A very small community

Hello all, i now have been daily on Bisq, did a few trades, and have the feeling there are always the same guys hanging out, like 9-12, but not more. Please correct me if i am wrong.

We can’t prosper like this, it’s the same as with poker: you always have to introduce new people to the deck, otherwise we will starve to death and finally cannibalize ourselves.

Where are all the freedom lovers, launderers, evaders, avoiders, etc? come on, if every body of the 12 disciples brings 3 more to the deck things will start to take off.

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This is probably true. As a long-time Bitsquare/bisq user I find it unfortunate that the number of active users is still in the sub-hundred range.

The number one factor limiting the growth of bisq IMO is that most users that exchange cryptocurrencies on a regular basis don’t run wallets on their own devices. Using bisq with hosted wallets only is rather pointless, as you might as well do conversions on the exchange or through the app (e.g. Jaxx allows you to convert with ShapeShift)

If you assume that perhaps only a few percent of potential users run wallets locally (I am guessing LESS than 1 percent if you exclude spv/light/mobile wallets running on devices not supported by bisq), then this is the potential user base that bisq taps into.

A second factor limiting bisq’s growth is the sometimes very long exchange times. Even transferring funds into an exchange and wait for confirmations both ways is typically faster than the time it takes for your trading partner to complete the trade on bisq.

Obviously, the lack of active users means low liquidity and large spreads which further deters new users.

I agree that a degree of evangelism is crucial. In addition to that new, users also need to STAY and for that you can:

  1. help by providing liquidity, as is possible, to 1 or 2 markets
  2. follow up your trades in a timely manner to improve first-user experiences
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imo the limiting factor is the fact that a user needs to run the client 24/7. That is ok for a professional trader but not for an occasional one. It would help a lot if there would be a web interface for occasional traders.

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I think Bisq could be more attractive if he could have a payment method with Cash. It is very difficult to get something like this, there are some (incomplete) ideas here.

https://forum.bisq.io/t/request-cash-by-mail-in-usd-and-cad-markets/1866/20?u=erizo

Achieving a truly functional system could attract many users

Another idea to increase the volume would be to create an additional version of Bisq for use of exchanges without a FIAT gateway:

https://forum.bisq.io/t/so-few-users-on-bisq/2494/6?u=erizo

They are a little crazy ideas, but we have to leave the small circle. More ideas?

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The total fee (Miner * 3 + maker or taker + bank) is high per trade.
Coinbase have 0% maker fee.

I’m new to Bisq too, and so far I’m quite impressed by the app and the philosophy behind it. However the low number of offers is very surprising, especially in the BTC market (DOGE market is another story…), as Bisq is easy to use and could catch a significant share of LocalBitcoins market. By “significant”, I mean that 0.5 or 1% would be very good.

As @dworf and @erizo said, one or both of these two features could transform Bisq into a killer app:

  • cash-in-the-mail payment option
  • ability to close the app without suspending one’s offers

In my newbie’s view these are the main problems to fix, by far, even if Bisq is very impressive as of today.

Anyway I can’t understand why Bisq’s BTC market is so little used…

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The reasons mentioned above + a (current) security deposit of $125 to list a trade.

currently the crypto-to-crypto exchange is done very reliable by Shapeshift or Changelly. But alone the fiat-crypto exchange should be reason enough to use Bisq.

Maybe it would be benefit to have a cash-in-mail option. But as far as I understand it it would undermine the principle of no direct trader communication. Far more it would probably require a chat channel between traders.

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Communication may not be necessary, according to the option I have proposed, although it would be necessary to perfect the system, but it is certainly possible.

In fact Bisq should completely replace Localbitcoins: it is safer, more confidential and occupies its same ecological niche

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I like the high security deposit. It make me safe. Else will the maker (offer) “forget” the trade if the price jump up and the taker if the price dump.

Many of us in the Unobtanium community have high hopes for Bisq. UNO is a low issue, low inflation crypto that is hodled. Though the marketcap is $15M and we have good appreciation in 2017, UNO isn’t a good fit for exchanges that need volume & velocity. We have a long term community that has seen large quantities of UNO get stolen from exchanges over the past 4 years (Cryptsy, Mintpal, Coinex, etc). We see a good fit for UNO & Bisq.

The problems we see are what’s been mentioned here, and a few other things.
The cost of doing a transaction on Bisq with BTC as a base is high.
Idea: support base coins with lower transaction costs, such as LTC.

