increase in SR sales fees.
And stop fucking feeling sorry like this is so much work and hard for SR to do and for their efforts, they make nothing. SR leadership are multimillionaires by now and will only grow richer after this move. Don't forget this people.
Also, doesn't SR make enough manipulating the BTC market as it is?
wow what a negative loser u are. u dont just suck as a vendor u suck as a human being. hopefully these new "similar boards" get created quick so losers like u can take ur negativity elsewhere
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perhaps for the buyerstats there could also be an average price of the products listed there,
I have long thought that "average purchase amount" in the buyer stats would be a HUGE help. Say you're a vendor looking at two buyers with equal quality/responsibility but with these difference: Buyer A 30 transactions, average amount $40 or Buyer B 20 transactions, average amount $200. Which would you feel more warm n fuzzy about?
I apologize for being off topic.
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Good thing on the FE front, although it doesn't even affect me. The money exchange vendors are also adressed, perfect.
I support this move, because I'm support this movement, institution, rebellion, whatchamacallit both financially and idiologically.
As to the fear of clamping down on individual listing: I think that's totally unreasonable as the guys are probably totally see that offers more and better options to both buyers and sellers (mixing & matching) and stays inside of the escrow system.
I see how the burdgen of tax can be dumped on the seller (and probably will in a lot of cases, I'll probably try to split it personally). You may consider it kind of a dick move but this is the price people will have to pay both for the power of reducing scamming and ultimately for the privilege that SR is in itself. Even if you have good connections you'll never have the variety of selection as on SR and if you basically don't have any local connecs at all then SR is a godsend for you. If you consider this a gamechanger then you have to adapt to it (e.g. I hand out minor freebies for larger transactions both as an incentive and giving the customer more bang for his bucks.) or drop out. SR is IMHO by no means the cutthroat capitalism that we see on wall street (I think we'll never see SR bail out a vendor ;)) and has virtues that the market out there as lost.
All glory to SR (and I love the thread title, hopefully we won't see to many 'road construction ahead' and 'detour'-signs ;)). \o/
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10% is a little high for under 50$
Just stating my opinion.
:)
nomad bloodbath
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10% is a little high for under 50$
Maybe even a little greedy?
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So if I use silkroad to tumble my btc from transactions which never originated on this site I will be pegged as someone who goes out of escrow and my account canceled?
Also what is the standard of proof? Can another vendor make a fake account and say you did business out of escrow with them? What happens to the btc in the account, does SR keep it?
There are so many unanswered question and potential for abuse. Don't get me wrong I'm fine with the policy but there needs to be clearer guidelines.
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This is nothing more than a sizable rate increase under the guise of protecting the customers.
Let's all just be honest here. This isn't about protecting customers one bit, because vendors are still allowed to demand early finalization. I mean, for every transaction that is done entirely out of escrow, there are probably 100 that are done in escrow but finalized early.
The only difference is, SR gets paid for an early finalization, so there is no real motivation to end that practice.
While I don't agree with the price increase (I think the amount SR previously charged is fair, and with each rate increase they just hasten the arrival of competition), it is certainly SR's right to increase rates, and I do not begrudge them for doing so.
But don't treat us like fucking idiots and spin some fairytale about how this change is designed to do anything other than put more money in your pockets.
BRAVO!!!
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We're buying and selling things that are still illegal in most countries, so I'm not going to complain if the creator of it all wants a piece of the action for all of this risk. I'm happy to pay extra for the convenience that the site provides. It also connects me to quality product I would never have access to in my area of the US. Keep up the awesome work.
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I believe the unique aspects of SR should be simply be appreciated and accept that cost increase are a way of life today.
Like any other available amusement, all costs will eventually increase as it does with everything else in the world right now.
Cool to have a venue like this to access the world wide RX. Thanx
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I just received news about the fees increase. I have no problem with the fees increase HOWEVER if i MUST keep all my transactions in escrow, I am effectively out of business, I cannot afford to put that much money out of my pocket for a week some times ten days until the customer gets their packages! I would basically be able to sell for one day every two weeks and then I would have to wait for everyone to get their mail to finalize and I can reup and sell more. if we are really doing absolutely no out of escrows, im in the same boat as warweed but for diff reasons, I AM OUT OF BUSINESS!! Look at all my transactions so far, everyone has gotten their packages and most were done out of escrow and now I cant serve these same customers anymore!??!??! I believe it should be up to the buyer if they trust the vendor enough to finalizee early and, if not, to either agree to an escrow or just dont do business with that vendor!!! I thought this place was support to support the free market!! well, your killing my free market!! I HOPE THIS ISNT THE END OF WUMG00 ON SR!!! :'(
Just to be clear, no mention of banning finalizing early was made. We recognize the cash-flow needs of vendors and are working to address these needs while preventing scams arising from finalizing early. At this point though, while we advise buyers to avoid finalizing early at all costs, vendors are still free to request it.
No mention of banning for FINALIZING EARLY?? what about OUT OF ESCROW? Your PM says my account will be TERMINATED.
What about donations? I'm currently non-profit!
Once again this is ridiculous and dictatorial.
As a compromise for warweed orders from .01-2.5 BTC can be %2 or something related.
-RI
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My suggestion would be to price the commission based on transaction volume per seller, rather than the price of each individual item. Look how MtGox does their trade fee. Set the fee based on a seller's 30-day trading volume, makes it more fair to sellers who do many small transactions instead of a few big ones.
I agree with 0ni0ns on this one. I don't do anything out of escrow, but there have been times where someone was a couple BTC short and I said sure just send them direct. Now I will have to make a custom listing each time, this takes away from my friendliness towards buyers. It will become a lot of work making custom listings for everyone that needs to send me a few extra BTC for any overages on shipping or like I stated being 1-2 BTC short of a listing.
I think the new method should work fine, but I am worried about my anonymity if I can't funnel all my BTC from my vendor acct. to another acct to get out of SR. I just hope the NO TOLERANCE policy for OOE transactions will not be automated and will come down to being peer reviewed per case. I mean if your gonna do this to us, you should increase the amount of employees to handle all the case by case transactions you are expelling.
Otherwise it's just more work for us trusted vendors, for less money?
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I just received news about the fees increase. I have no problem with the fees increase HOWEVER if i MUST keep all my transactions in escrow, I am effectively out of business, I cannot afford to put that much money out of my pocket for a week some times ten days until the customer gets their packages! I would basically be able to sell for one day every two weeks and then I would have to wait for everyone to get their mail to finalize and I can reup and sell more. if we are really doing absolutely no out of escrows, im in the same boat as warweed but for diff reasons, I AM OUT OF BUSINESS!! Look at all my transactions so far, everyone has gotten their packages and most were done out of escrow and now I cant serve these same customers anymore!??!??! I believe it should be up to the buyer if they trust the vendor enough to finalizee early and, if not, to either agree to an escrow or just dont do business with that vendor!!! I thought this place was support to support the free market!! well, your killing my free market!! I HOPE THIS ISNT THE END OF WUMG00 ON SR!!! :'(
Just to be clear, no mention of banning finalizing early was made. We recognize the cash-flow needs of vendors and are working to address these needs while preventing scams arising from finalizing early. At this point though, while we advise buyers to avoid finalizing early at all costs, vendors are still free to request it.
It seems to me that the best way to keep everybody happy would be to bring "out of escrow" sales out of the shadows. There are honest and legitimate business reasons to bypass the escrow system, and these needs must be addressed. Using early finalization is a clumsy, awkward workaround to this problem.
Allow vendors with a high enough feedback rating and sales history to earn the right to add "out of escrow" as an option when listing a product.
Now, out of escrow sales don't bypass the SR fee structure or feedback system. SR revenues increase. Scammers will be exposed via feedback, and could lose the privilege of bypassing escrow. There is now no legitimate reason (no, fee avoidance is not a legitimate reason) to bypass the SR system; there should be little opposition to banning these deals.
Such listings would have a big, bold print disclaimer automatically added to the top, so even newbie buyers would know the risks they take by buying out of escrow.
Some vendors may be able to offer lower prices for out of escrow deals; this benefits both buyers and seller. If this happens, it might be worth setting things up so listings have both an "in escrow" and "out of escrow" price. Again, this benefits everybody.
I really can't see a downside to this. Does anyone else? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?
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maybe there needs to be a sliding scale that after you've become a long-time vendor (paid your dues) that your taxed percentage starts to decrease with the more sales you make.
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SR becomes greedy and starts to act like a little chief, here it comes! Your demagogic version of the changes smell fishy to me but you might work hard so you might deserve a little too even if you are now able to transform this little into a big one, a big juicy profit! You better save the most you can coz you might need it all one of these days.. perhaps to buy back your freedom... The revolution you are talking abt smells fishy too as there is actually some war going on under your own roof you are not caring abt, legit vendors are being attacked by trolls and other envious cunts, some other vendors and buyers alike are continuing their exaction totally unpunished and you SR admin you are still ignoring it. You should clean your door footstep before trying to put us asleep with your soporific shit and your arbitrary way, I knew you partial once and i still remember it. What about making SR less accessible to the "pecus vulgus", to make it more difficult to register as both vendor and buyer for SR vendors and buyers own good and benefit to keep away the crooks and other shit alike that can only contaminate and spoil it all for bad.... What abt taking action against those who are perpetrating shit scams here atm under your SR nose, don't you read all the interesting threads reporting on them, bringing them to the light of shame unveiling their petty tricks, vendors and buyers alike. It is time, definitely, for some cleansing before more legit vendors and buyers who are tired to be ill-treated decide to retire from the arena coz you are going to end up making money on real dirty money, what an achievement..!!! I amplify it obviously but there is such a lack of true Spirit atm on SR, i wish you can implement some new rules to facilitate the good work of the good vendors, to protect them as much as they deserve it to make sure they will remain within SR ranks and not at the contrary to be constraint to quit as it is already the case.
I had such a great impression of SR when I first came, i gotta confess that the only positive aspect that remains in my mind now is only about the very good people I came across...of a very small community which makes a H of a difference.
With much respect to the true Spirits of this small community and to all the vendors of the other communities, I wish you to stand up for your rights and to fight to get the best of it because without you SR would worth shit.. sorry I would have stayed if only the Spirit was true...
. n .
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i'm afraid it may be time to start compiling seller keys and emails :o
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Those percentages seem greedy to me. I realize it costs money to maintain the server and site, and on top of that SR should get paid for taking the (relatively small) risk of doing this but even with a flat 3% fee across the board he would be making bank.
Tens if not hundreds of transactions happen daily, even if he was only making $0.60 per transaction (a $20 purchase) with 100 transactions a day would equate to $60 a day, or $1800 in a 30 day month. That's a pretty big check for just maintaining the site. I may be overestimating the average purchase price or the amount of daily purchases and SR can dispute this, but I feel that I'm not too far off.
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There are currently 350-550# transactions daily on SR.
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I want to weigh in on this matter of considerable importance, I just have to get my orders out before I can sit down and type out everything I have to say about this announcement.
Paperchasing
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There are currently 350-550# transactions daily on SR.
If that's true, assuming $10 average purchase (I think this is an underestimate tbh) at 3% fee SR would be making $3150-4950 monthly.
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There are currently 350-550# transactions daily on SR.
If so, then this place is making a lot of cash for the operator. If you assume an average sales price per transaction of $100, the new commission structure will generate better than $100K (gross) per month for SR.
Kudos to him as far as I'm concerned. He's come up with the proverbial better mousetrap and is making a shitload of money as a result. Like it or hate it, capitalism works.
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It was bound to happen sooner or later the success of SR = more greed from the owner(s)...from a customer point of view with regards to purchase protection nothing has changed in my opinion finalising early is EXACTLY THE SAME as going out of escrow the only difference being SR doesn't get it's cut.
NOW the strict enforcement of finalising early over OOE will lead to EVEN MORE problems then out of escrow orders ever could!
smaller orders = less profits + more work + security risk for vendors so why tax them more? people buying large quantities should be taxed more lets face it the majority that buy bulk are probably going to resell whether for profit or to recoup their money back...very few are buying to "stock up"...
It's obvious that a majority [70-80%] of transactions are under the $50 limit on SR...even assuming half of transactions done on SR are under that's a big pay day with this new tax increase
I think that this whole pricing revision was purposefully done the WRONG WAY ROUND...
There's been countless numbers of threads where people have complained about the increased prices for drugs on SR in comparison to IRL, but most of the time the price increase has been justified because of convenience and additional security for the consumer.
HOw long will this be the case...?
Oh, and seeing as how this is going to bring $1000's of extra revenue can we AT LEAST have a reduction in the Seller Account startup fee?
I think the majority of people would support the new fee system SR but you need to seriously rethink the % fees for $50-100 sales...
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to the blackmarket!
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to the blackmarket!
Good idea r.e compiling of seller keys + emails i did this when i signed up in case there was a mass takedown of the site..a few months in and now my concern is it'll turn into a $$$ chasing hell like ebay or Paypal..
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I typed out a huge fucking post and the forum went out as I went to post it....oh well I don't even want to put in the effort to type it out again.
short of it is: I'll deal with it, but I won't like it. SR didn't even address the problem I thought he would, early finalization. So all in all, this is a pointless price increase for me with no added security. If people want to go OOE, they are going to do it anyway. I didn't even think it was a big point of scams to begin with, for me and most buyers it was a non-issue. I believe all sellers should be required to use delivery confirmation, and not allowed to request early finalization in the guise of protecting themselves from scam buyers, or re-upping. Jesus Christ, if you can't afford to wait a week at the most to get your money to reup, you have the option of doing a low volume of sales until you build up enough to have a firm hold.
