Exchanges are often criticized as a central point of failure of the cryptocurrency space. This isn’t without justification as, in recent years, we have seen a number of exchanges get hacked, robbed, or embezzled by their founders, which is far from insignificant. One proposed alternative are decentralized exchanges that would allow people make peer-to-peer trades using sophisticated smart contracts. However, there remains the fundamental challenge of interfacing with the legacy banking system.

Manfred Karrer joins us for a lengthy discussion on Bitsquare, a decentralized cryptocyrrency exchange which supports most fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies. Built to be a decentralized equivalent of LocalBitcoins, the Bitsquare client, which connects to the peer-to-peer network, uses Tor by default, which makes it almost completely anonymous. There are also a number of safeguards in place to eliminate the potential for fraud and theft, as well as an arbitration system to resolve disputes between traders.

Topics covered in this episode:

The motivation behind Bitsquare

The Bitsquare client and user experience

A walkthrough of a typical trade

The mechanics of the order book

The fiat currency transfer mechanism

The current and future arbitration process

Manfred’s thoughts on DAOs

Bitsquare’s product roadmap

Episode links:

Bitsquare Website

Bitsquare Whitepaper

Risk Analysis

Arbitration System

Github Repo

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/140