If e.g. Shapeshift can walk away with my money when they feel like it, that's not decentralized. If the law can kill off Shapeshift for shady transactions and not following sufficient KYC protocol, that's not decentralized.

I'm not sure how to solve the problem of Bitcoin transaction fees. Much, much smarter people than me haven't. But I'm also not promoting a Bitcoin service with "no transaction fees".

And I'm not sure I agree that this is an improvement over centralized markets. With those I can buy escrow and some amount of assurance I'm not being swindled by the platform itself, which the platform is on the hook for legally.

OK, using ShapeShift isn't decentralised, but you don't have to use ShapeShift unless you want to pay in a currency that the merchat doesn't want to accept. (And even then, you don't have to use ShapeShift. You can use any currency exchange).

You can buy escrow on OpenBazaar too.

You can't really be swindled by the OpenBazaar platform. It's just open source code that you run yourself. There's no way for anybody to jump in and change the rules from underneath you.

> Scammers try to take advantage of both buyers and sellers online, but OpenBazaar uses a unique feature of Bitcoin that helps prevent fraud: Multisignature escrow. In this unique e-commerce marketplace buyers and sellers agree to a mutually trusted third party before they start a trade, and then the buyer sends his bitcoin to an escrow account. Those Bitcoin can only be released when two out of the three parties agree where it will be sent. Normally the buyer and seller are the two parties in agreement, but if there is a dispute the third party will come settle the dispute. These third parties offering dispute resolution are selected on an open marketplace.

From the Features page of the linked website that this is the comment section for.