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I'm worried about this. I live in a peripheral country with a slow postal service. Early finalizing and out-of-escrow (with trusted vendors only, of course) are practically a necessity for people in my situation due to the delay in receiving the products. After all, it's not fair to the vendor to keep the money locked in escrow for the better part of two months just because my country has a shitty postal service. Also, this gives the buyer too much power without balancing it out for the vendors; which will cause vendors to be extremely weary of new buyers, and generally avoid them. Besides, I suspect that the vast majority of transactions done in SR are small value transactions, though obviously SR knows that better than I do.
I'm a buyer, so I'm one of the people this change is meant to protect. But I'm a bit afraid of what its actual consequences might be. I hope I'm just being my old worried self and the change is positive.
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I have investors who will pay $5-10k to for a site set up like this. Anyone feel like taking me up on this can send me a message.
Also, Finalizing early is not out of escrow. SR is just making sure he gets his cut, this has shit to do with actually protecting the buyers.
Also, How about actually maintaining the site and forums and keeping them up. There are WAY to many times when I am unable to get on to process orders. This looks poorly on me and my business, and quite frankly makes you look like shit that you can't even keep your site up.
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SR -
Why just not implement something like charging vendors based on average monthly sales? Maybe I sell 10 things at $50 while someone sells 1 thing at $500. What is the difference honestly when we are still selling the same amount in the month but getting taxed different amounts?
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I typed out a huge fucking post and the forum went out as I went to post it....oh well I don't even want to put in the effort to type it out again.
short of it is: I'll deal with it, but I won't like it. SR didn't even address the problem I thought he would, early finalization. So all in all, this is a pointless price increase for me with no added security. If people want to go OOE, they are going to do it anyway. I didn't even think it was a big point of scams to begin with, for me and most buyers it was a non-issue. I believe all sellers should be required to use delivery confirmation, and not allowed to request early finalization in the guise of protecting themselves from scam buyers, or re-upping. Jesus Christ, if you can't afford to wait a week at the most to get your money to reup, you have the option of doing a low volume of sales until you build up enough to have a firm hold.
That's the other thing, he is charging all these fees and can't even manage to keep his sites up and responsive. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the concept of SR and similar sites and realize it takes money to keep them going but these increased fees seem like nothing but greed to me based on the math I've done.
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yap,
10% + 4% hedge is what cost transactions under $50.
Nice cut SR.......
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a trend like this could lead the users of silk road to find alternative means to achieve their ends. However, I will play ball for now and just hope that our awesome vendors stick around as well.
Exactly, it's the least we can do..until another .onion site comes along with a full escrow system.
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This site has truly exploded.....I got here when there were already some 8,000 members. Today the last time I checked it was well over 100,000 and growing faster everyday it seems. Tremendous growth and also tremendous profits. To try and frame this price increase as nothing more than making us safer and protecting us from scammers is pure Bullshit.....it's all about making more $$$ for SR. Reminds me of a quote from The Outlaw Josey Wales...... SR "Don't Piss down my back and tell me it's Raining".
-
Thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions. One suggestion I especially like is the one about commission being affected by trade volume. To those of you that are either supportive of the change, or have faith in what I am doing regardless of whether you see the point or not, thank you for your support! I have done everything I can to earn that trust and I cherish it.
To those of you chalking my actions up to pure greed and ignoring the context for the changes, I say shame on you. When have I lied? When have I cheated or stolen from anyone here? When have I treated anyone unfairly? When have I lead you astray? Why do you turn on me now when I have poured my heart and soul into this community and project?
10% on $50 orders? We are talking about an extra $1.88! A $10 order? An extra 38 cents! Do you think this site built itself? Do you think it runs itself? Do you have any clue what goes on behind the scenes to keep this going? Do you have any idea the risk the people operating this site are taking? Do you have any clue what we've been through to get here today? Do you have any clue what it's going to take to get through the next year?
Whether you like it or not, I am the captain of this ship. You are here voluntarily and if you don't like the rules of the game, or you don't trust your captain, you can get off the boat. For those that stay, we at Silk Road will continue to do everything in our power to keep this market running smoothly and safely, and thank you again for your support!
-
To those of you chalking my actions up to pure greed and ignoring the context for the changes, I say shame on you. When have I lied? When have I cheated or stolen from anyone here? When have I treated anyone unfairly? When have I lead you astray? Why do you turn on me now when I have poured my heart and soul into this community and project?
In my head, I read this paragraph in the voice of Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone.
Don't be offended by this remark: I don't think there exists higher praise in organized crime than being compared to this guy.
Here's to hoping these changes turn out for the best. :)
-
To those of you chalking my actions up to pure greed and ignoring the context for the changes, I say shame on you. When have I lied? When have I cheated or stolen from anyone here? When have I treated anyone unfairly? When have I lead you astray? Why do you turn on me now when I have poured my heart and soul into this community and project?
Amen to this! SR is not pretending to be anyone's friend here or to be an altruist building an enterprise that serves the common good. His site serves a great and useful purpose for many of us and if he pockets $100,00 a month (or more as time goes on) as a capitalist, more power to him. As long as somebody never claims to be anything more than a capitalist entrepreneur looking to cash in, you can't accuse him of being any kind of hypocrite for changing the rules to make more profit.
I do feel a slight twinge for any anarchist/up the system types who think (or once thought) that this place was something more -- some kind kind of anti-establishment, counterculture enterprise that was as much about community and living free from rules as it was profit -- but I don't think there were ever too many of those anarcho/utopians in any event.
This place fills a need and does it pretty well. As long as SR doesn't pretend to be trying to do any more than that, let him make as much cash as the capitalist system allows.
-
Perhaps my response and those by some others who also attacked with haste shows greed in itself. Reflecting upon the value of this service and how I hadn't even considered such a thing five months ago is really still mind blowing. Fans of mind altering substances across the globe can utilize technology to easily network with like minded individuals anonymously and seemingly bypass police force by governments who are overstepping their boundaries.
My only fear with the policy change is the loss of certain vendors/products which is yet to be seen but I admit to overstepping my boundaries. Silk Road is awesome and every day it stays up and running makes me smile.
-
Whether you like it or not, I am the captain of this ship.
Oh Captain my Captain! :P
-
I predict that this will result in an increase in scammers. As more and more vendors say fuck it, since it has become less profitable to use SR due to these new fees, they will scam as much money as they can, and then run with it.
-
Thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions. One suggestion I especially like is the one about commission being affected by trade volume. To those of you that are either supportive of the change, or have faith in what I am doing regardless of whether you see the point or not, thank you for your support! I have done everything I can to earn that trust and I cherish it.
To those of you chalking my actions up to pure greed and ignoring the context for the changes, I say shame on you. When have I lied? When have I cheated or stolen from anyone here? When have I treated anyone unfairly? When have I lead you astray? Why do you turn on me now when I have poured my heart and soul into this community and project?
10% on $50 orders? We are talking about an extra $1.88! A $10 order? An extra 38 cents! Do you think this site built itself? Do you think it runs itself? Do you have any clue what goes on behind the scenes to keep this going? Do you have any idea the risk the people operating this site are taking? Do you have any clue what we've been through to get here today? Do you have any clue what it's going to take to get through the next year?
Whether you like it or not, I am the captain of this ship. You are here voluntarily and if you don't like the rules of the game, or you don't trust your captain, you can get off the boat. For those that stay, we at Silk Road will continue to do everything in our power to keep this market running smoothly and safely, and thank you again for your support!
Silk Road, thank you for everything you have done. Just this post has inspired me to have even more confidence in you, and I especially like the captain analogy.
Fuck the haters.
Do you realize what would happen to this man if he were ever caught?
He would be hung up by a fucking string, he and his cohorts would be labeled as terrorist sent to Guantanamo bay and never heard of again. Doomed to be tortured the rest of their life. To think that some of you could even bitch and moan about being able to make money and receive your drugs anonymously and securely ? Would you be willing to pay the price this man is so that bitches like you could do so?
Sorry, got a little fired up there. There is a HUGE difference between constructive criticism about the new policies, and suggesting alternatives to be considered and flat out accusations of SR being a greedy liar.
Hell, I could care less if he's a greedy man. After pondering on it, I am willing to pay an extra $1.88 to fill his pockets so that I and many others can continue to use this service.
That's my .02btc. Again, I would like to thank all of our wonderful vendors, moderators, and admins who are willing to risk their livelihoods to supply us with our medicine, and our recreational fun.
Stay safe and take care,
Trinitron421
[edit] I really do hope I don't end up eating my own words.
-
SR is truly a remarkable concept and the ideas and concepts were forged by someone that as it stands unfortunately was not me, was not the newbie or the high rolling Vendor. If it was that easy to run a Battleship like this, then I guess I would have started up my own site 60 or 90 days ago.
What I'm saying is that there is always a Mob Mentality or Mutiny Type of Aggression when new rules/laws/orders are in-acted. As we speak, there are probably 2-3 other sites that will try to spring up, but will die on the Vine. There is only one Ketchup, one McDonald's and one Kleenex. How may copy cats of Ebay have come and gone?
IMHO, I consider myself lucky to be able to Buy High Quality Weed or H that I would or could Not ever find no matter how hard I looked in the metropolis I live. The only thing I would ask of The Captain...is that you become more accountable for The Vendors that break rank and put the screws to the newbie. If Requiring Escrow is going to do it..than let's see how it works. Also, while I commend Capitalism..part of a growing companies responsibility is R & D. Research and Development. I will accept that The Captain will do for me what is in the best interests of his Crew and Ship.
oppy
-
Hi,
i understand and follow the rules of payment of silkroad fee in escrow but i have one question and that is that i have one customer who i do a resend of an item that he didn't received in escrow before.
Is an special custom resend list allowed?
Is releasing escrow early allowed?
Greets DutchShop,
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I didn't read every page, but it seems like a mixed review from the sellers.
I think disallowing OOE will eventually eliminate most scammers. And I like this idea.
Although, prices will now have to go up about 10-15%, of already high prices, to make up the difference.
But...as The Captain said, it takes a lot to make this all possible! I appreciate all the hard work, time, and $$ that goes into SR.
-
Whether you like it or not, I am the captain of this ship. You are here voluntarily and if you don't like the rules of the game, or you don't trust your captain, you can get off the boat. For those that stay, we at Silk Road will continue to do everything in our power to keep this market running smoothly and safely, and thank you again for your support!
I'm staying on the boat.
Convenience, safety, and selection of quality products is more than worth a couple extra dollars to me.
Thank you SR,
T
-
Whether you like it or not, I am the captain of this ship. You are here voluntarily and if you don't like the rules of the game, or you don't trust your captain, you can get off the boat. For those that stay, we at Silk Road will continue to do everything in our power to keep this market running smoothly and safely, and thank you again for your support!
I'm staying on the boat.
Convenience, safety, and selection of quality products is more than worth a couple extra dollars to me.
Thank you SR,
T
Exactly my feelings on this subject. The fact that the Silk Road can give us safe access to these products should not be overlooked.
Vendors strive to have great products and prices, and buyers want great products at low prices. But without this open
marketplace I, for one, would never have had the same level of safety, convenience and selection.
My hope is this will help lead to increased security on the back-end.
-
SR -
the "State of the Road Address" link on the welcome page takes you to the thread "new .Onion url" fyi
-
What I'm saying is that there is always a Mob Mentality or Mutiny Type of Aggression when new rules/laws/orders are in-acted. As we speak, there are probably 2-3 other sites that will try to spring up, but will die on the Vine. There is only one Ketchup, one McDonald's and one Kleenex. How may copy cats of Ebay have come and gone?
Bullshit. There are numerous products and services where businesses compete and keep a certain balance in the market. In every supermarket I can buy the same shit, yet there are numerous supermarkets. Remember, we're still in the early days of this type of business. Nothing is written in stone yet and there will be a lot of changes.
What has been studied and is seen in the past is that when an organization goes into a new market early, they will probably get a head start. At the same time they will have to find ways to deal with new problems (like scamming or finding the right cut of sales they can take). If another organization steps into the market later, they will probably need to bring some money to get the show running. But they will benefit from the fact that previous mistakes won't have to be made and might be able to do things better right away.
That said, if I can buy the same product, from the same vendor, with the same 'safety' (escrow), I choose the site which has the lowest price. As soon as enough sellers get the feeling it's worth to advertise on other sites, you'll have a critical mass on that site which could end SR (if they don't find a way to compete). What that reason can be, can be numerous: it can be the high fees, or maybe the downtimes this site has (but probably a combination of a lot of reasons).
-
Bullshit. There are numerous products and services where businesses compete and keep a certain balance in the market. In every supermarket I can buy the same shit, yet there are numerous supermarkets. Remember, we're still in the early days of this type of business. Nothing is written in stone yet and there will be a lot of changes.
Ok joechem..I'll bite. A little off topic, but if I'm looking for high end quality in H or Weed..what would be my options?
Numerous Markets? Ebay/Amazon vs. ??. If you were wanting to Buy an item that required specifics,
outside of the Two I mentioned, where would you go?
-
For drugs online, I think SR is currently your best bet (although I'm seeing BlackMarket building almost the same site - could be a big competitor). But remember, this market has just opened for the masses (before, most people didn't buy or bought of street dealers, I guess).
Now if you take regular electronics, you might go to only Ebay or Amazon. But I think many others compare at other shops. Where I'm from (the Netherlands) those sites aren't that big, and I buy my electronics at a huge range of webshops (which I get from a price comparison site). Low price + good reviews (or other form of trust) = sell.
Same would go for this market (online drugs). If I get a better deal at BlackMarket, trust both the seller as the site it self, I'll just buy there instead of here at SR. This isn't the deal (yet), so most will stick around here. But my guess is that more of these sites will pop up, disappear and maybe take over the market position of SR.
