Topic: Any work being done on decentralized fiat exchanges? - page 2. (Read 497 times)

Which central bank?

The way Waves DEX handles fiat trades is through a central bank.

The problem with truly decentralised/market-based stable coins (assuming they're definitely possible) is acceptance: the only way to prove the peg is to have stableUSD trade directly against USD. That means a centralised exchange has to pick up stableUSD for trading, to prove the peg. This might be considered not to be in their interests, and consequently never happen. Although maybe it might work if a p2p stablecoin like Tether was used as a proxy to demonstrate the peg fidelity of a truly decentralised stablecoin... it's a tough challenge

Dare I say it, but the often derided central banking news pieces claiming an interest to create "national cryptocurrency" might be the genuine solution, depending on which central bank actually does this (and under what conditions). I'm not sure if it's more likely that Bitcoin simply gains more share of commercial transactions first instead, although that might be the catalyst that inspires a central bank to make the breakthrough.

Decentralized crypto exchanges are already a thing but unfortunately, they lack users. People still prefer to use big, centralized exchanges such as Bittrex and Binance because they support a huge variety of altcoins. Making decentralized fiat exchange is literally impossible. Even regular exchanges have problems with their bank accounts being frozen for no reason in some countries. Using Bitcoin ATMs and localbitcoins seems to be the best idea. Keep in mind that even localbitcoins started to force some people to pass through KYC verification.

The developers of Lightning Network are working on Atomic Swaps which will allow users to trade cryptocurrencies without any third party. It won't be possible for fiat, though.

Same problem here, I have solved it with a friend that run an import business.

Looked a bit more into hodlhodl and it is a centralized site like localbitcoins but they use multi-sig wallets instead of holding your coins which is a decent improvement.

My main reason behind all of this is because I currently live in a country that has a banking oligopoly (only 3 banks) which have basically forbidden any bitcoin exchanges from using their services (I've talked to a bitcoin supporter who works for the bank about this). People have to wire their money to another country, pay the horrible wire fees and currency conversion rates to buy bitcoins.

Most people globally that do p2p like on localbitcoins do so by charging a fee (a few percent) on top of the current price, then they go buy the bitcoins back on the exchange at a better rate.

The airport has said they would accept a bitcoin ATM but again, if you cannot convert the fiat back into bitcoins or vice versa then you are stuck with one currency or the other building up over time due to demand. The currency exchange at the airport charges 15% to convert currencies. The banks charge 20%.

If there was an in-between cryptofiat then locals could buy/sell the cryptofiat without risk of volatility while making money with fees. Once their money is in cryptofiat then they can day trade for bitcoin as much as they want. Sure they might do bank transfers or physical cash transactions but at the individual level the banks can't stop it.

I have sold locally on localbitcoins but I am the only listing. I only sell to get some cash for local purchases, but if someone wanted a high volume I would not be interested because it is too hard for me to turn it back into bitcoins.

Ok, I read through TenX which appears more promise than offering solutions. The network relies on their COMIT protocol. The COMIT protocol seems to be reliant on these magical "Liquidity Providers". Which essentially, as it says in the white paper, are the centralized exchanges. It appears to be trying to organize the exchanges a bit more like nodes on a network but it essentially relies heavily on these nodes to handle the fiat to crypto exchange. Whether or not that allows for decentralization down the road or not, possibly. But their solution focuses more on what happens after that is taken care of rather than working on that particular piece.


I like Bisq, have downloaded it and put up some BTC for sale on it. It's like localbitcoins but through a decentralized app. There is a mechanism for arbitration set up which is where the developer plans on making the money via his token. Anyone with the token can be an arbitrator. Also, only the couple of developers have those tokens.
It is certainly a good p2p solution, the low volume is no fault of the platform. I did not like that I had to keep the program running on my PC to keep my listing up but I understand the reason. Unfortunately the program was taking up too much CPU on my machine.

HodlHodl looks like a cleaner version of bisq, I just started checking it out so I will give my thoughts on it after checking under the hood.

Exactly. Trading P2P for a fiat pegged crypto would allow for onboarding but then allow for decentralized trading from crypto to crypto from there.

I don't understand how we could do DEX on Fiat/BTC,
how do you integrate fiat banking system to blockchain based crypto?
since Fiat is physically real money and not blockchain based then you would need a Fiat gateway
no matter what you would need financial institution for cashing out your Fiat thru this gateway
when you're referring to fiat pegged (crypto)currency, then you shouldn't say Fiat/USD

Thank you. I will check these out.

