My Experience Using OpenBazaar for buying Bitcoin Cash

I wanted to convert some BTC to BCH.

Instead of using Coinbase, I decided to use my resources in the support of services, platforms, and real people, by using technology that support individual liberty, and are not in cooperation with certain three letter entities which are against liberty.

OpenBazaar does to Amazon what Bitcoin did to central banks & the Federal Reserve. Because it is decentralized, it is permission-less, and anyone with adequate technology can buy & sell things on this platform. This is becoming increasingly important with the expansion of the surveillance state in the advent of COVID. There is no central server, which leaves such sites vulnerable to shut downs, data-leaks, DDOSing, & outright theft via exit scamming, as seen on DarkNetMarkets (DNM). Each computer that downloads the OpenBazaar open-source software, for free, at their website openbazaar.org, contributes to hosting the network. Similar to BitTorrent.

My Experience & Walk-Thru:

At the Home Page (OB1, or "Discover") the very first option is the "Trade" market.

After clicking "See All" under the Trade market, the below shows up.

After shopping around for the best offers to convert BTC to BCH, factoring in Exchange Rate against the Reputation of the vendor, I settled on vendor Opticbit. (there aren't too many such vendors on the platform just yet, for those entrepreneurs feeling froggy & wanna jump)

After seeing this listing, I clicked on the offering, which took me to this page. (there were no Reviews when i checked, but there will be one posted soon.)

As you can see, a "Verified Moderator" can be used to act as an escrow to ensure you're not getting scammed. (More details on that here, & yet another opportunity for entrepreneurial cryptosavages to make some Bitcoin on the side with this valued service). However, given I was transacting a rather small amount, and the creditworthiness of the Vendor, I did not do this. If you would like an example of using the moderator, express your interest in the comments & I'll try the Moderator service, and potentially apply to become a Verified Moderator myself.

To vet the vendor, I clicked the "Go to store" button in the top left.

He has 277 Followers, 13 5 Star reviews, & 31 different listings, claims to be located in Las Vegas, and has an interesting cover photo, which appears to be a man, in front of a plane, with a pickup truck. Lol.

Next, I clicked on the hyperlink to look at the reviews.

I'm not sure how the reviews are sorted, but they clearly aren't chronological. All 13 reviews are affirming, across several different product listings. The most recent review was Jan 7th, 2020, which is something to be aware of & may be disconcerting. But given the nature of the platform, and other options, was not worried. This guy/vendor, Opticbit, clearly had the best available listing.

To further verify, you can look at the profiles of the accounts which left reviews. Not everyone makes their account available on the review. However, I could look at the 3rd review from user "mutatingbrains"... just kidding, after waiting two minutes it failed to connect, as shown below. Now trying user "OB zab21a"... same thing. And third times a charm for user "tektonic" who left a review for purchasing a $100 cash bill, a product listing I'm curious in trying for fun...

Looks like "tektonic" is a real person, and not a dummy review. 69 Followers and 145 Following. And the anon location & lack of avatar is common on the platform, so not too worried.

Further, I wanted to look at this Benjamin $100 product listing, for future reference, and for your exemplary purposes...

Now into the details of my order... which you can view by going to your profile by clicking the upper right icon (your avatar) and selecting "Purchases" & then clicking the link under "ORDER ID" in bottom left.

I put the order in on a Saturday. So the two day response time that I got for fulfilling the order was expected. I had low time preference on this transaction. Even still, I received a message from the vendor apologizing for the delay. You can see the messages by clicking "Discussion" on the left side under MENU.

However, the Status of the Order is still sitting at the "Accepted" stage, despite having sent my BTC & received my BCH... can update later on that.

In summation, it was a rather easy process! I successfully executed a purely peer-to-peer transaction with no trusted intermediaries over the internet. Alchemy.

FYI, the meaning of Bazaar according to wikipedia

This is one of several ways one can leverage the internet to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions, which serves as a tool to empower individual liberty.

I can't encourage enough, for those interested in individual liberty, to invest time into learning how to use these platforms. This knowledge is an asset that can pay great dividends as the need for such tools ramp up in accordance to the Orwellian surveillance state.

Next, I want to use the local.bitcoin.com marketplace which serves to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions with their website. A noted difference with their platform is it's not a decentralized marketplace such as OpenBazaar, but more than likely such solutions are more accessible with less steps, which deserves much commendation for increasing onboarding & adoption. Only one way to find out though.

In liberty,

Sean