Remember, technically this isn't really an interesting enterprise. Your average web developer could set this up in a week or so. The challenge is in building trust (between all parties involved: SR, sellers, buyers) and making sure you don't get caught. The last bit probably takes some experience from similar, less legit businesses and is the thing holding me back getting into this business as well.
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Had to put in my 2btc, i am a fairly new buyer and love it. now that that is outta the way here is what i think. OOE has never happened to me but i have been scammed with early finalization. WTF is stopping OOE gonna do to protect me the buyer? you want to protect me, fuck finalize early for new sellers with less than $1000 dollars worth of sales to no less than 15 buyers. that would get rid of scammers.
Also SR post alot of questions as to what he has to do but never answers them. in debate that would never fly. You know how much it takes to research sellers? how long to get bitcoins? How much work to check the mail? i could do it too.
but please SR show us the numbers!! Cost to run and maintain and total revenue. I have no problem with you making a profit but arbitrarily raising fees with a red herring of buyer safety is not cool.
As a buyer i usually only buy personal amounts. This is usually under $300 a month. Why dont you charge the buyer a % fee and take it off the seller??? say %6 up to $300 or make differnt fee options for the type of buyer you are, light, medium or bulk??
I already pay way too much ($10 a hit of LSD, fuck me but i do it) for what i buy online compared to real life but i get access to shit i cant find locally and now i will have to pay more.
If it stays at 10% under $50 im goin to the streets because its bullshit that doesn't protect me!!!
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SR im just asking you to give up $1.88 per $50. Thats not too much is it?
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Silk Road, thank you for everything you have done. Just this post has inspired me to have even more confidence in you, and I especially like the captain analogy.
Fuck the haters.
Do you realize what would happen to this man if he were ever caught?
He would be hung up by a fucking string, he and his cohorts would be labeled as terrorist sent to Guantanamo bay and never heard of again. Doomed to be tortured the rest of their life.
Trinitron421
- i don't wish this but should it happen, maybe a drug lord could come up with the bail money and fly Mr SR to a secret location.
- hopefully there's a contingency plan to continue SR till management is restored.
- change location & regroup
-
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I have considered all that you have written, it has clearly been the result of much consideration. Here's
my concerns:
- -------------------------
"First we must deal with trading out of escrow. Up to this point we have charged a flat 6.23%
commission on all trades. This is much too high for transactions in the $300 and over range, making
trading out of escrow for large transactions much more attractive than staying within the system. Now,
instead of charging a flat commission, we will charge a higher amount for low priced items and a lower
amount for high priced items, similar to how eBay does it."
- ------------------------
Well, first off let me say this is *NOT* Ebay. Ebay sellers get their money *BEFORE* they ship *ANYTHING* out.
So if its gonna be like ebay, then let me have my money upfront. Ebay bills at the end of the month for their
percentage. Instead of being paid before I ship things out, Silk Road gets the money and the benefit of the
interest as well as the fluctuation of the BTC market. Also, I cannot feedback to buyers feedback like on ebay,
and buyers do not have a percentage rating that is displayed with their usernames either. This makes scamming
me quite a bit easier. Furthermore, the listings are not auctions, I have to name my price instead of
allowing the market to bear what it will as with ebay, so lets just be clear that this is not ebay and you cannot
parallel it to ebay. Now if you wanna make the changes to make it like ebay, then sure, lets copy ebays system,
I'm 110% all in for getting paid upfront before I send out products.
to sum it up:
1) Ebay sellers get paid BEFORE they ship goods or services to the buyer.
2) Ebay sellers get billed at the end of the month for sales percentage due.
3) Ebay sellers get to post feedback to BUYERS accounts and buyers are rated beside their usernames
4) Ebay sellers get the benefit of auction type of prices resulting from current market demand
- ------------------------
"We also went to the Silk Road independent sellers to see what they thought an appropriate commission
schedule would look like. The average response looked like this:
15% of the first $10
11% of $10 - $50
8.14% of $50 - $250
5.6% of $250 - $1000
3.7% of $1000 - $5000
We looked at past sales data and our current and future revenue needs and were able to bring these
numbers down even further:
10% of the first $50
8.5% of $50 - 150
6% of $150 - 300
3% of $300 - 500
2% of $500 - 1000
1.5% for everything over $1000"
- ------------------------
First I heard of this was in the mass PM you sent out, it seems to me that you would have at least PM'd the
top 10 sellers to get some feedback. All the sellers that I know seemed to be suprised by this, perhaps I dont
associate with the people you discussed this with. I dont sell anything under 10 dollars but I know some do,
and a 10% tax is a bit high.. I do sell some items in the $10-$50 range, which has been somewhat of a pain in
the ass due to fake feedback being posted to my history. Increasing the tax does nothing to protect the buyers
or the vendors from the issues with scammers on either side of the table. Might I inqure with which vendors you
corresponded with?
- -----------------------
"With this change, there are no phoney excuses whatsoever for vendors to ask for out of escrow payment.
Any request should be interpreted as a scam attempt and reported to the Silk Road support team via the
“contact us” link on the main site. We are looking at several mechanisms for enforcing the ban on OOE
transactions, from self-policing to bounties on offenders."
- -----------------------
Well, it sounds like your calling me a scammer, right? Maybe you have not read my vendor homepage. I do all
my international orders OOE for a reason: Im not a bitcoin loan agent. Some international people get my
orders within 5-8 days and some dont get them for 18-21 days (South Africa, Russia to name a few) If you want
to stop OOE's then you need to provide more options within the escrow system so that vendors can work within
it without having to be forced to wait nearly a month at times for their BTC's on orders that they paid
their suppliers for long before it was even shipped out. I provide a OOE listing so that people will have the
opportunity to feedback as with any other sale, good or bad.
It sounds to me like your planning to take a freedom and trust based community and introducing an
financial incentive to create snitches. So how much are you planning on paying snitches to ban your
vendors? Really thats laughable cause the biggest and most financially rewarding scams are the MP->BTC
vendors that have turned scammers which you have granted an exception to the rule. Apparently you have not
considered that a banned vendor can simply get a new vendor account for $150 and scam or OOE again. How does
this OOE ban stop scamming?? The answer is simply that it does not. As long as early finalize is allowed, OOE
is no different with regard to protecting anyone other than protecting Silk Road getting a percentange.
If its that you feel your being cut out of the OOE deals then *YOU NEED TO JUST SAY SO* and not make it about
protecting the buyers, nobody can protect the buyer or the vendors UNLESS you plan to provide insurance. Now
thats something that I think we all would agree would be worth 10%.
I hope that you do not get all bent out of shape and order me to "walk the plank" because I'm not a "YES" man,
and I say all of this with the upmost respect for what you have accomplished and achieved. People that roll
with me know that I will speak my truth even if I know some people wont like it, those that are wise appreciate
being surrounded by people that dont just rubber stamp everything they say because nobody is right 100% of the
time. Hell if I was right 51% of the time I'd just go to Las Vegas and get rich in a day. I have been in this
trade IRL for a very loooonnnnngggg time, I can assure you that it is easier to find webpage developers than it
is to find vendors with exceptional access to very high quality drugs. Creating financial incentives to ban
your vendors is a disaster in the making.
Personally, I would have rather taken on these issues privatly in a forum format with the top 50 vendors and the
top 50 buyers, however your schedule is so abrupt that there is no time for back channel diploymacy. I submit
that it would be wise to postpone making any changes until there has been enough time for buyers and vendors
alike to have a open dialogue with you with regards to changes that can actually make a difference with regard
to scammers, if thats what this is really all about. If its about you need more money then you need to just say
so. Theres nothing wrong with wanting to get paid, Im certainly not doing this shit for free.
Submitted with the upmost respect,
Paperchasing
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-
..
but please SR show us the numbers!! Cost to run and maintain and total revenue. I have no problem with you making a profit but arbitrarily raising fees with a red herring of buyer safety is not cool.
- operating costs + admins, mods, coders + emergency costs + SR profit + future proofing to expand service.
- a few months ago SR wasn't making much in profit, there may be more transactions but probably so have the costs associated with running have gone up too.
- based on SR's posts he obviously has a game plan and setting aside even $400 a month isn't going to be enough to take SR + forum to the next level, and to quote SR "This is not about making money. This is about winning a war. Look how far we've come in 8 short months. We are JUST getting started"
{not that i know anymore than what i read here...}
;)
-
the ebay analogy :-
- difference is ebay +paypal are all above board and easier to "force" known buyers and sellers to cough up when either is at fault and they have your bank a/c or paypal
reg'd etc.
- SR and the illegality dictates we remain anonymous.
- similar in terms of providing an online shopping service so perhaps costs are comparable.
- ebay & paypal take into account shipping methods and condition of item been sold/bought, SR -its nobody's "responsibility" (?!) {the downside of the drugs market..}
-
UNLESS you plan to provide insurance. Now
thats something that I think we all would agree would be worth 10%.
SR, might want to give some thought Why some of the most Profitable Corporations (Life & Auto Insurance) are Raking in The Wad.
In the past I've been peachy with being charged a "Privilage Fee" to be a Buyer.
Now if I was Given the "choice" to Buy Insurance on my Transaction (say 10%), with with a Trusted Vendor..all goes well I get back 8%, you keep 2%..then your talking about Fair & Voluntary Revenue and further Protecting the Buyer. I'm just saying...
-
I want to add to this discussion further by saying that I was scammed here too before I was a vendor.. hell I was just tryin to get the damn BTC's to buy a vendor account and some ass nugger MP->BTC exhanger that had built up some rep turned scammer and stole a $400 MP from me. I dont see how any of this proposed legislation could have prevented that, especially with a special exemption for MP->BTC exchangers.
-
It seems to me that the best way to keep everybody happy would be to bring "out of escrow" sales out of the shadows. There are honest and legitimate business reasons to bypass the escrow system, and these needs must be addressed. Using early finalization is a clumsy, awkward workaround to this problem.
Allow vendors with a high enough feedback rating and sales history to earn the right to add "out of escrow" as an option when listing a product.
Now, out of escrow sales don't bypass the SR fee structure or feedback system. SR revenues increase. Scammers will be exposed via feedback, and could lose the privilege of bypassing escrow. There is now no legitimate reason (no, fee avoidance is not a legitimate reason) to bypass the SR system; there should be little opposition to banning these deals.
Such listings would have a big, bold print disclaimer automatically added to the top, so even newbie buyers would know the risks they take by buying out of escrow.
Some vendors may be able to offer lower prices for out of escrow deals; this benefits both buyers and seller. If this happens, it might be worth setting things up so listings have both an "in escrow" and "out of escrow" price. Again, this benefits everybody.
I really can't see a downside to this. Does anyone else? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?
I like this idea. Vendors sometimes need to get money immediately, and I'm sure there will be some secretive OOE deals still for that very reason. Instead of now forcing vendors to do non-escrow deals behind encrypted messages, why not make it more transparent?
Integrate an option for non-escrow purchases into the SR system. Provide it as an alternative - if a buyer is willing to give up all recourse on getting monetary re-compensation in exchange for a discount, let them. Give the option only to trusted and active vendors - ones with a certain number of transactions per month who have been proven to be reliable.
Silk Road would still get their fee, and vendors would get their money immediately. Again, criteria would need to be established to ensure that only trustworthy vendors would be able to use this option. (I have Anarcho in mind right now, but I am sure there are many others). No more newbies scamming OOE.
This would leave it to buyers to decide what is more important to them, price or security. They could buy the product in escrow if they wish, but if they have trust in a vendor they can get the same product at a discounted price. I think I'd honestly prefer a system like this to 'early finalization'.
-
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Hash: SHA1
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I have considered all that you have written, it has clearly been the result of much consideration. Here's
my concerns:
- -------------------------
"First we must deal with trading out of escrow. Up to this point we have charged a flat 6.23%
commission on all trades. This is much too high for transactions in the $300 and over range, making
trading out of escrow for large transactions much more attractive than staying within the system. Now,
instead of charging a flat commission, we will charge a higher amount for low priced items and a lower
amount for high priced items, similar to how eBay does it."
- ------------------------
Well, first off let me say this is *NOT* Ebay. Ebay sellers get their money *BEFORE* they ship *ANYTHING* out.
So if its gonna be like ebay, then let me have my money upfront. Ebay bills at the end of the month for their
percentage. Instead of being paid before I ship things out, Silk Road gets the money and the benefit of the
interest as well as the fluctuation of the BTC market. Also, I cannot feedback to buyers feedback like on ebay,
and buyers do not have a percentage rating that is displayed with their usernames either. This makes scamming
me quite a bit easier. Furthermore, the listings are not auctions, I have to name my price instead of
allowing the market to bear what it will as with ebay, so lets just be clear that this is not ebay and you cannot
parallel it to ebay. Now if you wanna make the changes to make it like ebay, then sure, lets copy ebays system,
I'm 110% all in for getting paid upfront before I send out products.
to sum it up:
1) Ebay sellers get paid BEFORE they ship goods or services to the buyer.
2) Ebay sellers get billed at the end of the month for sales percentage due.
