Tim May writes with regard to anonymous contract killers:
... And the risk of losing the digital cash can be made vanishingly small by use of anonymous escrow services, which act solely as holders of the digital cash....
Sandy Sandfort writes
I don't buy it. Anonymous digital assassins, murder escrows and all that work fine in an artificial, abstract, game-theory world. I doubt we'll see much--if any--of it in the Real World. Why? Because the market is too richly textured not to come up with its own cultural, ethical and digital fixes.
This true conclusion is based on a true assumption that Sandy does not explicitly make, indeed implicitly denies. That there is a strong correlation between one wrongful behavior - murder for hire, and other wrongful behavior - dishonoring promises. Murder for hire will work if there are honorable, well respected murder for hire escrow agencies with a long and well established reputation and murder for hire hitmen with a long and well established reputation. Neither seems likely, especially the second.