Notice they changed the metric from the number of sales to the number of merchants? Because it was a huge flop.

>"Both Gyft and NewEgg experienced their best day of bitcoin sales ever"

Congrats to those two companies. That doesn't change the fact that the event was a flop.

>You are wrong, which is why you quote no source.

I quote no source because I'm too lazy to go search through the /r/bitcoin posts. Go search for accepting/started/etc then contact the merchants and see what they say. Better yet search for "no sales" or similar, search for complaints about coinmap they generally revolve around a store not receiving any sales, getting rid of bitcoin and having the user be stuck. Or look at Adafruit.

>CheapAir recently passed $1.5 million in bitcoin sales

It's been over a year since they started taking bitcoin we have no indication if they are seeing growth or shrinkage in sales with just one figure.

>Newegg, although they quote no numbers

Enough said.

>Same thing for Overstock who decided to expand bitcoin acceptance to their international market.

This being the same Overstock that recently announced they missed their bitcoin target by $17 million dollars? Overstock is helpful in that they release their figures regularly so you can plot the decline in sales on a chart easily.

>The most important problem that Bitcoin solves is fraud

It solves fraud for merchants by removing consumer protections. Merchants having no fraud doesn't matter if no one uses it because they don't want to get screwed over by merchants. (Look at all the complaints related to Tigerdirect and bitcoin orders).

>And conversely, Bitcoin solves the problem of financial theft for customers: if Joe Schmo decides to pay a trusted merchant like Dell in bitcoins

Note the trusted part? What about all the millions of other merchants online? Or do you expect everyone to centralize into a few trusted retailers? Besides that there are plenty of trusted merchants who make mistakes sometimes that require charge backs. With bitcoin you're out of luck.

>he can be assured that if Dell is hit by hackers who steal CC data, they won't be able to financially steal from Joe

If they steal his CC data he can be sure they won't be able to financially steal from him either since he is insured against loss by his credit card company.

Unfortunately for Joe he isn't a security expert and his odds of losing money due to accidentally installing a coin stealing virus are way higher than the odds of him losing money due to Visa not accepting his fraud claim.

>cryptographic 2-party escrow to deal with untrusted merchants

A new one appears every few months at which point I post the reason they don't work and the developer moves on.

>The most expensive part of the business is the requirement to have physical presence --offices and employees-- to deal with the need to be able to handle cash deposits and withdrawals

That is another very expensive part of it. It's required because you're often dealing with the unbanked who can't just have an exchange deposit money in their account. Again bitcoin doesn't solve this problem.

>Bitcoin services make this cheaper because they don't need physical presence. https://www.sendbitcoin.mx for example accepts deposit by sending coins to their service, and they rely on the ATM network of an established bank for withdrawals.

They do actually need a physical presence to compete with the services that have a physical presence. There are a lot of people who can't receive a bank transfer.

Sendbitcoin.mx will not be around for long once the bank they utilize finds out they are using their service for remittance because they are avoiding all regulations which make remittance to MX expensive. If it was so easy to do remittance using the ATMs surely the bank that owns the network would be doing it by themselves and raking in the money.

Most likely they quoted this number because 10 or 20 or 30% "increased sales" sounded less impressive. It doesn't really matter. The reality is that there are 82% more merchants who completed sales than last year, so no it was not a huge flop. By the way you still fail at providing any data why it was a "huge flop". Second time I have called you on this, and second time you ignore me. Burying your head in the sand saying something does not make that thing a reality.

> I quote no source because I'm too lazy

You quote no source because you have no source.

I am confident you are able to find some anecdotes on /r/bitcoin from a few mom-and-pop shops disappointed by their bitcoin sales this year. But anecdotes are not data. Data is the "+82%" number I reported above.

> This being the same Overstock that recently announced they missed their bitcoin target by $17 million dollars? Overstock is helpful in that they release their figures regularly so you can plot the decline in sales on a chart easily.

Their sales are not declining anymore. They have reached a steady state of $7000-8000 a day for the last 3 months: http://www.coindesk.com/overstocks-2014-bitcoin-sales-miss-p... But I am sure you will ignore this piece of so called "data" and continue shouting around that "overstock sales are declining!!!!1!!one"

> Merchants having no fraud doesn't matter if no one uses it

"if no one uses it" -> that's the thing, people actually use Bitcoin, and pay with it: Newegg, CheapAir, Overstock, etc. So it really does matter to such merchants that Bitcoin removes the risk of fraud.