3) Ebay sellers get to post feedback to BUYERS accounts and buyers are rated beside their usernames
4) Ebay sellers get the benefit of auction type of prices resulting from current market demand
- ------------------------
"We also went to the Silk Road independent sellers to see what they thought an appropriate commission
schedule would look like. The average response looked like this:
15% of the first $10
11% of $10 - $50
8.14% of $50 - $250
5.6% of $250 - $1000
3.7% of $1000 - $5000
We looked at past sales data and our current and future revenue needs and were able to bring these
numbers down even further:
10% of the first $50
8.5% of $50 - 150
6% of $150 - 300
3% of $300 - 500
2% of $500 - 1000
1.5% for everything over $1000"
- ------------------------
First I heard of this was in the mass PM you sent out, it seems to me that you would have at least PM'd the
top 10 sellers to get some feedback. All the sellers that I know seemed to be suprised by this, perhaps I dont
associate with the people you discussed this with. I dont sell anything under 10 dollars but I know some do,
and a 10% tax is a bit high.. I do sell some items in the $10-$50 range, which has been somewhat of a pain in
the ass due to fake feedback being posted to my history. Increasing the tax does nothing to protect the buyers
or the vendors from the issues with scammers on either side of the table. Might I inqure with which vendors you
corresponded with?
- -----------------------
"With this change, there are no phoney excuses whatsoever for vendors to ask for out of escrow payment.
Any request should be interpreted as a scam attempt and reported to the Silk Road support team via the
“contact us” link on the main site. We are looking at several mechanisms for enforcing the ban on OOE
transactions, from self-policing to bounties on offenders."
- -----------------------
Well, it sounds like your calling me a scammer, right? Maybe you have not read my vendor homepage. I do all
my international orders OOE for a reason: Im not a bitcoin loan agent. Some international people get my
orders within 5-8 days and some dont get them for 18-21 days (South Africa, Russia to name a few) If you want
to stop OOE's then you need to provide more options within the escrow system so that vendors can work within
it without having to be forced to wait nearly a month at times for their BTC's on orders that they paid
their suppliers for long before it was even shipped out. I provide a OOE listing so that people will have the
opportunity to feedback as with any other sale, good or bad.
It sounds to me like your planning to take a freedom and trust based community and introducing an
financial incentive to create snitches. So how much are you planning on paying snitches to ban your
vendors? Really thats laughable cause the biggest and most financially rewarding scams are the MP->BTC
vendors that have turned scammers which you have granted an exception to the rule. Apparently you have not
considered that a banned vendor can simply get a new vendor account for $150 and scam or OOE again. How does
this OOE ban stop scamming?? The answer is simply that it does not. As long as early finalize is allowed, OOE
is no different with regard to protecting anyone other than protecting Silk Road getting a percentange.
If its that you feel your being cut out of the OOE deals then *YOU NEED TO JUST SAY SO* and not make it about
protecting the buyers, nobody can protect the buyer or the vendors UNLESS you plan to provide insurance. Now
thats something that I think we all would agree would be worth 10%.
I hope that you do not get all bent out of shape and order me to "walk the plank" because I'm not a "YES" man,
and I say all of this with the upmost respect for what you have accomplished and achieved. People that roll
with me know that I will speak my truth even if I know some people wont like it, those that are wise appreciate
being surrounded by people that dont just rubber stamp everything they say because nobody is right 100% of the
time. Hell if I was right 51% of the time I'd just go to Las Vegas and get rich in a day. I have been in this
trade IRL for a very loooonnnnngggg time, I can assure you that it is easier to find webpage developers than it
is to find vendors with exceptional access to very high quality drugs. Creating financial incentives to ban
your vendors is a disaster in the making.
Personally, I would have rather taken on these issues privatly in a forum format with the top 50 vendors and the
top 50 buyers, however your schedule is so abrupt that there is no time for back channel diploymacy. I submit
that it would be wise to postpone making any changes until there has been enough time for buyers and vendors
alike to have a open dialogue with you with regards to changes that can actually make a difference with regard
to scammers, if thats what this is really all about. If its about you need more money then you need to just say
so. Theres nothing wrong with wanting to get paid, Im certainly not doing this shit for free.
Submitted with the upmost respect,
Paperchasing
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SR this is an important point about vendors not being able to rate buyers and having their btc stuck in escrow while buyers take their time finalizing. This is basically what I was trying to say before, albeit a little more succinctly.
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It seems to me that the best way to keep everybody happy would be to bring "out of escrow" sales out of the shadows. There are honest and legitimate business reasons to bypass the escrow system, and these needs must be addressed. Using early finalization is a clumsy, awkward workaround to this problem.
Allow vendors with a high enough feedback rating and sales history to earn the right to add "out of escrow" as an option when listing a product.
Now, out of escrow sales don't bypass the SR fee structure or feedback system. SR revenues increase. Scammers will be exposed via feedback, and could lose the privilege of bypassing escrow. There is now no legitimate reason (no, fee avoidance is not a legitimate reason) to bypass the SR system; there should be little opposition to banning these deals.
Such listings would have a big, bold print disclaimer automatically added to the top, so even newbie buyers would know the risks they take by buying out of escrow.
Some vendors may be able to offer lower prices for out of escrow deals; this benefits both buyers and seller. If this happens, it might be worth setting things up so listings have both an "in escrow" and "out of escrow" price. Again, this benefits everybody.
I really can't see a downside to this. Does anyone else? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?
I like this idea. Vendors sometimes need to get money immediately, and I'm sure there will be some secretive OOE deals still for that very reason. Instead of now forcing vendors to do non-escrow deals behind encrypted messages, why not make it more transparent?
Integrate an option for non-escrow purchases into the SR system. Provide it as an alternative - if a buyer is willing to give up all recourse on getting monetary re-compensation in exchange for a discount, let them. Give the option only to trusted and active vendors - ones with a certain number of transactions per month who have been proven to be reliable.
Silk Road would still get their fee, and vendors would get their money immediately. Again, criteria would need to be established to ensure that only trustworthy vendors would be able to use this option. (I have Anarcho in mind right now, but I am sure there are many others). No more newbies scamming OOE.
This would leave it to buyers to decide what is more important to them, price or security. They could buy the product in escrow if they wish, but if they have trust in a vendor they can get the same product at a discounted price. I think I'd honestly prefer a system like this to 'early finalization'.
Yes, there are PLENTY of reasons such as the following actual Silk Road scenerio: Lets say I order some LSD from my partner Mitanox that I plan to re-sell here.. ok, so I pay Mitanox OOE for the LSD, and according to your proposed rules you want your cut (actually, according to your proposed rules Mitanox and myself would then be *banned as vendors*) Now, I turn around to re-sell it here and there you are with your hand out AGAIN wanting your cut. Now, does that make Mitanox a scammer? NO. Does that mean that Mitanox attempted to scam me with a "phoney excuse" why he wanted his money? Umm.. NO not at all. Would that amount to double taxation? Yes. Does banning Mitanox and myself for arranging this type of transaction make any sense? lol... I dont think I really need to answer that for you, loosing Mitanox's and myself as a vendors would not be prudent, just think of all the commissions you would loose from the two of us not being here anymore.
Ok, well how about when I send BTC's to an exchanger, you want your cut of that too? Apparently... according to your post and clarification I'm not exempt from any type of transaction on Silk Road that does not give you a percentage EACH AND EVERY TIME.
I think that this all needs to be given a thorough second look before you enact sweeping rules that run your vendors off... well the scammers would likely stay, they can just keep getting new accounts no problemo... what a mess that would be. Bounties on my head? Sheesh... its already difficult enough just keeping the cops at bay and the scammers off of me, now I gotta hide my activities from you too?
Paperchasing
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I couldn't agree more! Here the major problem to a new small time vendor:
Ordering product takes: 2-3 weeks
Without early finalization payment takes: 1 week
So roughly3-4 weeks before I get my money back after buying product.
If I do not have the monetary funds to buy a large quantity of product (and I don't) then I will ALWAYS be sold out, except maybe 2-5 days out of a month.
Sure, I'm nearly doubling how much I put down, so it will only be a matter of time until I can buy enough bulk to get around this issue, but until then it is a slow process. We are talking about roughly 3-5 months of vending before I can buy large enough in bulk to HOPEFULLY not be sold out between shipments. This is with roughly $800 down in the beginning. If I see profits from this it will be 8-12 months from the time I put my original money in and started this whole game.
Until then, I look like an unreliable vendor which isn't exactly good for reputation. I literally do not have the money to handle a single scam from a buyer or a seller. One scammer and I'm out of business.
Early finalization adds up to the young vendor, as time is more important than money. It isn't about being paid more. It is about getting my money NOW so I can reinvest it the second I get it.
-
Yeh, I'd be all over all this Ebay structuring plan if I got my money before I sent things out instead of like 3-18 days later... why should I have to shoulder the entire burden of financing this shit out for buyers, especially the noobs that end up auto-finalizing their orders? Hell, I'm taking enough risk just hooking up a good connect for quality stuff not to mention risking my ass dropping like 20-40 federal felonies a day in a USPS bluebox?? I understand it takes a lot to run this site with all the planning, coding, bitchin, bullshit and the forums... and by the same token it takes a lot to run a organized crime syndicate that specializes in supplying quality drugs consistently. Know what I mean? Damn.
-
Paperchasing pull up your panties your embarrassing yourself.
Fuck man go start your own website if your that upset, no one's going to miss you faggot. And no one's going to visit your website lol! Just please shut the fuck up.
-
Wow....nothing like calling somebody a faggot in your very FIRST POST. Aren't you cool. Learn some respect and then come back and post your opinions. TROLL
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Paperchasing pull up your panties your embarrassing yourself.
Fuck man go start your own website if your that upset, no one's going to miss you faggot. And no one's going to visit your website lol! Just please shut the fuck up.
lol... what a surprise: "MANTHEFUCKUP" Newbie - 1 post
hahaaa you sure picked the right name for yourself, nice work dumbass! Now get back to your homework before you get in trouble with your mommy...
Paperchasing
Edit: Yeh, so this is a perfect example what I was saying about how the assholes and scammers will be doing - just gettin a new account to talk shit from... didn't even take more than a few hours to prove it.
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Whether you like it or not, I am the captain of this ship. You are here voluntarily and if you don't like the rules of the game, or you don't trust your captain, you can get off the boat. For those that stay, we at Silk Road will continue to do everything in our power to keep this market running smoothly and safely, and thank you again for your support!
I'm staying on the boat.
Convenience, safety, and selection of quality products is more than worth a couple extra dollars to me.
Thank you SR,
T
You have my support too SilkRoad. (i am sure you are trying to work out a lot of other stuff except the commissions in order to improve the site)
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Paperchasing pull up your panties your embarrassing yourself.
Fuck man go start your own website if your that upset, no one's going to miss you faggot. And no one's going to visit your website lol! Just please shut the fuck up.
Your parents should have used a condom.
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Paperchasing pull up your panties your embarrassing yourself.
Fuck man go start your own website if your that upset, no one's going to miss you faggot. And no one's going to visit your website lol! Just please shut the fuck up.
lol... what a surprise: "MANTHEFUCKUP" Newbie - 1 post
hahaaa you sure picked the right name for yourself, nice work dumbass! Now get back to your homework before you get in trouble with your mommy...
Paperchasing
Edit: Yeh, so this is a perfect example what I was saying about how the assholes and scammers will be doing - just gettin a new account to talk shit from... didn't even take more than a few hours to prove it.
obviously someone that is too much of a pussy to post under the own handle
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Well mrgrey, you know, if they had something productive or interesting to say they would have posted it under their own username instead of hiding like a little fake ass cartoon movie ass bitch. Hell I'm right here, I'm not hard to find.. you know where I fucking be and you know where I stand. I'm trying to have a real discussion about valid issues... I welcome intelligent dialogue.
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Thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions. One suggestion I especially like is the one about commission being affected by trade volume. To those of you that are either supportive of the change, or have faith in what I am doing regardless of whether you see the point or not, thank you for your support! I have done everything I can to earn that trust and I cherish it.
To those of you chalking my actions up to pure greed and ignoring the context for the changes, I say shame on you. When have I lied? When have I cheated or stolen from anyone here? When have I treated anyone unfairly? When have I lead you astray? Why do you turn on me now when I have poured my heart and soul into this community and project?
10% on $50 orders? We are talking about an extra $1.88! A $10 order? An extra 38 cents! Do you think this site built itself? Do you think it runs itself? Do you have any clue what goes on behind the scenes to keep this going? Do you have any idea the risk the people operating this site are taking? Do you have any clue what we've been through to get here today? Do you have any clue what it's going to take to get through the next year?
Whether you like it or not, I am the captain of this ship. You are here voluntarily and if you don't like the rules of the game, or you don't trust your captain, you can get off the boat. For those that stay, we at Silk Road will continue to do everything in our power to keep this market running smoothly and safely, and thank you again for your support!
I agree that you should make money from SR but I disagree with forcing escrow on people, although of course you are morally okay to do this since it is your damn site in the first place. But please spare acting like it is to combat scammers when it is obviously for money, which of course is needed and i fully understand that and I do have a good idea of what it takes to run a site like this. I am concerned by an admin of a drug forum who forces anyone to use anything in particular, although I can not immediaitely thinkt of anything malicious you can do by forcing escrow that you couldn't otherwise do it does automatically make warning bells go off in my head when some action is made to be required for participation when it isn't in reality required. I think though that you are only trying to make more money, which is fine, but please consider taxing all orders and forcing vendors who work on SR to pay the tax, but don't force escrow is my honest suggestion. In the end you will make the same amount of money, but nobody is going to risk losing to a reverse scammer for a big deal and there are other potential issues with forced escrow as well probably, although I don't have the time to think about it in depth atm.
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I'll be keeping my purchases over $150. This means I'm paying 0.23% less in tax, which is fine by me. But in the end it also means less money I give to the site due to less frequent purchases. But that's not my problem. SR is entitled to run this site however he wants. The other shoe will drop.
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LET THEM EAT CAKE.
