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Comment by jamisteven | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why anyone would invest in this which is strange because if Andreeson is investing you would think it would be obvious as to why, but this one I just dont get. After all the drama with SR, sure you can piggy back off of that hype and user base, but your biggest problem is going to be getting away from the stigma of being an underground marketplace. I would be staying as far away from the "police-free" marketing terms as possible, seems like startup suicide if you ask me. Maybe im not seeing something though, as the founders and investors are clearly smart people.

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We are absolutely not using terms like "police-free". Others have labelled us as such. We view this as an agnostic protocol that people can use to trade goods and services online with each other, with no fees, and it's coupled with a marketplace that no one centrally controls. It's not Silk Road 3.0, it's ecommerce 2.0.

For more information on what investors are thinking, reach USV's Brad Burnham discussing why they invested in us:

https://www.usv.com/post/5579998c8711930003901f5f/introducin...

Agnostic is a great term to use here. "We are not police free we are just agnostic towards them while building a system that will almost completely undermine all of their techniques for law enforcement."

But I'm glad to see you guys have at least thought through how you're going to avoid the SR stigma while pretty much building SR on steroids. And I'm not being sarcastic, I actually do think that's important and look forward to seeing this gig succeed.

Call it however you like, agnostic protocal etc, the fact still remains your going to have ALOT of work to do differentiating yourself from SR and the stigma that comes along with using bitcoin as a currency, especially when media are already using phrases like "police-free" and "sell ANYTHING"...

Maybe brainstorm around:

-"We are like Amazon (or maybe craigslist?), but for bitcoins!" -Require social login. If you truly arent an anonymous marketplace using an untrackable cryptocurrency as method of payment, then requiring social login will be a good way to show the government that you mean it.

Point im making, OpenBazaar definitely has its work cut out for them. Exciting nonetheless, keep us posted!!!

-Jami Frazier

The phrases "decentralized" and "require social login" are mutually exclusive.

Not necessarily. The network itself can be decentralized and anonymous, but the company could use identity services as a monetization technique on top of (as a subset of transactions on) the network.

Hash pipe in the documentation is nod-and-a-wink.

You should really watch this talk by Ben Horowitz [1]. The takeaway here is that they look to explore "good ideas that look like bad ideas," and he goes on to talk about Air BnB and some other companies.

I bet this is one of those types of investments -- it is actually a good idea but looks like a bad idea right now (by conventional wisdom).

[1] - http://a16z.com/2014/11/12/how-can-large-companies-innovate/

If openbazaar succeeds in creating a robust decentralised platform for trade, the portion of black market transactions done in bitcoin will grow significantly, and anyone holding bitcoin (eg. a16z) will get big returns.

The black market is already well established on Tor, so I'm not sure if OpenBazaar will result in growth in such markets, or just a shifting of some existing business from Tor to OpenBazaar.

It is well established, but plagued by issues relating to centralisation - exit scammers, law enforcement infiltrating markets, people stealing bitcoins. Each time this happens, growth is damped as buyers and sellers shuffle over to new operators. OpenBazaar would revolutionize this.

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