> This doesn't prevent scams in the other direction

Which is probably the majority of the actual scam cases. Sellers scamming buyers.

So I don't think this is a good case at all.

I could not disagree more, as someone who operates a niche ecommerce business. The longer I exist, the more reputation I have. But every single customer I sell to is a new risk, and the credit card companies fob all the risk onto me. Crypto payments (which I accept as an option) are great because I have no risk of a charge back a month after I shipped. The risk of being scammed is so much more about anonymous customers than it is of businesses, who need repeat business and word of mouth.

The problem is that the risk is borne by honest business owners and honest customers. Scammers exist in both directions and the scammers typically bear none of the risk.

Regarding businesses specially, someone operating one or more scam online retailers is actively trying to suppress word of mouth. They also don't care about repeat business because their profit margin is so high. Their process may even specifically include periodically cutting ties with their previous name, websites, vendor accounts etc when victim ill becomes unmanageable.

If you choose to purchase from sketchy merchants, you have all sorts of risks regardless of what payment infrastructure is used.

As a business that wants to last a long time and attract customers, reputation is everything. People buy from large, established companies for this reason. Crypto payments help all sellers by eliminating an enormous problem of scam buyers using stolen credit cards.

I don't know if that's true at all, and I suspect it's false. While both types are not uncommon, I think sellers being scammed is the more common scenario.

Even if it wasn't, though, how can you say this isn't useful? Even if 99% of scams were from sellers, the fact that this trivially and provably solves scamming from buyers is amazing. Saying this isn't a good case because cryptocurrency doesn't miraculously universally eliminate the possibility of any fraud from any party in any scenario is really setting a very high bar.

And with things like Ethereum smart contracts, you theoretically can prevent fraud from all parties in some cases, and defer all risk to the implementation of the contract. Or do you consider this a bad case as well, because a contract could possibly be flawed and "the majority of fraud isn't actually due to human deceit"?

Well, it is a good case for an honest merchant, that is dealing with people trying to scam them.

So it solves this by superseding consumer protections? What does blockchain add here over direct payments, or cash, or even some payment broker with more seller friendly terms? I can't help but assume that regulation will reinforce these protections.

Essentially, crypto's major benefit is skirting regulation because its new and that can't last forever.

How do you propose a direct payment or cash without giving a buyer your bank account number or address, which you may not necessarily want to do for privacy and security reasons? And mailing cash isn't very efficient or practical.

Payment brokers are always going to be a point of failure. But also, it's about pragmatism: can you name an existing payment broker that fits the criteria? If not, what option are they left with other than to use cryptography as their broker?

But, yes, it's often about avoiding certain kinds of regulation. Regulation isn't inherently good or bad. Some regulation is good in some contexts and some is bad in some contexts. Cryptocurrency lets you enforce your own absolute regulation for cases where legal regulation isn't able to easily help you (like in this scenario).

I remember when eBay operated on people sending checks to each other. Good times.