The amount of crypto we can exchange through Bisq is low.
Idea: remove restrictions on amounts that can be traded. This may be where Bisq is really shines… trading large amounts of crypto.

There is a burden of keeping computers online to complete a transaction.
Idea: instead of developing a mobile app, have Bisq to text me so I can remotely approve a transaction. Integration with Signal messenger/Telegram/WhatpsApp would add some encryption security to the message delivery/response. I wouldn’t have to shut off Bisq when I’m away for a time.

Very good idea. But the problem is that the instance of Bisq that will send the message will be that of the other part of the operation. If the other party has your phone would be violating the principle of anonymity between parts of Bisq.

I do not know if is possible to encrypt this number (or email address) so that the other party could not see it, so that Bisq would decrypt it and send the message. However a Hacker could obtain this data in several ways, since the application at the end obtains it.

I do not know if there is a technical solution to this.

Thanks all for the discussion and suggestions. I am on holiday and not much online, so I only give a quick summary feedback:

  • Main issue is that we don’t have sufficient resources (people who do real work) to implement all what we would like to
  • There are a few high priority tasks we are focused on which might not sound that hi-prio from a user perspective but are from a conceptual (decentralization, DAO) and security perspective. Full DAO verison, decentralized arbitration system and security improvements are those top priorities.
  • Many suggestions (no need to keep app running, support altcoin wallets,…) are very hard to implement, both conceptually and technical. When having enough dev resources we might work on that.
  • When comparing Bisq with other exchanges you should consider the privacy protection as well as the exchange model. We don’t compete with Coinbase or Bitfinex. Shapeshift and LocalBitcoins are our field but both have a much lower level of privacy protection (leak IP address,…).
  • Bisq is a young project and needs time. We are not a VC backed company and prefer organic and sustainable growth were we stay honest to our values.
  • Anyone is invited to help, but there is also effort to help people to help (like writing here about background info). With our limited resources we have not been very good in that area so far, but we will come up soon with improvements.

Stay tuned for updates in the next weeks!

One old school way to approach a notification would be to send an email from a client that is on my computer. Nobody would have the email address excepet me.

There are also desktop clients for whatsapp, signal and telegram that are end-to-end encrypted. Perhaps a notification from my bisq client could trigger an event to a local messaging client. Again, other party has no idea and is not involved.

If Bisq client could even just have an api that could make these events accessible, I could probably code my own solution.

Hi, FallingKnife.

I’m not sure I understand you. If you keep Bisq open and you are elsewhere, your instance of Bisq could send you an email without any problem.

But if you keep Bisq closed with an operation expecting confirmation of payment from the other party, the email must come from the other party, and then violate the confidentiality principle, or, as I have proposed, the email could be sent by the operation arbitrator (the referee’s Bisq instance)

https://forum.bisq.io/t/how-to-verify-payment-method-of-buyer-to-minimize-risk-of-fraud-and-chargeback-through-zelle-clearxchange/2696/3?u=erizo

I had also proposed it as 2FA system, but 2FA does not make much sense, since there is no previous record in Bisq.

The current version of bisq allows you to set LTC as your trade coin. Its in settings, and then you restart the app. However, every time I’ve done that I haven’t seen any offers, so it seems like people either (1) don’t know that they have that option now, or (2) prefer the higher security that the bitcoin network provides for their trades.

I’d been interested in trading against litecoin if others are. I would typically buy LTC with USD, and then sell the LTC for EUR, but I don’t take offers that are over 1000 USD in value. (I use bisq to save on remittances between my paycheck (in USD) and my bank account (in EUR). And usually I look for buy and sell prices so that I’ve covered my fees or sometimes manage to set aside a bit of the cryptocurrency for long-term savings.

Did not know that option to set LTC, will try it out this week.

Do you think that there is anyway to have a web version of bisq? Or better yet, at least a .onion site that allows people to use the exchange without downloading anything? Maybe this is the problem with not a lot of users, people just are lazy.

Lots of great suggestions, but I gotta say, I admire Bisq for always putting decentralized first. Im sure many features could be & could have been added very easily - but would compromise its decentralized approach. I think the demand for Bisq / amount of ‘traders’ will increase as the entire crypto space learns more about the technology and its true function. Current Bisq users/traders are just early to the boat. I agree word still needs to be spread as op mentioned. Though the tech and ideology upon which it is built is deeply correct…in that we can take comfort. -AJT

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