> Note the trusted part?

That's precisely my point: most sales are performed with trusted merchants. It is OK for a payment system to not provide the consumer protections of credit cards. That's why cash works. You go to a restaurant and pay cash because you don't care about giving up the ability to contest the charge: you trust the restaurant. For the same reason, when I go to a local restaurant accepting bitcoins, I have no qualms paying in bitcoins. There are SOME transactions for which Bitcoin does not work well out of the box, like paying an untrusted online merchant without escrow, but that's OK. Bitcoin doesn't have to satisfy 100% of use cases to be successful. You seem to see Bitcoin as binary: it has to be perfect or it can't work at all. But you are wrong. It is just like cash or credit cards: they don't work in 100% of use cases either (can't send cash online, my CC can't be used when I encounter the 3rd merchant of the day who only takes Visa/Mastercard but not my Amex), yet they are successful payment systems.

> Besides that there are plenty of trusted merchants who make mistakes sometimes that require charge backs. With bitcoin you're out of luck.

I chuckled at this. Obviously you are unfamiliar with how it's done. The standard way of doing a "charge back" in Bitcoin is to ask the customer to provide a refund address. Easy peasy :)

> If they steal his CC data he can be sure they won't be able to financially steal from him either since he is insured against loss by his credit card company.

You completely ignored what I said: despite not losing money, it can be a tremendous annoyance and hassle to cancel and replace a CC, with the incident affecting your credit score, etc. These are real problems, real annoyances, NOT solved by credit cards. Bitcoin fixes that.

> Unfortunately for Joe he isn't a security expert and his odds of losing money due to accidentally installing a coin stealing virus are way higher than the odds of him losing money due to Visa not accepting his fraud claim.

Second time you completely ignored what I said: yes security is hard, but hardware wallets are improving security. You can't deny this.

> A new one appears every few months at which point I post the reason they don't work and the developer moves on.

They do work (I have used one). Please enlighten us.

> That is another very expensive part of it. It's required because you're often dealing with the unbanked who can't just have an exchange deposit money in their account. Again bitcoin doesn't solve this problem.

Wrong. My example (sendbitcoin.mx) absolutely does work with the unbanked. The recipient does not need a bank account.

> They do actually need a physical presence to compete with the services that have a physical presence. There are a lot of people who can't receive a bank transfer.

Wrong. As I explained, my example (sendbitcoin.mx) does not need physical presence, as they rely on an existing bank ATM network, even if you don't have a bank account.

> If it was so easy to do remittance using the ATMs surely the bank that owns the network would be doing it by themselves and raking in the money.

Banks don't do it for the same reason large companies often fail to innovate compared to small agile startups: inertia, redtape, etc.

Fewer transactions and lower volume than last year. Multiple vendors on /r/bitcoin claiming little to no volume either compared to last year.

>I am confident you are able to find some anecdotes on /r/bitcoin from a few mom-and-pop shops disappointed by their bitcoin sales this year. But anecdotes are not data. Data is the "+82%" number I reported above.

Right so reports from multiple vendors about lackluster sales are anecdotes. A vanity number like 82% increase with no indication of the size of the transactions, etc is data. How about the fact that bitpay has been claiming the 1m a day in transactions now for over half a year? How about that for no growth?

>Their sales are not declining anymore. They have reached a steady state of $7000-8000 a day for the last 3 months

That is a decline

Here are the figures from their releases so far

Jan 10 - 130K Jan 11-29 - $26K/day average Next 36 days to March 4th they do $400K - $11K/day average Next 83 days to May 27th they do $600K - $7200/day average

Now they are claiming $7000 a day. Given that the $7200 * the number of days left in the year = $3m I'm guessing we'll see that $3m number change again when they actually release their financials.

>That's why cash works. You go to a restaurant and pay cash because you don't care about giving up the ability to contest the charge: you trust the restaurant

Cash works like this because you are physically present with the merchant when you use it so you can validate immediately if you are getting ripped off or not.

>Bitcoin doesn't have to satisfy 100% of use cases to be successful.

Right but it has to satisfy enough common ones to convince users to make the additional effort to acquire it. It's not doing that.

>I chuckled at this. Obviously you are unfamiliar with how it's done. The standard way of doing a "charge back" in Bitcoin is to ask the customer to provide a refund address. Easy peasy :)

Yes that explains why there are no scams in bitcoin at all. And there were no complaints about Tigerdirect fulfillment related to bitcoin orders.

