cbuy is a peer-to-peer marketplace for physical goods where the aim is that protection is the floor and settlement is a choice. Sensitive data is encrypted, new sellers verify their listings, and disputes are reviewed by an admin. On-chain escrow — settled in BTC, LTC, ETH, Base, or SOL — is built but not switched on yet; once it is live, buyers will be able to turn it on for orders paid in those coins. Today buyers pay sellers directly.
Peer-to-peer resale runs on trust. A buyer pays a stranger for goods they can't yet hold, and when it goes wrong there is rarely anyone to turn to. Crypto widens that gap: payments can't be reversed, so a bad trade has no undo.
Earlier crypto marketplaces tried to close it. OpenBazaar, the clearest example, offered moderator-based escrow on a peer-to-peer network — and that network shut down. Meanwhile the rails matured underneath everyone: stablecoins moved about $33T in total transfer volume in 2025 (all transfers, not commerce), up 72% year over year, and the GENIUS Act gave U.S. issuers real regulatory footing.
The opening: a marketplace that is genuinely crypto-native and pairs those rails with protection a buyer can check on-chain. That's what cbuy is building.
cbuy is a wholesome peer-to-peer marketplace for real things — bought, sold, or bartered. What separates it from both fiat incumbents and earlier crypto marketplaces is the structure: a protection floor with no separate price tag, and an optional settlement layer the buyer controls once it is live.
Payment goes straight from buyer to seller — fast and frictionless for trades the buyer is confident in. There is no recovery of funds if a trade goes wrong, and while escrow is off an admin's dispute ruling changes the order's status but moves no money. Encryption, new-seller verification, and dispute review still run underneath. The flat fee is not added to the amount the buyer sends; it is recorded but not yet collected on direct payments.
Funds enter a single-use, per-order escrow address. The seller isn't paid until the buyer releases the funds or a dispute is ruled on. A dispute freezes the funds. An admin runs an AI-assisted review of the order evidence and executes the ruling when its confidence is high. The same flat fee policy applies.
Once escrow is live, the buyer chooses — at checkout, on every order paid in a supported coin. A seller can't opt a buyer out of protection. That single design decision is meant to keep the marketplace's median experience trustworthy.
The differentiator isn't any single feature — it's the trust stack taken together: item verification, aggregated price data, on-chain payments (escrow to follow), and encryption as a default. Fiat incumbents don't offer crypto-native settlement; a crypto competitor would have to build the verification layer and the pricing stack itself.
The fee policy is a fixed brand promise, not a pricing lever: one flat rate on every order except XMR, split 50/50 between buyer and seller by policy. On direct payments it is not added to the amount the buyer sends. It is recorded on each order but not yet collected on direct payments; collecting it on direct payments is planned. Against incumbents charging 13.6–20% of a sale, a sub-5% rate is both a growth wedge and a trust signal.
Revenue ideas (none of them products today, none of them gating safety): swag via culturebyuniversalyou.com, API licensing of the settlement and verification layer, and optional premium seller tooling. The through-line: monetize convenience and reach, never protection.
cbuy sits at the intersection of trust-starved peer-to-peer resale and a fast-maturing crypto settlement layer — each of which is de-risking the other for the first time.
Why now: the GENIUS Act (signed 2025-07-18) set a federal framework for U.S. payment stablecoins; in our view, spending power is shifting toward buyers who already use crypto, and resale is becoming a more common way to shop; and OpenBazaar's shutdown left the category without an established operator. The rails, the buyers, and the opening arrived at the same time.
| Platform | Crypto-native | On-chain escrow | Take rate | Item verification |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| eBay | no | no | 13.6% + $0.30–0.40 per order | some categories |
| Poshmark | no | no | 20% over $15 (flat $2.95 below) | select $500+ items |
| Craigslist | no | no | — | no |
| OpenBazaar | was | yes, with a moderator | 0% (moderators set their own fee) | no |
| cbuy | yes | built, not live yet | 4.2069%* | new sellers |
*Flat on every order except XMR; the policy splits it 50/50 between buyer and seller. Recorded on each order, not yet collected on direct payments. Competitor figures are published U.S. information, and the table covers only the platforms compared here; it is not a survey of every marketplace. eBay's final value fee for most categories is 13.6% up to $7,500 per item (2.35% above), plus $0.30 per order of $10 or less and $0.40 above (ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/selling-fees); its Authenticity Guarantee covers some categories (ebay.com/authenticity-guarantee). Poshmark charges 20% on sales over $15 and a flat $2.95 below that (poshmark.com/fee_policy); Posh Authenticate covers select $500+ items (poshmark.com/posh_authenticate).
Incumbents own trust but charge 13.6–20% and can't offer crypto-native, verifiable settlement. The earlier crypto marketplace, OpenBazaar, offered moderator-based escrow on a peer-to-peer network that has since shut down. cbuy is aiming at an open quadrant: crypto-native settlement with escrow-backed protection once it is live, at a fraction of incumbent fees.
The platform is live on Vercel, with sensitive-data encryption, new-seller verification, the pricechecker, barter, and Shippo in production. Escrow is built but not live; its custody model is still to be settled.