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I'll be keeping my purchases over $150. This means I'm paying 0.23% less in tax, which is fine by me. But in the end it also means less money I give to the site due to less frequent purchases. But that's not my problem. SR is entitled to run this site however he wants. The other shoe will drop.
You're not correct. You're reading it wrong. When you hit 150, it doesn't become 6% for the whole thing. He's gonna take 10% of the first $50, plus 8.5% of the next $100 dollars. On a $150 order, you'll be paying $5 + 8.50 = 13.50 which is 9%. I did all the math on page 1. You'll have to purchase over $417 worth to get a lower percentage now. That's quite a bit larger than $150.
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Initially I thought, SR has to make some money somehow but the more I read it the less it makes sense.
This new policy punishes and makes it even harder for lower cost vendors from being able to penetrate this market and be competitive. This is all under the guise of 'reducing scammers'. I'm sorry I just can't even get behind that, how does raising the prices on lower cost items reduce scammers? In fact it doesn't, not at all. Also the gaps between comission percentages are too wide and %10 while you might think it's not very much, tell that to the buyer that decides that they are already paying a premium to order from SR and now they are paying more? Or the vendor is now going to take a hit, what if their margins are already tight as it is? Now they are discouraged from doing business here and lowers the volume of sales lowering YOUR revenue!
I fully understand what it costs to run a site such as this I've worked IRL doing exactly the same thing and every time I read this 'State of the Road Address' all it says to me is 'I knew this would be popular and grow, but I didn't know it would grow this fast, lets see if we can squeeze a few more % out of people'
I'm not even saying that there is a problem with that but thats really what it looks like, and if thats the case just say so. A message saying something like 'We did not anticipate that this amount of growth would occur in such a short time and in order to maintain the site and perform some upgrades (maybe even some examples would be nice) we need to re-asses the fee structure to accomodate this. Additionally the amount of work it is requiring is more than anticipated therefore the fees will be going up. But this is not the message not at all.
If the interest was truly in how to reduce scamming and taking a community oriented approach to this (as you indicated that you discussed this with people, although seeing as how the top vendors that have posted here knew nothing about it) it would have been discussed WITH THE COMMUNITY. Show me one single thread where there was some mention of 'The SR staff and I have been reviewing the comission structure and think it needs adjustment, this is what we have come up with thus far'. Hell you could have even done a poll with say 3-4 options and outlined them and then if it was really about 'the community' let them decide and then maybe find something that was somewhere in the middle where you got more out of the sales and the community as a whole supported it, a win-win but thats not what is happening.
I really truly think SR is a great site, and I really hope to see it survive a long and healthy life but if you want people to believe in it as much as you claim then things like this should be discussed openly at least to some extent with the community. I don't think thats too much to ask. Even if it means throwing out a simple feeler topic and having a few more forum admins that review them for you.
As much as I support SR and it's goals or at least what I thought it's goals were/are this approach makes me doubt the honesty and integrity of what SR is really all about and does not leave me feeling that this is whats best for the community, it sounds like this has become whats best for SR staff and if the community doesn't like it they can go screw off.
Hope this works out in the long run.
Looker
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Well said Looker. They do not address any issues, set no goals to fix anything, do not even acknowledge the mass amount of scammers there are, especially in the LSD market. Also, they made the fee structure without any input from the community, and I do feel that it is too high, too greedy.
They say that the captain always dies with his ship. It will be interesting to see what happens.
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Dear Silk Road,
I read the diatribe by my vendor friend paperchasing.
When he gets made he really lets it out. He has his point representing the vendors.
For him, you are cutting into his profit margins.
For others they will increase prices, and lose possible sales.
Also it was kinda spring on us, but I have to say your early posts suggested this direction.
To both of us buyer, and vendor you are being disingenuous to tell you are going to stop scamming by stopping OOE.
Or are you suggesting OOE is the cause of scamming?
It's bullshit. You need to make other changes in the system.
The BTC market, and the BTC tradedrs are the biggest scammers/taxers of them all.
I've lost more in BTC trades than any drug deal.
How you protecting me? You ain't.
But yet make an exception for them.
Now saying that, you worked hard, you made SR what it is, and it's credit.
You deserve to squeeze it for what it's worth.
This is not a democracy.
Competition is the key.
So soak us for what we are worth.
I promise, now that we know it can be done it will be done, again, again, and again.
Unless it's not worth it.
You have done great things, I only hope you don't push our limits too far.
I suggest you are testing us, as a group.
I would suggest as a buyer, that paying for the privilege to buy will stop many more scammers then your suggestion.
It won't generate the capital you are really interested in, and feel cheated out of. Rightfully so.
So just lets be honest. It's about $$$$$, not protection.
With respect, and love,
Uniwiz
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Initially I thought, SR has to make some money somehow but the more I read it the less it makes sense.
This new policy punishes and makes it even harder for lower cost vendors from being able to penetrate this market and be competitive. This is all under the guise of 'reducing scammers'. I'm sorry I just can't even get behind that, how does raising the prices on lower cost items reduce scammers? In fact it doesn't, not at all. Also the gaps between comission percentages are too wide and %10 while you might think it's not very much, tell that to the buyer that decides that they are already paying a premium to order from SR and now they are paying more? Or the vendor is now going to take a hit, what if their margins are already tight as it is? Now they are discouraged from doing business here and lowers the volume of sales lowering YOUR revenue!
I fully understand what it costs to run a site such as this I've worked IRL doing exactly the same thing and every time I read this 'State of the Road Address' all it says to me is 'I knew this would be popular and grow, but I didn't know it would grow this fast, lets see if we can squeeze a few more % out of people'
I'm not even saying that there is a problem with that but thats really what it looks like, and if thats the case just say so. A message saying something like 'We did not anticipate that this amount of growth would occur in such a short time and in order to maintain the site and perform some upgrades (maybe even some examples would be nice) we need to re-asses the fee structure to accomodate this. Additionally the amount of work it is requiring is more than anticipated therefore the fees will be going up. But this is not the message not at all.
If the interest was truly in how to reduce scamming and taking a community oriented approach to this (as you indicated that you discussed this with people, although seeing as how the top vendors that have posted here knew nothing about it) it would have been discussed WITH THE COMMUNITY. Show me one single thread where there was some mention of 'The SR staff and I have been reviewing the comission structure and think it needs adjustment, this is what we have come up with thus far'. Hell you could have even done a poll with say 3-4 options and outlined them and then if it was really about 'the community' let them decide and then maybe find something that was somewhere in the middle where you got more out of the sales and the community as a whole supported it, a win-win but thats not what is happening.
I really truly think SR is a great site, and I really hope to see it survive a long and healthy life but if you want people to believe in it as much as you claim then things like this should be discussed openly at least to some extent with the community. I don't think thats too much to ask. Even if it means throwing out a simple feeler topic and having a few more forum admins that review them for you.
As much as I support SR and it's goals or at least what I thought it's goals were/are this approach makes me doubt the honesty and integrity of what SR is really all about and does not leave me feeling that this is whats best for the community, it sounds like this has become whats best for SR staff and if the community doesn't like it they can go screw off.
Hope this works out in the long run.
Looker
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Agreed Looker.
Paperchasing I completely agree with you as well.
Manthefuckup, fuck you and your pathetically ironic name.
-RI
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Maybe a good alternative way of generating revenue could be charging for buyer accounts? Perhaps a read-only account is free, but to make a purchase requires getting a paid buyer account?
This would have the added bonus of massively decreasing the amount of scam buyers, which is a major reason why vendors do OOE/early finalization...it would also, I feel, increase the quality of the SR community. As I understand it, most people who make accounts never make a purchase anyway, so they would be happy with a read-only account.
As a buyer, I would be more than willing to pay a one time fee for a buyer account, because of the benefits I mentioned above. Food for thought, anyway...
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If buyers have to pay for accounts, that will drive even more people away from SR. Bottom line to me is that SR should already be making $5k+ per month with the flat 6.25% fee and if he can't run this site and pay himself pretty well for what is very much part-time work then he's doing it wrong.
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I have no problem with a buyer fee. even a couple of BTC to unlock from read-only would greatly discourage scammers.
I've been mulling this over and I can understand where SR is coming from on OOE as far as not getting their cut goes. That being said, there should be a tiered system where, say, a seller with less than 50 completes cannot force early finalize. Maybe even 100. With the amount of buyers on here, if you have good prices it doesn't take long to hit that point.
Sadly, I'm not going to be able to offer bulk on here unless someone is willing to early finalize the transaction, mostly because of the float tie-up.
I MAY still do the group buys, but I'm going to have to see how pricing works out with the new commission and come up with something fair for me and buyers. Group-buys will be early-finalize only, while my regular listings will be as per usual escrow (except under-stat customers or refund stat customers, which will be early finalize).
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buy accounts to fund Escrow / finalise early pool suggestion:
- buyer account +-$40
- all deposit goes into the seller escrow / finalise early pool
- seller is paid early from the pool
- unsure what the criteria would be for sellers to have access to the finalise early pool, hopefully some new vendors are allowed access to this too...
- i would be prepaid to buy an account if it helps achieve the above, $40 might not cover all purchases but the % of bad sales to good ones is low (?)
;)
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I feel that something that is not being addressed is the fact that these new rates will affect the poorest user the hardest. Many of the buyers here are persons that are buying medicine that desperately need. For the average person to get bitcoins they pay 10-15% , then they pay another 10% from SR fees and then dont forget the 4% fee for hedging. After all this is done on a small purchase the little guy is now paying something like a 30% additional fees just to get his medicine. This is not fair at all.
I really truly feel that we are putting way to heavy a burden on the people that can least afford it. There must be a better way!
I feel ya, not all of us have an expendable income. We can only budget so much, and with the new fees that just means less medicine/product for us. But, I do think your estimate for 10-15% is a little ridiculous for bitcoin fees, there are quite a few ways to acquire bitcoins and even if you want them the same day for most in the United States you shouldn't be paying over 5%. I think if people are going to try to get more bang for their buck, they need to do their research before trying to jump in, as it seems that most people do.
All in all, we can discuss it all we want, but we will have to test it out as SR says. We might have to pay higher fees for a while with trial and error until we get something that is good for everyone. Can't expect to do that just taking theoretically, it needs to be put into practice before we can truly criticize.
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If buyers have to pay for accounts, that will drive even more people away from SR. Bottom line to me is that SR should already be making $5k+ per month with the flat 6.25% fee and if he can't run this site and pay himself pretty well for what is very much part-time work then he's doing it wrong.
"making $5k+ per month"? The commissions generated here are a lot more than $5K+ per month. They're also a lot more than $50K+ per month.
I don't care if SR pockets $500,000 per year off the site or $5 million -- that's the way the capitalist world works -- but let's not kid ourselves about the scale of the revenue/profit that's being made here these days. There may well have been a time when the site generated only enough to reinvest and cover expenses and pay SR $5000 or $10,000 per month, but I suspect those days are long gone.
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I feel that something that is not being addressed is the fact that these new rates will affect the poorest user the hardest. Many of the buyers here are persons that are buying medicine that desperately need. For the average person to get bitcoins they pay 10-15% , then they pay another 10% from SR fees and then dont forget the 4% fee for hedging. After all this is done on a small purchase the little guy is now paying something like a 30% additional fees just to get his medicine. This is not fair at all.
I really truly feel that we are putting way to heavy a burden on the people that can least afford it. There must be a better way!
I feel ya, not all of us have an expendable income. We can only budget so much, and with the new fees that just means less medicine/product for us. But, I do think your estimate for 10-15% is a little ridiculous for bitcoin fees, there are quite a few ways to acquire bitcoins and even if you want them the same day for most in the United States you shouldn't be paying over 5%. I think if people are going to try to get more bang for their buck, they need to do their research before trying to jump in, as it seems that most people do.
All in all, we can discuss it all we want, but we will have to test it out as SR says. We might have to pay higher fees for a while with trial and error until we get something that is good for everyone. Can't expect to do that just taking theoretically, it needs to be put into practice before we can truly criticize.
the 15% is from the rates Sugarmama and BTCPal post themselves for anything less than 100 dollars. but even if you only have to pay 5% exchange fee, with 10% SR fee, and 4% hedging, you are still looking at a 20% tax upon anything you want to buy. and this tax is hitting the people that can afford it least. like i said some people here are getting medicine they desperately need and can not afford such taxes, its literally a choice between getting their medicine and getting nothing. there has to be some other way we can distribute this fee that is more fair.
I understand completely. Just saying, there are ways for the time being for us to mitigate some of those fees. One of the first things I posted about this is that it would hurt the little man, like me, the most. I don't agree with it, but I can deal with it. I am not in the same situation as some, as it is uncomfortable for me to go without my medicine, but I can live. I understand that some people here are desperately in pain and this is the only way for some of them to relieve it. I really can sympathize with that, I really wish SR would read this and give us a direct response to this problem exactly, because for me it is one of the major ones.
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I've already noticed a huge spike in price for smaller items. And I think SR themselves recommend doing smaller transactions, so if you get ripped,or it doesn't show, you're not out tons of $$. Seriously,is anyone paying $70usd for an 1/8 of herb? I hope this catches on IRL! Not the fees, but the prices! It'll go from care giving to actually making some $$!!
MrGrey is right in saying this hurts the little guy, both buyer and seller. Hurts em bad.
We must also look at this from another view: The police call most drugs "controlled substances", as they control them(especially in my area)...make no qualms about it. So, they make the price by keeping the demand for supply up. If I'm wrong, please tell me the lone sole individual who creates the prices of drugs,as most are in no way correlated to the cost to manufacture them. I bring this up, because isn't SR doing the same thing? SR is creating prices that just go up and up and up. How long will keep buying items at a 20-40% markup, just for the novelty or "safety" of getting them online? How safe is it when you take 1/8,which is a minor crime in most countries, but put it in the mail, and instant felony.
