Selecting Base Currency

Development
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For now, it’s not a huge problem or anything to restart Bisq whenever changing the base currency (BTC, LTC, DASH). Especially since offers dealing in BTC are by far the most common.

In the future, however; and especially as support for additional crypto becomes available, would it be possible to switch back and forth between “Base Currencies” without restarting? This may not be feasible due to technical reasons beyond my understanding.

I remember reading that for some reason it wasn’t possible to show all offers of different crypto at the same time (I forget why, perhaps something to do with the anonymity/TOR aspect?). However, if we could more easily switch between currencies, perhaps we could garner more interest in the alt coins as well as Bisq itself.

I just want to buy LTC without having to buy BTC first… lol. And don’t get me started on the exchange which shall not be named :face_vomiting: Coinbase … :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

Thanks again for the insight as always, I know it’s annoying when newbies come on here but there’s still so much I’m trying to figure out. I just really believe in the philosophy behind decentralization and want to do my part to usher in a better future.

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I am sure it is possible even to show offers from different base currencies, it just might be very difficult to develop as it might mean rewriting a lot of code.

Thank you for your input, we like to hear everyone’s opinion here :slight_smile:

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One other thing I’ve noticed, and maybe I’m just doing something wrong or maybe there aren’t enough people making offers in LTC – however, even when I go to make an offer to buy LTC, the app tells me to select an arbitrator, but none are available. Am I overlooking something? Will there be more arbitrators as adoption increases?

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No, that seems like a bug, since Litecoin is still supported as base currency as far as I know.

It could be that there is a problem with Bisq’s Litecoin P2P network. As it seems my Bisq client can’t connect to seed nodes when I start it with Litecoin as base currency.

Maybe @ManfredKarrer has some info about this.

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5

There is no activity on the other base currencies, so it might be that we remove them at all and just keep them as backup in case BTC tx fees explode some day…

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Ah, bummer! I’m sorry to hear you’re considering removing LTC and DASH as base payment methods.

If I may speak my mind regarding this matter — Bitcoin has thus far maintained its position of primacy among cryptocurrencies due to momentum and the head start effect. On a near-daily-basis, the challenges posed to BTC by the abundance of new cryptocurrencies, specialized blockchains, and industry competitors have arisen at an exponential rate in recent years.

Bitcoin will long remain venerated as the “OG” cryptocurrency. The popularization of ideas like Blockchain, Decentralization, and Mesh-network communication, for example, owe their momentum to ideas like Bitcoin which has infiltrated the imaginations of the public. However, to be blunt, Bitcoin is a digital dinosaur, on its way out of the crypto arena.

With such an abundance of challengers gaining steam, they will almost certainly overtake BTC in the not-so-distant future. BTC is being squeezed increasingly tightly on all sides; be it via the increased transaction speed and cost of those like LTC, or the employment of smart contracts and DAOs as with ETH, not to mention the abundance of crypto tokens being built around aspirations so far-ranging that they stretch from potentially-world changing, to potentially-futile.

When we “zoom out” and think of the larger crypto market as a whole, as something that will most-likely outlive us all, it becomes quite clear that a long term approach will ultimately gain the most ground, and is indeed necessary for the eventual and inevitable triumph of true humanity against the attempts of hierarchical establishment.

As to the second aspect; it really surprises me that there would be absolutely no offers listed under LTC and DASH, because when I first started using Bisq there were indeed listings under those base payment methods (although it was always a very minimal amount; but back then even the BTC base was sparse.) Now the BTC section has noticeably grown, which is great; but it still makes no sense that the other 2 currencies would suddenly turn into ghost towns.

I was hoping for MORE options for coin support, not less; especially after trying to deal with the unending frustrations of the big name/mainstream exchanges.

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Some of us don’t think that Bitcoin is on its way out. I for one think that everything else is on its way out.
From a pragmatic point it has been seen that the altcoins are not used on Bisq as a base currency. Neither is there much trading of altcoins (except Monero) using Bitcoin as base currency either. Supporting other base currencies takes effort and given the scarcity of development resources on Bisq it makes perfect sense to simply skip them until the flippening happens.

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fair enough, we’re all entitled to our prognostications. but it should go without saying that more abundant support increases client base.

of course i’m not part of the team so i’m not privy to many details, this is purely from a consumer standpoint.

i still love bisq and use it regularly, i would just love even more to see its continued growth, evolution, and social impact.

thanks all

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The bootstrapping of markets is a huge challenge and we still fight to get the offerbooks filled for the other Fiat markets beside EUR (which has bootstrapped successfully). Beside that, it takes more effort as one might think (e.g. running and monitoring the seed nodes, arbitrator, testing at releases,…).
The main reason for adding alternative base currencies was when BTC tx fee have been skyrocking but so far in the past that was only for relatively short periods and I am not so concerned about that problem anymore for the foreseeable future. So I see those other base currencies as a backup plan for worst case scenarios that BTC tx fee stay very high over several months. Another point to mention is that we got basically zero support from the LTC and DOGE communities (DOGE was absolute zero). DASH was certainly more support but trade activity was also far below the min. threshold for a liquid market.

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Fair enough, makes sense. Thanks for the info.

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Since it’s my first time taking active part in the forum and I’m replying to a Bisq founder, let me express my respect to all the people contributing to this great project.

I noticed that base currency selection was removed in Bisq 0.7.0 and I fully understand the reasoning for this. Have you considered “outsourcing” some or all of the effort needed to keep other base currencies?

There are currencies with built-in governance like Dash or PIVX, that accept and vote on funding proposals. Bisq might be able to “hire” people to keep different base currencies active in Bisq and the funds would come directly from the currency being supported.

For example, if there is demand for DASH as base currency in Bisq, a proposal could be made to ask for funding directly from the Dash community. I think this could work out well for everyone (Bisq, Dash and Bisq users). What do you think?

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Since Bisq is an open source project, anyone can create a fork with a different base curreny without any permission if they got the resources. I don’t see why we would have anything against it if all is done fairly.

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If there would have been at least a min. trade activity we would have left them. No payment required. But as it was basically zero the last months we removed it as it seems there is no demand. Outsourcing is not that easy in regards to arbitration. As long the fully decentralized arbitration system is not in place is it s high-trust role which we could not outsource. If there would be a scam it would fall back to our brand.

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