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In the early days of Bitcoin, much of the community’s focus was around payment and getting merchants to adopt cryptocurrencies. Although the technology and narratives have evolved, some projects continue to embrace that original vision of peer-to-peer business, where merchants and their customers interact directly, and if they so wish, anonymously.
We’re joined by Brian Hoffman and Washington Sanchez of OpenBazaar. Since we last interviewed Brian in 2015, the project has grown to become a mature decentralized marketplace where people come together to buy and sell products and services anonymously with crypto. Its polished interface and reputation system gives users a similar experience to that of using eBay, but without fees or the risk of censorship.
Topics covered in this episode:
Brian and Washington’s respective backgroundsThe origins of OpenBazaar as the Dark Market projectThe history and evolution of OpenBazaar since their last appearance on episode 67How OpenBazaar managed to survive all these years and how the vision has evolved over timeWho uses the platform and to what endsHow it compares to traditional dark markets like The Silk RoadOpenBazaar’s position on deplatforming and how it responds to pressure to censor contentHow OpenBazaar works under the hood as a collection of decentralized technologiesThe company’s business model and future plans Episode links:
OpenBazaar website Dark Market project on GitHub Episode 67 of Epicenter with Brian Hoffman Trust is Risk Brian Hoffman, Twitter Washington Sanchez, Twitter This episode was hosted by Sébastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal, and is availble on YouTube, SoundCloud, and our website.