Don't wanna get your noid gland salivating, but how many vendors could be NUCLEO? And to me, this stands for Narcotics Undercover Law Enforcement Officer, so even seeing a vendor with this antonym is sketchy as fuck. Is that supposed to be funny? Anyway, how many have purchased, never received, got your 50% refund, and felt all was OK? Or even worse, got your product, but it wasn't as stated (MHM & TT), I bring this up just to point out that we may be paying very high prices, just to give ourselves up.
IRL I can get most of what's offered on the road, but much cheaper, and I feel much safer, as I am lucky enough to deal with people I have known since grade school (I know this option isn't there for everyone, but we choose where we live ans who we associate with, it wasn't me who put you in a city full of thugs and murderers.) My 1st thoughts of SR were that I could find some killer deals,since they had a world market. But those thoughts were quickly stifled.
I know I went off topic, but I think it coalesces with price increase.
Then there's the other spectrum. It is already difficult to become a vendor,unless you're a computer genius, so there is a lot of time (time=$$) and $$ invested in becoming a vendor....a safe one, anyway. $150 for the account, a vac sealer, plastic, stamps, etc, etc, etc, so yeah, most have ALREADY raised their price to compensate, not thinking long term at all. If you're selling 1oz/wk IRL, and 10oz/wk on SR, then you've already been compensated. Bulk is supposed to be cheaper.
I also think anyone who claims they just want to be able to spread the love(drugs) to all us who want it is full of shit. If that were the case, it'd be FREE.
The more posts I read, the more I think this may be a bad idea. $150 for an account, there's $36,000usd right there. BTW, that's my salary,too! What a coincidence. Then, of those sellers, he takes what percent? 6.25% of sales, plus the hedging fee? So, basically 10% of every sale. Yeah, I'd say WELL over $5K/mo,though I don't have those figures to compare. But from the forums to the feedback, I'd say maybe $5K/day is closer to it. Any of those funds being funneled to NORML, or MAPS?? I doubt it. Very much so.
And if SR had lengthy discussions with top rated vendors prior to this decision, and that those same vendors felt it was a fair schedule, then WHY are top rated vendors coming to this thread to complain?
Just my morning un-thoughts after sleeping on it,an seeing more posts.
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I had been pondering becoming a vendor over the holidays, and coming back to this had made me put off that decision.
From a buyer standpoint, this could hurt the community in one fundamental way; I like to try new products and new vendors as often as possible. But now, what I call 'sample quantities' are skyrocketing in price. Which means, I will never try half the vendors I normally would,because I won't invest the extra amount to drop the transaction into a lower commission bracket, on product and service I am not familiar with. I'm sure many others feel the same way. As someone who is usally buying for myself, and several friends, the dropped commission for larger transactions is a big help, but I can't honestly say its a long term benefit to the overall community. Maybe it will help take out the wishy-washy sellers, but how many upcoming vendors want to lose money the whole time they are trying to establish themselves? Especially those who are already established in the game, outside of SR.
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Maybe a good alternative way of generating revenue could be charging for buyer accounts? Perhaps a read-only account is free, but to make a purchase requires getting a paid buyer account?
This would have the added bonus of massively decreasing the amount of scam buyers, which is a major reason why vendors do OOE/early finalization...it would also, I feel, increase the quality of the SR community. As I understand it, most people who make accounts never make a purchase anyway, so they would be happy with a read-only account.
As a buyer, I would be more than willing to pay a one time fee for a buyer account, because of the benefits I mentioned above. Food for thought, anyway...
- cast your vote:
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=8535.0
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Yeh, I'd be all over all this Ebay structuring plan if I got my money before I sent things out instead of like 3-18 days later... why should I have to shoulder the entire burden of financing this shit out for buyers, especially the noobs that end up auto-finalizing their orders? Hell, I'm taking enough risk just hooking up a good connect for quality stuff not to mention risking my ass dropping like 20-40 federal felonies a day in a USPS bluebox?? I understand it takes a lot to run this site with all the planning, coding, bitchin, bullshit and the forums... and by the same token it takes a lot to run a organized crime syndicate that specializes in supplying quality drugs consistently. Know what I mean? Damn.
Well said PC and quite funny. Tuff being a noob trying to get established as well. I see both sides. I am sitting on a rather sizable order that I sure am glad it is in escrow, however I see the delimma on your end as well. BTW, miss you on the yayo listings. Any ETA? You are my only completed transaction. I hope I don't have to dispute my other, but sure no communication or receipt on it!
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Yeh, I'd be all over all this Ebay structuring plan if I got my money before I sent things out instead of like 3-18 days later... why should I have to shoulder the entire burden of financing this shit out for buyers, especially the noobs that end up auto-finalizing their orders? Hell, I'm taking enough risk just hooking up a good connect for quality stuff not to mention risking my ass dropping like 20-40 federal felonies a day in a USPS bluebox?? I understand it takes a lot to run this site with all the planning, coding, bitchin, bullshit and the forums... and by the same token it takes a lot to run a organized crime syndicate that specializes in supplying quality drugs consistently. Know what I mean? Damn.
Well said PC and quite funny. Tuff being a noob trying to get established as well. I see both sides. I am sitting on a rather sizable order that I sure am glad it is in escrow, however I see the delimma on your end as well. BTW, miss you on the yayo listings. Any ETA? You are my only completed transaction. I hope I don't have to dispute my other, but sure no communication or receipt on it!
Yes, ETA on yayo is this weekend when I get back in town. That is part of the reason this is soooooob damn frustrating for me, I'm out of town trying to handle my yayo/pharms/H re-upping business and we're squabbling amongst ourselves here at the high command... oh yeh, new product at Paper-Mart: Oo Uoglobe #4 100% Heroin uncut, listing for that go up to when I get back to the Papercave...
Paperchasing
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I just want to show some solidarity for Silk. As far as I'm concerned, he deserves every penny he makes from this place. There is nothing that can compare to the service SR offers.
Those who disagree are more than welcome to try the alternatives or create their own. I hear the Blackmarket is actually not too shabby these days, I'd check it out myself, but I've got more business than I can handle here as it is.
I personally don't think the prices are that exorbitant, and although I do have some reservations about the zero tolerance for OOE, I think that the ability to require early finalization covers the primary objections proffered by Anarcho and Paperchasing.
I'm actually ashamed SR had to defend himself here. As far as I can see, Silk has never betrayed or misled the community. Accusations of greed are petty and classless. Even if Silk is pocketing 95% of the proceeds from the site, he deserves every penny for what he's created here. I've been peddling pot for nearly 8 months now and never once experienced the fear-for-your-life/freedom encounters that happen all the time out on the street. If we can't appreciate the value of such a revolutionary institution, we better be prepared to work without it, and I'm personally not to that point.
Anyway, that's all I have to say, pay the man his dues or peddle elsewhere; this aint no craigslist.
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I haven't logged in a few weeks and I just did to check up on SR. I read the first ''letter'' and now this State of the Road and I must agree I'm very happy that you have finally done this. I can't speak for others, but I have gotten ripped off when I first joined and it really sucked, so this "KEEP EVERYTHING IN ESCROW" definitely made my day brighter :).
PS....Anyone please I'm curious as to where the BTC = Dollar value at the bottom of the SR homepage went?! I wanted to know how much my BTC were worth but I couldn't find it anywhere on the site and it always used to be down on the left? Any help please :)
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...there are issues with the running btc / $ ...its been taken off till theres another or better solution..
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I have zero issues with this policy change. As a business, SR has the right to do what it pleases. If you don't like it, then create//find your own alternative. There are plenty of source forums out there. Scamming has become too large of a problem for out-of-escrow transactions to continue. Finalizing early is another beast in itself and I'm really on the fence about it. I've never gotten screwed over because of it but I've had some very sketchy transactions with it as well.
SR, I love you like a love song, baby. Keep on fightin the good fight!
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That about scamming is interesting question. I would like to know some facts in the numbers and how much bad (scams) transaction percentage is compared to successful?
I can see thread "Sr scam list" with around 20 pages but thread "H vendors" has over 70 pages. Both thread started 20 days apart.
I am a vendor for 6 month and can easily calculate how much avrg transactions SR has a day 430 (avg for last 4 month).
If SR has 430 transaction a day that is 129000 a month. Let say that 1% (acceptable?) is bad/scam transactions. Its 129 transaction per month from both vendors and buyers. Different story is how much those transaction worth. How many reports are made for scams here in the forum on monthly basis and regradless is it buyer or vendor??
Maybe I am little of the topic here but I would like to discuss with some statistical facts and not speculations.
Another issue what somebody mentioned - it will be difficult to prove who made a direct payment outside of SR market. (wallet to wallet)
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Godspeed Silkroaders,
For more than 5 months I have been more or less silent observer of this revolutionary project, and in near future I plan on becoming more active.
With the risk of being judged by the community I must say that SR stuff deserved to charge even more than this. I will not elaborate much, we all know that prices here are a bit higher than street prices and you have total anonymity, which is by itself priceless feature....and what are your profits in dealing with drugs?
C'mon people lets be honest! Can you compare yourself to someone who sells snickers and sunglasses on eBay? Who is lucky to have 30% profit?
My humble opinion is that SR have well deserved every penny from the transaction fees they propose.
Of course I'm addressing drugs which are ~99% of the transactions.
May the good force be with you all,
psi
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Somehow I just keep seeing this coming to some sort of Buyer Expense. To tell you the Truth, I am A-ok, 100% peachy with it.
I'll pay for a Silver or Platinum Standing (being Rated over 85% as a No Hassle, No Scam Buyer). If Im a Vendor, who are you going to Sell to?
A newbie with 2 Transactions that pays as he goes or an Established Buyer that put his Money Down to show he/she is serious about this stuff?
That will stop Scam Buyers in their Tracks
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has the new fee schedule been implemented? it appears that it is being applied to my orders that were placed before implementation, ie still in escrow. If that is the case then that is very disingenuous. please correct me if i'm wrong.
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has the new fee schedule been implemented? it appears that it is being applied to my orders that were placed before implementation, ie still in escrow. If that is the case then that is very disingenuous. please correct me if i'm wrong.
It has been implemented and only applies to orders going forward, not ones currently in escrow.
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I think its bullshit that we can no longer buy under 400$ without raised taxes. The majority of us DONT buy bulk off of silk road, and if you're already spending 1,000 why cant you spend 60$ more? You talk about SR not being about the money but the taxes you charge are ridiculous. I would rather see adds then this bullshit.
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SR, a quick question.
Are the commissions applied to the list price or the list price plus the shipping costs?
If the shipping costs are also subject to commission then we must increase them in accordance.
thanks and keep up the good work.
fly
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Are the commissions applied to the list price or the list price plus the shipping costs?
This issue was raised before, and the commissions apply only to the list price, and not the shipping charges.
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Are the commissions applied to the list price or the list price plus the shipping costs?
This issue was raised before, and the commissions apply only to the list price, and not the shipping charges.
thanks VJ.After much internal debate, I said fuck it! I made another donation to SR and the buyers will just have to pay more. Most of us don't make enough for the risk we take as it is so I am certain most to none of the sellers will be lowering prices to compensate. It is what it is.
I think there might be another more proactive solution for us vendors to take.
I have been analyzing the pricing structure and can see that the vendors need more information on the pricing.
I don't think that the SR commission is a major problem nor the only expense that Vendors incur.
We must not forget 2 things
1) The Hedging Ask-Spread cost avg. 4%,
2) The moving averages exchange rate effect. I have noticed that there seems to be a discrepancy of up to 5% between the BTC/U$D fx rates used when we are payed and the spot price on mtgox. What this means is that if a vendor were to immediately sell his coins he would incur an immediate 5% decrease in cash + the spread between the spot rate and the next bids. Maybe even upto 10%.
To calculate this, go the account page, see how much you were payed in BTC and then click on the transaction to see how much you were paid in U$D. Calculate the FX rate and this is the price you have to sell your BTC in order not to lose out on the Moving averages impact.
Please note that the second is the hidden cost of using the moving averages and it maybe where the vendors can attack to be more profitable and to cover all commission increases.
I think that it is important that the vendors be given access to more financial info to be able to increase their profitability.
An excellent addition to Silk Road (IMHO) would be the following
1) Average FX Rates on all the transactions
2) The ability to download data on an excel sheet, so that people can play around with it.
OK guys, I admit I'm a bit of a Finance dork but I believe that this way and with this info we can make our work here more profitable and cover SR's commissions.
If we know that we are being given the BTC at a given FX rate all we have to do is add a 10% to that price and then sell them and we've made back the commission fee.
Us vendors must understand that we are working with a highly volatile currency and if we use it to our favour can make this the most profitable business of our lives.
SR and community, it would be great to have your feedback.
thanks
fly
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could someone please clarify something for me ? (i have read 90% of the thread and see no obvious answer)
if i buy 10x $49 items from one vendor in one transaction, is the commission paid to SR still 10% ?
also one point (to vendors mainly): it seems pointless to pay the 4% hedging fee on escrow for items that are finalized early, since those coins are only hedged for a couple of hours or so. an un-hedged, finalize-early-only listing would save that 4%, although i admit, it's not very elegant.
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could someone please clarify something for me ? (i have read 90% of the thread and see no obvious answer)
if i buy 10x $49 items from one vendor in one transaction, is the commission paid to SR still 10% ?
also one point (to vendors mainly): it seems pointless to pay the 4% hedging fee on escrow for items that are finalized early, since those coins are only hedged for a couple of hours or so. an un-hedged, finalize-early-only listing would save that 4%, although i admit, it's not very elegant.
