Global weekly transaction volume on Bitsquare’s decentralized platform is gradually picking up, as the latest figures from Coin.Dance show.
However, there is still a long way to go when compared to Bitcoin’s largest online trading marketplace, LocalBitcoins. LocalBitcoins is an open-source desktop application that allows the trading of Bitcoins for national or alternative cryptocurrencies, which recently hit a global average of $32,000 weekly volume in the week of Dec. 10.
The weekly volume in Europe has the record for the highest amount of transactions - about €40,000. This did not come as a surprise to the platform, according to a statement made to Cointelegraph, because people are uncovering the potential of its app and they want to support it as an open-source project with huge potential.
OpenBazaar and BitMarkets mirror Bitsquare’s principles, however, BitSquare maintains that no other project fits its definition of a decentralized Bitcoin exchange.
Decentralized Bitcoin exchanges
Regarding what has changed or is changing in the user’s perspective that is drawing their interest to the platform, Bitsquare’s Ken Shishido says:
“We are seeing more hacks on centralized exchanges and regulatory environments in some parts of the world are forcing exchanges to turn some of their customers away. Naturally, people are looking for alternatives and Bitsquare is here to the rescue!”
However, despite the development, Shishido does not think we are likely to see transactions on Bitsquare reach the scale of LocalBitcoins very soon unless there is a change in some aspects of the Bitcoin exchange process.
Shishido says: “LocalBitcoins is one of the oldest companies that exists in the Bitcoin space. It took them more than four years to reach this far. Therefore, it may take some time for Bitsquare to reach their scale. However, you can trade BTC/Fiat as well as BTC/Altcoins with Bitsquare. Our transaction volume can spike if situations around the world become more difficult to trade Bitcoins with centralized exchanges.”
Relatedly, Bitsquare is now integrated with BittyBot allowing you to compare prices offered by traders on the decentralized Bitcoin exchange with regular sites such as LocalBitcoins, Paxful, BitQuick, etc.