>You completely ignored what I said: despite not losing money, it can be a tremendous annoyance and hassle to cancel and replace a CC, with the incident affecting your credit score, etc. These are real problems, real annoyances, NOT solved by credit cards. Bitcoin fixes that.

But it's not a tremendous hassle. You call the bank tell them the card was stolen(or they detect it) list any transactions you didn't make and the money is refunded and a new card is posted. There are a handful of cases where it is more difficult than that. Do you have examples of it affecting credit scores?

>Second time you completely ignored what I said: yes security is hard, but hardware wallets are improving security. You can't deny this.

Walk me through the steps to buying and putting bitcoin on your hardware wallet that wouldn't be compromised by the user having a virus on their computer that targeted bitcoin.

>They do work (I have used one). Please enlighten us

Which one have you used and I'll tell you how to abuse it.

>Wrong. As I explained, my example (sendbitcoin.mx) does not need physical presence, as they rely on an existing bank ATM network, even if you don't have a bank account.

That is a physical presence. The fact that they are using someone elses physical presence doesn't mean they don't need one. It means they are using someone elses locations to subsidize their own. Companies tend to not like that which is why I would put money on sendbitcoin.mx being shut down within the next 6 months.

>Banks don't do it for the same reason large companies often fail to innovate compared to small agile startups: inertia, redtape, etc.

Actually there were a lot of banks doing the US->MX remittance up until a few years ago when regulations and compliance got to be way too expensive for it to be profitable.

Again, for the 4th(!) time, you have no data proving this.

> Multiple vendors on /r/bitcoin claiming little to no volume either compared to last year.

A few anecdotes != reliable statistics

> Right so reports from multiple vendors about lackluster sales are anecdotes.

Yes. Your "multiple vendors" probably means "less than a dozen vendors", which is insignificant given there are tens of thousands of vendors in the world accepting Bitcoin.

> How about the fact that bitpay has been claiming the 1m a day in transactions now for over half a year? How about that for no growth?

Ha! Now you change your claim. You talked earlier about a significant reduction, a "huge flop". Now you claim stagnation, no growth. That's very different.

> Here are the figures from their releases so far > Jan 10 - 130K Jan 11-29 - $26K/day average Next 36 days to March 4th they do $400K - $11K/day average Next 83 days to May 27th they do $600K - $7200/day average > Now they are claiming $7000 a day. Given that the $7200 * the number of days left in the year = $3m I'm guessing we'll see that $3m number change again when they actually release their financials.

Sales were declining, but not anymore, not since September, not since the last 3 months. That is exactly what I claimed, and nothing more. I said: "They have reached a steady state of $7000-8000 a day FOR THE LAST 3 MONTHS" (emphasis mine).

> Cash works like this because you are physically present with the merchant when you use it so you can validate immediately if you are getting ripped off or not.

Exactly, and I am glad to see you acknowledge that Bitcoin's lack of CC-like consumer protections is a total non-problem in such scenarios. You made it sound like such protections were absolutely necessary, at all time, or else Bitcoin can never work!!!!!1!one

> Right but it has to satisfy enough common ones to convince users to make the additional effort to acquire it. It's not doing that.

Yes, and I think you will agree that "reducing fraud to zero for merchants" is a pretty major use case given that fraud is a huge problem for merchants online. As well as "being able to pay a trusted merchant online while guaranteeing not having a CC number that can be stolen" since financial theft is becoming more and more frequent.

> Yes that explains why there are no scams in bitcoin at all. And there were no complaints about Tigerdirect fulfillment related to bitcoin orders.

Technological problems from one merchant's deployment of Bitcoin is hardly a sign that "OMG Bitcoin totally doesn't work and will never be adopted" as you make it seem to be. For every customer who experiences one issue paying/getting a refund in Bitcoin, there are many more customers who do so without any problem.

> But it's not a tremendous hassle. You call the bank tell them the card was stolen(or they detect it) list any transactions you didn't make and the money is refunded and a new card is posted. There are a handful of cases where it is more difficult than that. Do you have examples of it affecting credit scores?