In this case the commission would be calculated for $490, not $49 and then multiplied by 10. In other words, less commission is charged for larger orders whether it is one $490 item, or ten $49 items.
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If vendors aren't allowed to go OOE or require Early Finalize, then why are most still doing this for new consumers? I wuold like to place some orders, but the vendors won't allow it, unless I finalize early.
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If vendors aren't allowed to go OOE or require Early Finalize, then why are most still doing this for new consumers? I wuold like to place some orders, but the vendors won't allow it, unless I finalize early.
OOE and early finalize is not the same thing. OOE is banned as transaction is not evident and SR have not his share (fee).
Early finalize is still allowed by SR clearification.
Just to be clear, no mention of banning finalizing early was made. We recognize the cash-flow needs of vendors and are working to address these needs while preventing scams arising from finalizing early. At this point though, while we advise buyers to avoid finalizing early at all costs, vendors are still free to request it.
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thank you mseller.
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OOE I understand. Its dangerous and you can lose your account. What I do NOT understand is HOW VENDORS can make new buyers finalize early? And how did 3-5 transactions now make you (the buyer) eligible not to have to finalize early? No longer a noob buyer...? WHY do BUYERS put up with it?? Being FORCED to finalize early!! ITS ALL HORSESH*T!!
Follow the site rules and suggestions. THEY WORK!! Finalize upon arrival!! Leave comments after your experience. But release those bitcoins!! Your VENDORS WORK HARD!!
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OOE I understand. Its dangerous and you can lose your account. What I do NOT understand is HOW VENDORS can make new buyers finalize early? And how did 3-5 transactions now make you (the buyer) eligible not to have to finalize early? No longer a noob buyer...? WHY do BUYERS put up with it?? Being FORCED to finalize early!! ITS ALL HORSESH*T!!
Follow the site rules and suggestions. THEY WORK!! Finalize upon arrival!! Leave comments after your experience. But release those bitcoins!! Your VENDORS WORK HARD!!
Hi, I don't want to get grilled on this one but I'm going to try to speak out for all those vendors who do finalize early (so please no attacking) :P
We've got to separate between finalizing early and excellence in customer service, I have personally created a risk profile where I believe that it's ok to ask a customer to finalize early (in no way do I believe it's a scam as I state this clearly and the customer agrees to these conditions).
Now, the customers must look to what finalize early means for them, in my case even if they finalize early they are still covered (hence the reason why I have 100% positive feedback). If a package doesn't arrive then I resend, + another very important point is to be 100% at the buyers disposal for questions, etc.
In effect for a customer to purchase from me, finalizing early is no different but on my side a I guarantee myself that I'm not going to get any newbie mistakes such as not finalizing at all. It takes time to learn about how this world works and vendors shouldn't have their capital tied in people learning how it works.
The reason the finalizing early model can be sustained is because the buyers have the power to change feedback after the transaction has been made, therefore if a vendor is scamming people by finalizing early it will soon be seen in his ratings (remember the Turkish guy selling heroin, for example). This is the model used by sites like ebay.
I hope I don't get grilled on this one.
What is important is not the finalize early option but the customer service given to the buyer.
Work hard for the buyer and he will compensate you by coming back.
or that's the theory, lol
fly
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How are you going to address buyers not finalising their orders once they received their goods?
My customers tend to get their orders next day, maximum 3-4 working days as I deliver locally. There isn't any need for me to be waiting 17+ days for the automatic process to kick in. What's worse is that it's even longer. I had to wait 20+ days the last time as it was stuck on "processing" after the 17 days had elapsed.
The reason I asked for early payment is because I know as soon as they get their goods the last thing on peoples minds is wanting to load up Silk Road to finalise a payment. As far as their concerned the escrow system will take care of it.
Is there any chance you can integrate an ebay style rating system so that vendors can rate buyers.
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How are you going to address buyers not finalising their orders once they received their goods?
My customers tend to get their orders next day, maximum 3-4 working days as I deliver locally. There isn't any need for me to be waiting 17+ days for the automatic process to kick in. What's worse is that it's even longer. I had to wait 20+ days the last time as it was stuck on "processing" after the 17 days had elapsed.
The reason I asked for early payment is because I know as soon as they get their goods the last thing on peoples minds is wanting to load up Silk Road to finalise a payment. As far as their concerned the escrow system will take care of it.
Is there any chance you can integrate an ebay style rating system so that vendors can rate buyers.
Too bad there wasn't a way to use DCN as a means of forcing finalization, say a week after delivery confirmation funds are finalized unless a dispute is launched. I realize there are probably a hundred reasons revolving around security as to why this couldn't be done. Maybe incentives to finalize promptly on the part of vendor or something. I totally get why this has to suck if you're a vendor. People are assholes, "shit got my bag of coke, I ain't loggin' in too much of a pain in the ass"
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Actually, a 'the item arrived, I have the DCN' button wouldn't be a bad idea.
Vendor enters DCN and hits the button; Resolution Center staff can confirm the DCN, and put it instantly into resolution.
If the customer doesn't appeal within 48 hrs - more than reasonable if there is already proof of delivery - then escrow auto-releases.
If the customer does appeal, it can be handled just like a normal resolution where the vendor has a confirmed DCN.
Vendors will get their money over 10 days sooner than the present system.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
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I am nothing but in agreement with this policy because it has been mine from the very first day I started here.
I have never asked anyone whoever to finalize early and I never will.
While I know this place isn't as secure as ovdb I know that they r trying and I really do appreciate the anonymity .
I appreciate it and I am willing to pay for it. My policy has been from day one to split the cost of the commission with the buyer.
I am more than happy to do this because I am a business woman. It's all included in the cost of doing business with the peace of mind that
I receive here.
I grow everything I sell so maybe I have less to lose than those that buy and resell. WTF Quit crying!!!
This is long overdue from what I can tell. I read al kinds of posts that decry "SCAMMER".
I have recently gone to the trouble of totally changing my os to linux - a completely foreign os to me.
I am in the process of learning this os ( just because of this site) to be safer. As soon as i figure it out ima switch to virtual.
It isn't fun for me and ima pulling my hair out but wtf - u hear me crying? NO!!!
This is a business - don't like it? GTFO......
Cheers SR and btw nice set of balls. :)
All my love to the crybaby's;
<3 Christy
Now that's what I like hearing, a businessperson with ethics.
You seem to have a nice set of balls too, Christy.
Bikerbum
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SR,
I agree on all the principles and the very goals the community has got, BUT........
As many had pointed out, we we'll be paying more fee than before if we buy stuff cheaper than 300 bucks or so.
Please reconsider the fee arrangement by paying more on even smaller prices, something like 200 bucks would be allright, IMO.
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Your idea with Variety Jones simplicity, sounds GREAT!
I've written up some notes and a link to this thread and fired it off to SR.
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I just don't understand how this will help stop scammers. It seems like a price hike and that's all. This change will do nothing to stop scam vendors. How long will we pretend asking for early finalize is ok from new vendors when we see over and over and over that new members will still fall for the same old scam. I just see this as "let's change everything, without changing anything."
I'm fine with a rate increase , but let's call a spade a spade.
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Actually, a 'the item arrived, I have the DCN' button wouldn't be a bad idea.
Vendor enters DCN and hits the button; Resolution Center staff can confirm the DCN, and put it instantly into resolution.
If the customer doesn't appeal within 48 hrs - more than reasonable if there is already proof of delivery - then escrow auto-releases.
If the customer does appeal, it can be handled just like a normal resolution where the vendor has a confirmed DCN.
Vendors will get their money over 10 days sooner than the present system.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
Vendor could just send an empty package with DCN and have it auto-finalize.
I think we should just shorten the auto-finalize time by a few days.
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I also never ask for finalizing early, it actually helps me keep track of everything easier anyway. Sometimes I'll have 8 or 10 orders all going out at once and if someone does have a problem, I can't remember them all if they have finalized early and disappeared from the orders, so I prefer they just wait until it arrives.
Libby
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FYI the signature doesn't check out. Maybe some forum formatting issue?
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Perhaps allow sellers to create a custom auto-finalize time for different shipping options.
E.g a UK seller could set 7-days auto finalize terms for domestic UK - UK orders. Buyers should have visibility of the finalize time the seller has set before buying and if they don't like it they don't have to buy. $0.02
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I'm going to have to chime in and complain that the new fees are way too high for small sellers. Vendors moving anything from an eighth to an ounces of weed will be screwed hard by this. The fee + shipping leaves a very tight margin, and unless the vendor is growing it himself, this may price him out of the market and make selling smaller more trouble than its worth.
Smaller amounts are important, they reduce the risk in a single transaction and reduce the LE risk. No one will break down your door for a quarter ounce of weed in a priority envelop. Some buyers might start to get nervous beyond an ounce. Then there are buyers who don't really need more than a quarter or an ounce.
You are going to choke revenues and growth. CUT YOUR PRICES!
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Very happy to be a part of this community. A real privlidge. ;D
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I'm going to have to chime in and complain that the new fees are way too high for small sellers. Vendors moving anything from an eighth to an ounces of weed will be screwed hard by this. The fee + shipping leaves a very tight margin, and unless the vendor is growing it himself, this may price him out of the market and make selling smaller more trouble than its worth.
Smaller amounts are important, they reduce the risk in a single transaction and reduce the LE risk. No one will break down your door for a quarter ounce of weed in a priority envelop. Some buyers might start to get nervous beyond an ounce. Then there are buyers who don't really need more than a quarter or an ounce.
You are going to choke revenues and growth. CUT YOUR PRICES!
Fees are high because SR takes ALOT to keep running. People are even on payroll now. On another note, this keeps serious sellers on here and turns off punks that want to rip us off and duck n run.
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I'm just happy to be here and play the game. ;D
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I'm going to have to chime in and complain that the new fees are way too high for small sellers. Vendors moving anything from an eighth to an ounces of weed will be screwed hard by this. The fee + shipping leaves a very tight margin, and unless the vendor is growing it himself, this may price him out of the market and make selling smaller more trouble than its worth.
Smaller amounts are important, they reduce the risk in a single transaction and reduce the LE risk. No one will break down your door for a quarter ounce of weed in a priority envelop. Some buyers might start to get nervous beyond an ounce. Then there are buyers who don't really need more than a quarter or an ounce.
You are going to choke revenues and growth. CUT YOUR PRICES!
Fees are high because SR takes ALOT to keep running. People are even on payroll now. On another note, this keeps serious sellers on here and turns off punks that want to rip us off and duck n run.
higher prices do nothing to deter scumbags.
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Ok.
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some thoughts:-
- on some products its possible to shift more in a single delivery.
- delivery successes are proven.
- it may mean supply & demand for specific subs need to adjust themselves locally and / or globally.
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
- From it's humble beginnings, the Silk Road market was quickly populated with what has become a vibrant community full of interesting characters. From our superstar vendors and ever helpful mods to all of the active folks on the forum, the people here are truly awesome. Silk Road would not be what it is or possibly even exist without everyone who has stepped up along the way to point out security flaws, contribute their ideas, and take this experiment on as their own and stand with us.
It didn't take long before word got out. Our little hidden market got the attention of the media and soon the politicians and law enforcement. But Silk Road was never meant to be private and exclusive. It is meant to grow into a force to be reckoned with that can challenge the powers that be and at last give people the option to choose freedom over tyranny. We fundamentally believe that people can thrive and prosper under these conditions and so far tens of thousands have done so in the Silk Road market. A revolution has been born. So ideally, more participants means more prosperity. What we've found in practice is that if there is an opportunity to cheat, steal or lie for personal short-term gain, someone, somewhere will exploit it.
So, we've had two major challenges to face as Silk Road grows and evolves. One is making our systems tough enough and flexible enough to withstand and win a cyber-war with the most powerful organizations in the world, should they choose to start that war. This is always and ever a top priority. The other is making the market a place where people can quickly and easily buy and sell just about anything without worrying about being attacked by gun toting men in uniforms and thrown in a cage or worry about being ripped off by their trading partner.
I am proud to say we have been successful in achieving these goals up to this point. The site remains up and functioning (despite a few screw ups on our part, like not having a full capacity backup server ready to go when a live server went down, and a poorly executed url switch, just to name a few). And, over 99% of all transactions conducted within the escrow system are completed to the satisfaction of both both buyer and seller, or a mutually agreed upon resolution is found.
This success has in no way made us complacent however. New members are still being lured into trading outside of escrow by scammers and getting ripped off, and “finalizing early”, effectively cutting out the escrow process, is common practice. Still, I believe we can mitigate these risks and take our market to the next level in security, reliability, performance, and convenience for everyone involved.
First we must deal with trading out of escrow. Up to this point we have charged a flat 6.23% commission on all trades. This is much too high for transactions in the $300 and over range, making trading out of escrow for large transactions much more attractive than staying within the system. Now, instead of charging a flat commission, we will charge a higher amount for low priced items and a lower amount for high priced items, similar to how eBay does it.
We've worked hard to come up with a commission schedule that should work for everyone and will give scammers no excuse to make people send money outside of escrow. For some perspective, eBay and amazon charge the following rates:
eBay - $0.50 to list, 11% of the first $50, 6% of $50.01-1000, 2% of $1000.01+
amazon - $1.35 + 15% (for almost all items)
We also went to the Silk Road independent sellers to see what they thought an appropriate commission schedule would look like. The average response looked like this:
15% of the first $10
11% of $10 - $50
8.14% of $50 - $250
5.6% of $250 - $1000
3.7% of $1000 - $5000
We looked at past sales data and our current and future revenue needs and were able to bring these numbers down even further:
10% of the first $50
8.5% of $50 - 150
6% of $150 - 300
3% of $300 - 500
2% of $500 - 1000
1.5% for everything over $1000
With this change, there are no phoney excuses whatsoever for vendors to ask for out of escrow payment. Any request should be interpreted as a scam attempt and reported to the Silk Road support team via the “contact us” link on the main site. We are looking at several mechanisms for enforcing the ban on OOE transactions, from self-policing to bounties on offenders.
