Is there a huge unmet demand for 100% private 2-party transactions?
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Yes.
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Privacy centric markets e.g. Particl (PART) are useful for:
Privacy enthusiasts.
People who wish to live independent of fiat.
People who live in localities where crypto is not taxed or recognized as a legal unit of exchange (potentially legally bypassing local tax laws).
Grey market purchases (nootropics, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, alcohol, luxury goods, knockoff's (including unbranded device clones or items which are essentially legal but copyright may be an issue).
Embarrassing legal goods purchases or purchases you do not want appearing on a credit card statement (sex toys is an obvious one; I'm sure there are more)
People in countries with unstable economies (Venezuela, Zimbabwe) where local currency hyperinflation means purchasing various goods in native currency is pointless/expensive/cumbersome but using alternative non-private currencies to transact (e.g. Bitcoin) may result in prosecution.
Legal transaction of goods internationally but the need to keep location of buyer/sender publicly hidden due to local/regional restrictions or requirements for other bureaucracy if purchased in fiat
Extremely sensitive research and development or manufacturing projects especially product manufacture where for whatever reason the design, parts and manufacturing process must be completely unknown or obscurable.
Purist use as a store of value, anonymous secure, large OTC cryptocurrency transactions and wholeseller/sensitive R&D or confidential supply chain transactions is a massive legal use case area.
Whole seller/boutique manufacturing and R&D is probably the biggest legal use case especially where patent's or highly sensitive data is concerned and for whole sellers and large scale manufacturers who wish to keep their trade secrets intact.
Providing a safe, secure competitive edge when negociating with multiple contractors. MAD Escrow service serves as a nice deposit feature for lock on of contracts for large scale distributors where trust or quality concerns may be an issue.
Sometimes the convenience associated with trading on a fully anonymous platform (where the client node locations are anon and the buyer/seller/amount are publicly anon) in terms of keeping paperwork and records but still trading goods for a fungible currency) outweighs the risks. Anyone who has ever had to do company accounts will understand what a pain in the ass these are to keep and produce.
Any transaction where only the buyer and seller can know about the nature of the transaction. This relates back to R&D, sensitive information exchange but is facilitated by PARTICL having a trustless, automated non-human escrow (the MAD mutually assured destruction escrow) to ensure both buyer and seller are complicit in ensuring delivery of payment and delivery of goods in acceptable condition.
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I've discussed this with a friend who tinkers in making all kinds of legal useful gadgets (we're talking voice activated Iron Man suits with built in LCD screens, Thor Hammers and tonnes of custom cosplay stuff in amazing quality); he'd be reluctant to sell these on eBay due to litigation risks but he'd make a killing selling these anonymously online; these are definitely things people want and would enjoy. There's a tonne of stuff on alibaba which would be ideal to sell on the Particl network; true anonymity creates an incentive to justify many of the negatives I've outlined.
The stuff he's building would actually be legal to sell in many jurisdictions where copyright laws are more relaxed but centralised services would never tolerate due to their need to appease international corporate interests regardless of laws. Decentralized private commerce would allow him to serve those jurisdictions with confidence.
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I've also had the pleasure of discussing distributed ledger technologies with an analyst at BNY Mellon who highlighted his opinion that the two big things large investment banks look for in blockchain technology are scalability and privacy. These are banks whose transaction volumes can be in the billions of USD per trade. Discretion for their clients and representatives is paramount and freely publicly viewable records of transactions on a block chain represent a potential disadvantage to adoption. Privacy is paramount and solutions which preserve it protect security.
It is unfortunate that in recent times a need for privacy has been confused or maligned in popular culture with the desire to commit illegal activity. In day to day practice, the need for privacy of data transmission and transaction settlement manifests in the designs of all major institutions be it medical records in healthcare, government and corporate memos and communications or even transmission of social media and personal communications. Privacy is fundamentally associated with security and by extension safety.
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With that in mind, if you started this questioning the value and scope for privacy markets, I hope it is more apparent that the market and volume for true privacy centric, trustless listings, transactions, communications, escrow and marketplace settlement is probably much larger than you realized.
By: Joske