Obviously, whether it is a tremendous or a minor hassle is a matter of personal experience, and a matter of how much of your life depends on credit cards. But my point is: it can be a tremendous hassle, and credit cards do not automatically make a theft a non-issue. Some examples of major hassles: having you card stolen and having to cancel it during a vacation away from home. After a theft you have to re-configure all automatic periodic payments that were due to be processed on the CC. You forgot to give the new CC number to your cloud service provider? Oops they can suddenly shut down your instances at 3am with little to no notice. Your wife had set up some other random online service paid through the CC, but you were not aware of it? Oops her online account will be closed as fraudulent and it will take multiple phone calls and emails to the support department to get it re-opened. The CC thief's actions lead to some negative events added to you credit history? Oops good luck spending multiple WEEKS contacting the credit scoring agencies indepedentently to get your records cleaned up, and submit the proper documentation to prove it was all due to a theft.

Bottom line: you know how some Bitcoin fanboys blatantly ignore its kinks? Well you are guilty of the same thing when you blatantly and childishly ignore the kinks of credit cards when they are stolen and have to be replaced.

> Walk me through the steps to buying and putting bitcoin on your hardware wallet that wouldn't be compromised by the user having a virus on their computer that targeted bitcoin.

You mean the same computer where the virus will also steal the CC number that the user enters on a website when making a payement? Hmm? How does this virus scenario demonstrates that credit cards are safer? If the user cancels the first CC, gets a second one, what prevents the virus from stealing the second CC number at the next purchase? CCs don't solve this virus problem at all.

However I can envision scenarios where Bitcoin hardware wallets actually solve this virus problem. The simplest one is: you could buy a pre-loaded cheap disposable wallet (maybe in the form factor of a credit card) hence completely skipping the virus-ladden PC.

> Which one have you used and I'll tell you how to abuse it.

I used casascius's Bitcoin Address Utility. It has a self-escrow (two-party escrow) functionality which is not user-friendly, but the it is cryptographically well implemented and very secure.

> That is a physical presence. The fact that they are using someone elses physical presence doesn't mean they don't need one. It means they are using someone elses locations to subsidize their own. Companies tend to not like that which is why I would put money on sendbitcoin.mx being shut down within the next 6 months.

We shall see.

Go forth and compare https://blockchain.info/charts ignoring that the fact that they didn't mention sales at all is a pretty good indication.

>A few anecdotes != reliable statistics

A random statement about a random metric does not indicate growth

>Yes. Your "multiple vendors" probably means "less than a dozen vendors", which is insignificant given there are tens of thousands of vendors in the world accepting Bitcoin.

There are 10s of thousands of bitpay/coinbase accounts. That doesn't meant they are all still accepting bitcoin.

>Ha! Now you change your claim. You talked earlier about a significant reduction, a "huge flop". Now you claim stagnation, no growth. That's very different.

No change just another data point.

>Sales were declining, but not anymore, not since September, not since the last 3 months. That is exactly what I claimed, and nothing more. I said: "They have reached a steady state of $7000-8000 a day FOR THE LAST 3 MONTHS" (emphasis mine).

And given they change their numbers reported every few months I don't believe for a second it has stabilized. I'll wait for their year end.

>Exactly, and I am glad to see you acknowledge that Bitcoin's lack of CC-like consumer protections is a total non-problem in such scenarios. You made it sound like such protections were absolutely necessary, at all time, or else Bitcoin can never work!!!!!1!one

Yes, in face to face transactions bitcoin would be a good solution if cash wasn't already easier.

>Yes, and I think you will agree that "reducing fraud to zero for merchants" is a pretty major use case given that fraud is a huge problem for merchants online. As well as "being able to pay a trusted merchant online while guaranteeing not having a CC number that can be stolen" since financial theft is becoming more and more frequent.

The problem is consumers aren't willing to give up their customer protections to improve the rate of fraud for merchants. All the merchants in the world could accept bitcoin and that fact won't change. Why would you be willing to increase your own fraud window just to decrease the merchants?

>Technological problems from one merchant's deployment of Bitcoin is hardly a sign that "OMG Bitcoin totally doesn't work and will never be adopted" as you make it seem to be. For every customer who experiences one issue paying/getting a refund in Bitcoin, there are many more customers who do so without any problem.

I didn't say that. I said that they were a trusted merchant and they repeatedly screwed up. And the customers had no easy recourse like they'd have with credit cards.

>Some examples of major hassles: having you card stolen and having to cancel it during a vacation away from home.

What happens if you lose your phone/laptop while on vacation with bitcoin?

>After a theft you have to re-configure all automatic periodic payments that were due to be processed on the CC. You forgot to give the new CC number to your cloud service provider? Oops they can suddenly shut down your instances at 3am with little to no notice. Your wife had set up some other random online service paid through the CC, but you were not aware of it?

