Focus of Bisq

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#1

Recently I’ve been thinking of what should be the focus of the project, and while i’m a big crypto/fiat trader, experience has taught me that is a difficult path to follow.

I came across several altcoin projects/exchanges that claim they want to become decentralized (binance.com being the most prominent i believe).
It seems to me Bisq is in prime position to become the first largely used decentralized altcoin trading platform and that should be our focus. What do you think?

If you agree, what is preventing us from reaching the masses in that market? Are fees/deposits a problem here? I’m not experienced in altcoin trading so I never checked…
Is it hard for users to setup their own altcoin wallets? maybe…

Cheers

#2

I think that the biggest problem of Bisq can be the uncertainty generated by the user’s situation of not knowing who to trade with, and if I can get in trouble if I send or receive money from a bank account of a delinquent. Now it is not a real problem, because we are very few, but could become so if the volume goes up a lot. Perhaps a merchant valuation system could help, that would attract anonymous sellers which would have their store here, as in Localbitcoins. I can not think of any good reason why Bisq can not phagocyte 100% of Localbitcoins’ trade.
Some non-banked means of payment may also help.

Where Bisq can develop his potential is in exchanging BTCs or ALTs for FIAT. In the BTC / ALTS exchange I think that the Bitshares DEX concept is more advanced, since it does not need to make the change between Wallets, with the corresponding fees, but the trading is done between smartcoins that have the guaranteed price with their real counterparts through the guarantee of margin operations left by speculators.

The advantage of Bisq in this case is the presence of a much larger number of ALTS and, above all, the change by FIAT.

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#3

Altcoin trading is something Bisq could really make big advancements and we should definitely explore more ways on how to improve it.

I also agree that fiat/crypto trading is hard, but I think that this is exactly what makes Bisq great. This right here is the way to trade fiat with crypto in a decentralized manner, altcoins could be traded in many other ways and still be decentralized. Altcoins don’t really need human arbitrators, they could be programed in a smart contract or something, they are not bound by non-digital world.

I think that this is why Bisq should exist in the first place, because fait/crypto trades are hard and we need Bisq for privacy and security of such trades.

#4

Yes the Fiat side is the reason why the project was created. The Altcoin side was added later because it was relatively easy. That does not mean we should ignore the Altcoin side but I also think that pure crypto trade can be solved in a fully automated and trustless way. We plan to go there as well with APIs making the trade automated (look up blockexplorer and confirm altcoin tx) or even Atomic Swaps. But the practice of Atomic Swaps is not that trivial as it sounds from the theory. I dived into that topic for a few weeks in the early days of Bisq. SegWit solves the malleability issue but not the resource and engineering effort issue (run Bisq with x different Altcoins integrated…). So I am not sure if a pure P2P model like Bisq will be the best way to make Atomic Swaps a reality.

Beside that most trades are in USD and EUR, so that is our main market.

For the Fiat side: A hi-prio improvement I will be working on soon will be the security improvement regarding new fiat traders (see https://forum.bisq.io/t/new-requirement-for-payment-accounts-with-charge-back-risk/2376/65).

#5

One of the biggest problems to me is that you have no way of screening the person who you trade with. For example, a guy doesn’t pay in time and the trade goes into arbitration. Days later it is settled and then the same guy clicks on a trade with me again. That is one problem.

Another problem is that some of the trading partners I have seen have strange names or handles. What if down the road I get a visit from the FBI wanting to know why I am getting money transferred into my bank account from a known terrorist group.

I think there needs to be a way to (1) accept or reject a trading partner based on their history and (2) have some details about a partner available.

#6

You can ban onion addresses if you dont want to trade with the peer. But due to the nature of Bisq they can create a new account/instance and trade with you again. Bisq is an alternative/option to centralised exchange, not sure how you expect peers to be screened?

If a peer is using a strange names or handle, you should not be continuing with the trade and open a dispute. It is mentioned in the pop up dialogue about this.

Treroorr groups? Doubt it, would be easier for them to sell via localbitcoins (localmonero.co would make more sense). More trade activity, higher limits(bisq is low for this reason), etc etc. You also have plausible deniability in a way, you are using bisq platform and have no idea about the other peer before hand.

You do have the option to make a physical cash deposit to the persons bank so that there is no link to you, but its not that common/easy on bisq. Some work is needed to make it as easy as localbitcoins/localmonero.co

A rating type system has been discussed before, im not sure the status of it. Probably not that high on the priority list.
Personally i dont mind the slowness of the fiat & crypto trades, im not a trader. Remember that the bitcoin money is well protected.
It would be useful as part of a future rating system, to rate the speed of a trading peer.
Can be calculated by how long one peer is waiting for the other peer, and it averages out over the peers trades. People can then decide if they wish to start a trade.

#7

We need to add the following information for each seller:
Date of account creation, time of delay in starting the deposit of payment by the seller

#8

i think you can see why your point on terrorism financing doesn’t hold up if bisq grows.
There’s a whole slew of trouble when you have no KYC on the platform. But i’m not going to discuss this again.