I only know the following Fiat dezentralized exchanges:

1) Bisq (or Bitsquare)

2)  HodlHodl (https://hodlhodl.com/)

and others without Fiat Pairs:

1) Barterdex (komodo - https://komodoplatform.com/en/technology/barterdex)

2) Blocknet XBridge (http://blocknet.co/)

3) BlackHalo (Don't know if there are Fiat Pairs available)

In Developement:

1) Waves Dex with Atomic Swaps!!

2) TenX developes COMIT which is based on the lightning network (https://www.tenx.tech/)


hope I could help a little ...

Localbitcoins and more decentralized bisq can already do this.

Having thousands of people exchanging physical cash for crypto is not centralized. Everything you keep saying seems to ignore the fact that localbitcoins exists and is very prevalent all over the world.

It doesn't solve the fact that without physical cash, there is no way to do it. You can have the decentralized infraestructure at the exchange level, but then so what, the ins and outs of fiat are pegged to the legacy banking system (centralized) outside of physical cash. If it became illegal, you would still need physical cash, which is to be removed in the next decades when governments find it's the right time to do it.

There is no way to solve this, because of the interaction with the legacy system which is out of programmer's controls.

I'm not really caring about a decentralized exchange of BTC for shitcoins. Was focused more on fiat <-> BTC. The fiat pegged currency would certainly need to use Lightning Network and allow for atomic swaps.

In a first on BCT, I agree with you.

Moreover, what's required is an 'official standard' for implementing atomic swaps which would be functional not just across nakamoto style blockchains, but across all crypto-currencies which implement the standard.

There are newer models of fiat pegged crypto ("stablecoins") that try to decentralise issuance. There are various models for this, some more convincing than others. But I expect that either the designs will improve, or the quality assurance of the backing will (most probably both).

An exchange that uses fiat pegged crypto such as USDT or USDC that trades with BTC is essentially centralized via the issuer of the fiat pegged crypto.

I also don't see a decentralized exchange that trades BTC for ETH, for example, as something that will gain an especially large amount of steam. These types of exchanges will not be able to offer the speed of execution that traditional centralized exchanges offer, even with atomic swaps, and lower execution time will ultimately lead to worse liquidity and higher amounts of slippage.

Full decentralisation is difficult without atomic swaps to perform the actual trade. And that limits any platform to trading pairs for which atomic swaps can be programmed. As much as I like the concept, having to rely on arbitrators to fall back on is in some ways less desirable that the centralised model. Perhaps this is a good thing though; in a future dominated by p2p trading platforms, if a development team wants their cryptocurrency to be taken seriously, atomic swaps with the major coins they compete against must be easy to implement or else the market may be too thin (and if stable coins can do their job well enough, maybe the same will begin to be said about the currency that a well performing stable coin is pegged to )

Ideally, a fully decentralised trading platform could be more liquid than the centralised exchanges, as the traders can be completely certain that their trading funds will be end-to-end 100% safe if there is no third party custody of coins to be concerned with. We're a long way from that now, atomic swaps are used as a descriptive jargon to advertise DeX website platforms, but it's probably just marketing (not tried it out myself). But I like that idea: a p2p software trading platform with real p2p atomic swaps to trade (plus stable coins that don't need redemption guarantees and controlled supply to maintain the peg). We're a little ways from that right now though, there are few coins that can be swapped atomically AFAIA, and no p2p trading platform uses atomic swaps either (AFAIA).

Anonymity is not the point (though try to track someone's localbitcoins purchase back to them). The main problem to solve is the centralization of exchanges who hold a shit-ton of bitcoins and fiat which can be over-regulated, hacked, held ransom, etc. (ie: btc-e, MtGox, poloniex, etc.).

These centralized exchanges use centralized bank accounts which subjects them to the whims of those banks. Having thousands of bank accounts across the country owned by individuals selling small amounts of crypto is harder to stop than a single bank account. Even in Germany where they essentially outlawed exchanges (it is legal but in order to be compliant it's essentially impossible) it is still perfectly legal for an individual to sell their private asset to another individual (like selling your car online). Even if it becomes illegal it just goes underground like in places like Venezuela.