Given that bitcoin doesn't allow for automatic pull payments you have to remember all your accounts and manually pay them every month anyhow. This isn't an improvement.

>Oops her online account will be closed as fraudulent and it will take multiple phone calls and emails to the support department to get it re-opened.

Bullshit. No company is going to do this without contacting you and fraudulent? Seriously what world do you live in. This would never happen.

>The CC thief's actions lead to some negative events added to you credit history? Oops good luck spending multiple WEEKS contacting the credit scoring agencies indepedentently to get your records cleaned up, and submit the proper documentation to prove it was all due to a theft.

Notice you haven't shown a single example of any of this? Because it is fantasy.

>You mean the same computer where the virus will also steal the CC number that the user enters on a website when making a payement? Hmm? How does this virus scenario demonstrates that credit cards are safer? If the user cancels the first CC, gets a second one, what prevents the virus from stealing the second CC number at the next purchase? CCs don't solve this virus problem at all.

If a virus steals my CC details and spends on them I get the money back in my account. Does that happen now with bitcoin that I'm not aware of or do you lose your money for good?

It is not the same thing so I ask again. Can you walk me through those steps or do you admit you cannot do it easily?

>I used casascius's Bitcoin Address Utility. It has a self-escrow (two-party escrow) functionality which is not user-friendly, but the it is cryptographically well implemented and very secure.

What happens if we set up the transaction and I don't send you anything? Your funds are now trapped at no cost to me.

These charts do NOT show Bitcoin Black Friday sales, but all worldwide Bitcoin transactions. But even assuming they showed BBF sales, they prove you wrong, as they show a nice increase over time: https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-excluding-popu...

So for the 5th(!!) time: you have no data proving sales went down.

> A random statement about a random metric does not indicate growth

The OP gave not 1 but 10 metrics showing growth: http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/ You discarded some of them as "vanity metrics", but regardless, that's better than the how many metrics you gave that presumably showed a decrease of Bitcoin's adoption? Oh yeah, zero.

> There are 10s of thousands of bitpay/coinbase accounts. That doesn't meant they are all still accepting bitcoin.

Wrong. There are millions of wallet accounts on bitpay/coinbase (see http://avc.com/2014/10/bitcoin-adoption-metrics/). Out of them, there are 10s of thousands of vendors accepting Bitcoin. These are widely accepted numbers. No one debates them.

So the "multiple vendors" (less than a dozen) you claim who saw fewer sales on BBF 2014 than on BBF 2013 are a completely insignificant number compared to 10s of thousand, or 10 thousand, or even 1 thousand.

> And given they change their numbers reported every few months I don't believe for a second it has stabilized. I'll wait for their year end.

Sales vary from month to month, so the numbers reported vary from month to month. Shocking!

> Yes, in face to face transactions bitcoin would be a good solution if cash wasn't already easier.

Except Bitcoin can be easier/faster/more secure than paying in cash. Ever seen how annoying it is to split a restaurant bill with multiple people when no one has the right amount of change? You can always transfer the exact amount with Bitcoin. Ever been waiting at the cashier's line when a guy in front of you is wasting time looking for the exact change to pay the cashier? A Bitcoin hardware wallet could pay in an instant with an NFC tap. Ever had a wallet full of cash stolen? A Bitcoin hardware wallet could be PIN-protected and could have a backup at home.

> The problem is consumers aren't willing to give up their customer protections to improve the rate of fraud for merchants. All the merchants in the world could accept bitcoin and that fact won't change. Why would you be willing to increase your own fraud window just to decrease the merchants?

You assume that customers who pay in bitcoins had to "give up" credit cards. This isn't necessarily true. Bitcoin opens up new markets for customers who didn't even have the ability to use a credit card before. For example Overstock couldn't sell in many countries because these countries weren't supported by their credit card processors. But accepting Bitcoin lets Overstock sell in any country in the world. So customers in some random country are now happy to see a new option to shop at that just didn't exist before.

Also, I think there are quite a few reasons why customers would be willing to give up the credit card protections. For starters, some merchants offer Bitcoin discounts, like Air Baltic who removes a 5.99 euro fee when paying in Bitcoin (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtWPJVvCMAAPgzG.jpg). Other merchants can waive the 2-3% fee that credit card processors usually charge. Other merchants don't take credit cards when the amount is less than a certain amount. And in other cases, the customer might want to NOT give his CC number because he does not want to risk it having stolen (read any of the numerous stories of restaurant waiters cloning and skimming customer's cards: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Dave-Busters-Waitress-A...) You cannot deny that these are all very good and valid reasons for preferring paying in bitcoins.