Together, we can beat the scammers and make the Silk Road market a place where you can buy with confidence and peace of mind. If we stay true to our principles of integrity, virtue, mutual respect and camaraderie that have guided us to this point, I believe our future is bright and this revolutionary experiment will be a success!
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CLARIFICATION: The new policy regarding out of escrow transactions stated in this address does not affect a vendor's ability to ask their customers to finalize their orders and release payment before shipment. We still strongly recommend that buyers avoid doing this at all costs because we will be unable to protect you in case of fraud.
CLARIFICATION: This new policy also does not affect vendors who use the market as a platform for Bitcoin exchange. They may continue to operate as usual, but again we strongly recommend that you purchase bitcoins through a non-anonymous vendor because the market is not set up to facilitate bitcoin exchange and your money can be stolen without recourse.
FURTHER COMMENTARY: http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=8539.0
No, this just means out of escrow purchases will be more common on low cost items.
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Forgot to remind Dread Pirate Roberts to please invest more on security.
Regards
J 8)
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I haven't read this entire thread, but I have been thinking about the OP for a while and this is my firm objection.
Silk Road is not like eBay
It's more like a craigslist, it connects sellers with SR and deserves a payment, but it's not a bidding site.
The more you buy, the bigger the risk
I have bought $300+ orders before and would happily do so again, but they didn't arrive. Customs is more likely to take a peak a larger packages. So I order 1 month supply of meds at a time, which are usually sold as packs of ten. So I order 3-6 orders of 10 doses each. If they are all now 15% more, that's passed on to me. I've already seen sellers stop selling my meds, and others raise prices 30%. Theoretically, I could buy $300 at once and be better off, but previous experience tells me it's not getting through customs.
There are other ways to make money
Seller registration, escrow services, how about front page advertising for sellers? Why make me pay for lower, safer quantity which only makes me think twice about using SR instead of other sources?
I'd love to buy bulk and avoid the fee increase, but this isn't Sam's Club/Costco, I can lose $300 worth of meds to customs if I buy in that amount.
It's bad for sellers too
I understand "finalizing early" too. It's annoying to see so many reviews that don't say whether something arrived or was legit, but sellers can't control customs inspections. They also might not want to sell to someone with low reputation. So who wins here? No one, SR is damaged because we're driven away.
SR, good while it lasted.
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Um, I just made an private order for 74,18BTC which is well over the $300 mark and it is def not being taxed at 3%
I looked at it on the page and it was at 79.13. 4.95BTC extra.
That is like in the 6.67%
Or am I missing something here?
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Um, I just made an private order for 74,18BTC which is well over the $300 mark and it is def not being taxed at 3%
I looked at it on the page and it was at 79.13. 4.95BTC extra.
That is like in the 6.67%
The tax is cumulative. So you'd be paying 10% on the first $50, 8.5% on the next $100, et cetera.
Or am I missing something here?
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I haven't read this entire thread, but I have been thinking about the OP for a while and this is my firm objection.
Silk Road is not like eBay
It's more like a craigslist, it connects sellers with SR and deserves a payment, but it's not a bidding site.
- dont know what craigslist is no chance i have any use for it
- silk road isn't ebay but its the feedback that is interesting and works, visualise the buy / sell and how it is rated, i don't know of
another site that does any better...whether its bidding is irrelevant its still a sale.
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Silk road is like Amazon. It is a platform where individual sellers can offer products across a broad variety of categories. They are left feedback based on the success of the transaction. It is not a classified's listing like craigslist or kijiji, which are only service providers and can not be held legally responsible for the content posted on their sites (i.e. hitman offering to kill someone on craigslist).
Amazon can be held liable if someone were to offer up a hitman contract. They are not just a service provider, they are an actual market which monitors sellers and take a fee for transactions completed. The same as SR.
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I might be new here on SR, and want to become a seller, but I'm not new to The Bitcoins, web markets and business.
The SR apart from the idea it is a business place, and an revenue place for the creators of the SR. And they should earn as much as possible. They had an idea they made it and it should be appreciated by all users. This business have to grow = growing means more money it creates. And it should stay that way.
From what I can see now there is a problem (not a big of a deal but still) with some dishonest traders, either buyers or sellers, and Bitcoin fluctuation (but lets assume, that this fluctuations are sometimes pros, sometimes cons, depend on an individual opinion)
I only have a suggestion as a new user who wants to become a seller, and if this suggestion is already implemented that I'm sorry don't mind my post at all.
To grow, SR needs more sellers and buyers, with more "legal and illegal" goods. The idea of purchasing an seller account is very good, it prevents more dishonest traders to appear. But for new sellers that really want to be honest it is quite a lot of cash, and as am I, this comes with worries about buyers.
My idea about reading this forum is quite simple.
For new buyers escrow is obligatory (it seems that it would be in a short while for all) but they cannot "finalize early" - but could they list an item with a condition that only buyers with XXX ratings can buy from him? That way one can be a bit more secure, it will prevent from random orders and giving a bad feedback. This will prevent scamming by seller and buyers.
After the seller become trusty, he can than choose to not to sell to new users (but probably will not), and make an option for users to finalize it early. This finalizing early thing is good too. The bitcoins are still processed through the escrow system so the commission is charged to SR. And established seller can help grow the SR by accepting new buyers w/o a risk of being scammed by them. Let's face it. No one would want to be scammed either seller, buyers, and especially SR.
I cannot tell about the commission is it high or moderate or low - i don't think about that. But to be honest it probably will be added to final price for buyers.
In other simple words, SR needs to evolve, by making more buyers, sellers and especially money, but it has to be more friendly too. So basic suggestion is simple limitations for new buyers and sellers to prevent scammers.
SR is a good idea for The Bitcoins, one has to pay some money to become seller that is why customers might think that the seller is legit, but what about new buyers? Seller has to be protected too. But there is no simple solution for all these problems. As many ppl there are there would be as many opinion on that matter.
I really hope that SR will grow more, and more.
Maybe all these things is not a big of a deal - let say 1% of all users are scammers,? than my post is pointless. But after the growth of SR more seller and buyers will come and than it could become a problem.
Regards
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Silk road is like Amazon. It is a platform where individual sellers can offer products across a broad variety of categories. They are left feedback based on the success of the transaction. It is not a classified's listing like craigslist or kijiji, which are only service providers and can not be held legally responsible for the content posted on their sites (i.e. hitman offering to kill someone on craigslist).
Amazon can be held liable if someone were to offer up a hitman contract. They are not just a service provider, they are an actual market which monitors sellers and take a fee for transactions completed. The same as SR.
- yes you are right, the sale side of it is is less ebay and more amazon..i don't do much buying to pick out the fine differences between ebay
feedback and amazon's....ok
;)
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I LOVE your passion, keep up the great work!
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- i g e t i t n o w.
- its been bothering me for some time now, and have had to re-run the points in my head stated by 1 or 2 to decipher why things are the way they are...
- there's no need for me to state why its flogging a dead horse ...and since i'm new to the movement its all been real foreign to me.
thanks
;)
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Just got here but I think SR is a genius idea and loving it so far. Much love for whoever invented this gem and those who make it work!
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I have mixed feelings. Looks like bulk is going to be out of the picture on SR from now on.
Why do you say that? Is 1.5% a deal breaker? And if fees go down as a person spends more, how would this negatively affect the buyer or bulk seller?
Peace PK
me pulling bulk from SR has nothing to do with the fees, but the other changes. I used to do 75% of my business on here completely OOE, where people would send me the funds directly then purchase a 0.01BTC listing to leave feedback. I would only do bulk this way.
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there are already other sites with lower/no fees... (for example BMR at http://5onwnspjvuk7cwvk.onion/ or HackBB at http://clsvtzwzdgzkjda7.onion/).
the problem i see is that there are many different products. to sell an ebook or CVVs for example is no risky business and can be passed along in large amounts. sending 2 pounds of skunk from US to AU however is pretty much tossing it into the toilet, as it most probably will get seized by customs. same goes for a kilo of coke sent from ecuador to the united states.
of course, no one says that a bulk order has to be sent in bulk. might as well be sent in several small packages... sticking to domestic providers will always be more secure though, obviously.
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The rates are too high and indicative of a lack of competition. Why aren't there more sites like this?
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I logged into BMR about a month ago... It looked like a pretty lonely place. Has it picked up?
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i was lurking on BMR about a week ago. quite a bit of activity, but from what i saw there is no sort of escrow system whatsoever.
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The rates are too high and indicative of a lack of competition. Why aren't there more sites like this?
Prohibition raises the cost of entry and prices most of the competition out of the market. The only people left willing to do it at such high risk are few and far between. Those with the desire AND the competence to do it well are fewer and farther between.
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i was lurking on BMR about a week ago. quite a bit of activity, but from what i saw there is no sort of escrow system whatsoever.
quite the opposite actually. finalizing early is the exception on BMR and using escrow is not only highly encouraged but expected. the only downsides i see is relatively frequent downtimes and the smaller userbase compared to SR. all in all it's good to see some healthy competition.
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yeah, you're totally right... just went back and looked at it
guess i didn't spend enough time skimming it before!
although, a lot of vendors had very few recent transactions for the items that i'm interested it
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Jeez, it's good that out of escrow transactions were banned, I haven't heard of scamming sellers for months now! Thank You, DPR!!!! It's all about protecting us, not about getting a profit from scams, you doubters you!
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Jeez, it's good that out of escrow transactions were banned, I haven't heard of scamming sellers for months now! Thank You, DPR!!!! It's all about protecting us, not about getting a profit from scams, you doubters you!
How about banning people who, scam after scam still CHOOSE to finalize early?
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Jeez, it's good that out of escrow transactions were banned, I haven't heard of scamming sellers for months now! Thank You, DPR!!!! It's all about protecting us, not about getting a profit from scams, you doubters you!
You haven't heard of scams in months? are we on the same SR? Tony76, paythepiper, ect ect?
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sar·casm
[sahr-kaz-uhm]
noun
1.
harsh or bitter derision or irony.
2.
a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark: a review full of sarcasms.
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I think the bigger problem is the amount of scammer sellers. Especially scam LSD vendors. There needs to be a policy implemented for new sellers, so that they cannot do out of escrow or else they will be subject to deletion.
Agreed
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I think the bigger problem is the amount of scammer sellers. Especially scam LSD vendors. There needs to be a policy implemented for new sellers, so that they cannot do out of escrow or else they will be subject to deletion.
Agreed
But this wont do anything to vendors who go rogue after months like Mike.Murphy, Tony76, Noeirga and im sure countless others. The only real solution would be ban FE period.
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Although escrow is a pain in the ass to reputable vendors like myself, with every one of their patrons 100% happy,
I'm all for it.
It's a pain not to be able to re-up when I want to but not a huge pain.
Not being able to sell anonymously would be a far bigger pain.
I am currently encouraging, not demanding out of escrow transactions.
I was told in no uncertain terms by silk road admin that I could do this.
If they ever told me to stop, I would, immediately and without malice.
I think it speaks volumes for any vendor to disagree.
Escrow is a fabulous idea, without people feeling safe about ordering where the fuck would we be? Standing on a goddam street corner, that's where.
Should people trust a vendors stats? In a word, NO!
And in the words of the great Tony Montana "Who do I trust? ME! Tha's who!".
I'll get off my soap box now.
Thanks Silk Road, you guys rock.
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Just to clarify I thought OOE and FE were the same thing.
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Just to clarify I thought OOE and FE were the same thing.
OOE is where you are directly sending BTC to a username via the account page, bypassing the entire order/checkout/escrow/shipping information, etc.
FE is where you order as normally but you finalize and release the funds from escrow before the item has shipped.
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No that's absolute bullshit for guys like me perfect example I sell digital good the only way i make ANYTHING is by volume not by amount my current average price is .14 btc I am going to have to lower that to .07 and you want to take 15 % on top of that ? common that's a crock of shit and unless you want me to put up 4,000 listings for 4,000 different items so i can increase my front page time i can't have 15% it literally makes me as a seller pointless it's like im in china make shoes for a slave driver just to make my btc
Sorry everyone - I just have to out this chump.
Warweed, your products are shit. Everything you sell you can find on torrent sites for free.
You say " it literally makes me as a seller pointless it's like im in china make shoes for a slave driver just to make my btc"
to that I say: A smart man would find a better job than making shoes like a slave or maybe actually selling something worth while.
All of your seller stats are based on shill buys. Its not hard to sit there and send yourself 0.1btc and write a good review about yourself - and because its digital you can do this multiple times a day without it looking suspicious (or so you think)
We see through your bullshit, warweed.
By the way, your dox are easy enough to find as you use the same handle in the Canadian hacking scene. You were already dox'd years back. Remember when you received that huge phone bill just after christmas? That was because we set up a conf on your dime because you are a chump.
The only reason you haven't been shut down by LE is because you're not worth their time. What are they going to bust you on? Copywrite infringement?
Don't think that im trying to expose you - you've already exposed yourself. You can say that you're just a warweed amongst many warweeds on the internet but we all know.
http://www.youtube.com/user/warweed
The only reason I created this forum account was to point out the obvious
Also: You sucked in the Canadian hacking scene and you suck on SR.