Increase reputation score requirements for users selling $25 dollars of bitcoin or less on Bisq Easy to 1,000

[solomon1923]

Currently bitcoin sellers can take make or take offers to sell bitcoin of $25 or less with no reputation. This has resulted in approximately half a dozen or so trades a month ending with buyers sending $25 or equivalent only to end up being scammed by the seller not sending the bitcoin. All these scammers are trading with no reputation, so effectively they have nothing to lose by engaging in the scam.

I propose to increase the minimum required reputation to 1,000 for users that want to sell any amount of bitcoin. Users with less than 1,000 reputation should not be allowed to make or take offers to sell bitcoin on Bisq Easy. 1,000 reputation can be achieved fairly easily with an aged fiat account on Bisq 1 of less than 1 year old, or, a small BSQ burn.

This would improve the experience for bitcoin buyers on Bisq by reducing the number of traders that end up being scammed.

The number of experienced sellers (what Bisq Easy wants seller's to be) affected by this proposal would be negligible. Experienced Bisq sellers will have an aged account or be easily able to burn the required BSQ.

This suggestion is also to cover larger trade amounts than $25. Recently a user lost $150 by sending fiat payment to a seller with no reputation. The seller just took the payment and neve logged back on the Bisq 2. While it is possible to say that the buyer should not have ignored the warning the point is Bisq Easy should be for new bitcoiners with little to no experience. The buyer that lost money responded that they were a bit naive and assumed Bisq Easy was a safe platform to use.

So in summary, no seller should be able to make or take any offer if they have a reputation of 1,000 or less. if they try and do so they should get a message telling them they need 1,000 reputation to make or take an offer to sell and be directed to the reputation wiki.

[suddenwhipvapor]

I agree on the general principle, and my idea would be to rather apply a one-size-fits-all (score/200) maximum trade amount to every seller.

[solomon1923]

I agree on the general principle, and my idea would be to rather apply a one-size-fits-all (score/200) maximum trade amount to every seller.

I would be happy with that as a solution also.

[suddenwhipvapor]

I understand development resources went into the reputation-free tree, which could be saved by just reducing the 25$ amount to something less, say 10$, yet on that kind of amount the fees would eat a considerable part of the sats received by the buyers, and it still wouldn't prevent desperate scammers that are standing to get a few bucks for free.

[HenrikJannsen]

Thanks for the suggestion and info about the scams.

I think we have to consider the experiment with allowing reputation-free trades as failed even for relatively small amounts. The assumption that buyer's act with enough caution for sellers without any reputation turned out that it is not matched by reality.

Reducing the free amount to 10 USD or the like, would maybe only reduce the number of scams but also probably reduce the level of caution by buyers, thus I think it will not help that much, and even if the small amounts might not cause that much harm, the general harm on the reputation of the security of Bisq Easy needs to be considered as well.

Changing the min required score to 1000 should help but it adds another complexity and I think a similar and more flexible approach is to just keep the formula score/200 = allowed amount for all amounts.

So with the min amount of 6 USD that would be a score of 1200 which would be achieved with burning 12 BSQ (about 30 USD) or about 300 account age or 120 days of signed account age.

This would also make implementation easier as it removes one exceptional rule and stick with the general rule for all amounts.

[HenrikJannsen]

@axpoems What do you think? Would you have time to implement that if there is agreement on that?

[axpoems]

I agree with applying the score/200 rule for all amounts.

Moreover, in the first comment, @solomon1923 proposes enforcing this, rather that using the warning-based communication style that we have now.

Users with less than 1,000 reputation should not be allowed to make or take offers to sell bitcoin on Bisq Easy.

Given what we've seen so far, I think that makes sense and should always apply. It shouldn't be possible to create or take offers that do not meet this requirement (score/200 = allowed amount for the seller) especially when, as discussed, the bar to achieve a minimum of reputation is very low.
The most important reason for this enforcement is to preserve outside trust in Bisq Easy.

I will work on this. Any additional inputs/objections on this last part?

[solomon1923]

At least another 5 users in the last 48 hours have scammed users for 25 Euro and under amounts. I suspect it is the same seller creating multiple accounts. Some of the accounts share the same name and bank details. All of the scammers in the last 48 hours have German IBAN numbers.

The number of scams is likely to be at least double this as some with have gone to the other mediator and some buyers that sent money only not to receive the bitcoin will have not reported the scammers.