> I didn't say that. I said that they were a trusted merchant and they repeatedly screwed up. And the customers had no easy recourse like they'd have with credit cards.

Everything I read indicates they screwed up by mistake, not by malice.

> What happens if you lose your phone/laptop while on vacation with bitcoin?

Bitcoin hardware wallets can be PIN-protected and backed up.

> Given that bitcoin doesn't allow for automatic pull payments you have to remember all your accounts and manually pay them every month anyhow. This isn't an improvement.

More and more hosted wallets let you set up recurring payments.

> Bullshit. No company is going to do this without contacting you and fraudulent? Seriously what world do you live in. This would never happen.

Yes it does happen.

> Notice you haven't shown a single example of any of this? Because it is fantasy.

Yes it can happen. A friend of mine had a credit card that she was not using anymore that was stolen. The only reason she noticed the theft is because one day she was looking to get a car loan. The financing company ran a credit report, and it ended up returning a credit score lower than what my friend expected. The report showed that one of the factors that lead to a negative score was listed as "AMOUNT OWED ON DELINQUENT ACCOUNTS". The detailed history showed that a thief used the stolen credit card for an expensive purchase a few months back. My friend never received the credit card bill because she had moved and never updated her billing address on her credit card account (so the bill presumably went to her old address). So she thought she had a zero balance on this credit card, but in fact a high balance was due for multiple months which lead her account to be tagged as delinquent. It took her about 3 months of phone calls and writing letters to get this sorted out, and get her credit history fixed up.

I have no way to prove it, but I swear this is a true story. I wish people like you would stop clamoring how amazing the consumer protection feature of credit cards are, because although they work well in some cases, there are stills tons of scenarios where financial theft causes majors hassles and annoyances that credit cards DON'T solve.

You don't even have to look very far for other fraud problems that credit cards don't solve. Heck, with most credit card issuers, if you happen to catch a fraudulent payment made more than 60 days ago, you typically don't have any recourse because it's too late to file a claim...

> If a virus steals my CC details and spends on them I get the money back in my account.

But the attacker still has your CC details and if you file a claim for a fraudulent charge, the attacker can place other ones, as many times as he wants. So you have to keep cancelling fraudulent charges all the time. After a point you get sick of it and cancel and replace your CC. But the virus will steal again the replacement credit card number, hereby making it impossible to use ANY credit card on this virus-infected computer. The attacker will in effect have permanent authorization to spend your credit card funds, until you remove the virus or until you stop using this virus-infected PC for internet purchases. So for the 2nd time: how will credit cards somehow solve magically this virus problem? They can't!

> Does that happen now with bitcoin that I'm not aware of or do you lose your money for good?

Bitcoin can completely solve this virus problem, with proper processes and wallets: have the private addresses stored on the hardware wallet (inaccessible by the virus), and verify the payment address by an out of band mechanism. For example if you suspect the PC where you were about to complete the purchase may be infected by a virus, use a smartphone or another PC to verify the payment address the merchant wants you to send the bitcoins to. If both show the same address, send the transaction from the hardware wallet. So the ECDSA-signed transaction exits the wallet, and the virus will have no chance to steal the bitcoins as it would involve modifying the transaction bytes and breaking the signature.

> What happens if we set up the transaction and I don't send you anything? Your funds are now trapped at no cost to me.

But you have no financial incentive to do this. History shows that malicious economic actors in the VAST MAJORITY of the cases act maliciously to gain something from it, not just for the hell of it. Therefore this two-party escrow system works well enough in almost all cases, except in the 0.001% of cases where a malicious actor acts maliciously just for the hell of it. And, as I said earlier, Bitcoin doesn't have to solve everything to be successful, it just has to satisfy the majority of use cases. Remember that our discussion about escrow systems started by talking about how to deal with untrusted merchants. That's exactly a case that would be solved by this two-party crypto escrow system. A malicous merchant doesn't set up an online shop with fake items, and go through all this effort just to lock bitcoins up in the ether. A malicious merchant wants to make financial gains, and this two-party crypto escrow prevents him from being profitable running such a scam.

PS: Merry christmas!