Hey guys, I’m thinking about the following idea and wanted to get some opinions of yours.
Why not extend Bisq to be an alternative to BitPay that works decentralized and is not managed by one big corporation.
It would work something like this:
Merchant accepts bitcoin payments
All bitcoin payments are gathered
At regular intervals (hourly, daily, etc.), the payments are automatically put up for sale at the P2P exchange in chunks
People interested to buy bitcoin send fiat to merchant via bank transfer
Software checks for incoming payments on bank account and releases bitcoin to buyer
Of course there are lots of problems here, but I think that most of them could be solved and the end result would be a wonderful way to swap bitcoin for fiat and to accept bitcoin payments for merchants without relying on something like BitPay.
Bisq would need an API that you can attach to merchants cashier system, and it would need a connection to the bank account, so that the seller and buyer don’t need to do manual SEPA transfers, but only need to confirm each transaction with a PIN/TAN/mTAN/etc. This would prevent most of the mistakes users make when doing a transaction.
Of course there is the risk of falling or rising exchange rates, fraudsters, reversed SEPA transactions, etc. Bisq could be enhanced in a way that lets ordinary people “buy” these risks so they would get a fee that buyer/seller would have to pay if all goes well.
This sounds nice, but how could open source software automatically check such bank account information? I would think this is the biggest barrier to entry. If banks were to open up such APIs there would be a huge amount of innovation possible.
1-) The merchant is obliged to request identification to the users of Bisq, identification that will end in a centralized database.
2-) The SEPA system is slow, it takes up to 24 hours and can cause losses to the merchant as a result of the fluctuation of prices and possible delay in taking the offer
Blockquote1-) The merchant is obliged to request identification to the users of Bisq, identification that will end in a centralized database.
Obliged by whom? Regardless, any user of Bisq can create a database of their trades & counterparties. How is this different from any other use of Bisq?
Blockquote2-) The SEPA system is slow, it takes up to 24 hours and can cause losses to the merchant as a result of the fluctuation of prices and possible delay in taking the offer
This is also true for anyone else using Bisq. The whole point of the OP’s idea is to keep trades going very regularly and at similar amounts so as to smooth out the volatility.
Yes, but a large volume trader could easily get hold of the majority of Bisq users. It may not matter much, in practice, but it sounds disturbing. More serious is the second problem. if Bitpay allow a merchant to receive payments in btc and get the exact amount in fiat why would he use a fluctuating price service?