Charly Clinton, the creator of BitXBay, a decentralized and anonymous Bitcoin marketplace, claims to have created the first open source, peer-to-peer online platform for trade.

The first announcement of BitXBay was made in late-April on the BitcoinTalk forum, following on June 10 by the release of the alpha version with links to BitXBay binaries and sources on GitHub.

BitXBay's marketplace operates through the Bitmessage network for privacy matters and all transactions occur in the form of escrow with multisignature addresses. Each transaction creates 3 multisignature addresses: one for the primary and two for the payment of insurance.

BitMessage is a peer-to-peer encrypted email communication system created in November 2012, which grew in popularity in June 2013, right after the disclosure of the massive surveillance program operated by the American NSA. To ensure maximum anonymity and privacy, BitMessage email addresses are series of random letters and numbers, and nodes store all messages for exactly 2 days.

In a recent interview with CoinBrief, BitXBay creator Charly Clinton announced a lighter version of the pre-existing system - 300 MB vs. 30 GB. He also informed about the inclusion of Electrum, a lightweight Bitcoin client released in November 2011, which encrypts wallets, and enables its users to recover their wallets from their seeds with a secret phrase. Also, as private keys are exclusively stored on a hard-drive, clients don't have to download the block chain.

Clinton said that the idea of BitXBay came to him when he first heard about Bitcoin. After waiting 4 years to see a similar project surface, he finally decided to create it himself.

The initiative came with the desire of enabling Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies holders to buy goods and services as easily as they'd do in any brick-and-mortar store. He said:

"No trading rules, no registration, no need to enter into a contract or show their documents. Economics has nothing to do with politics or the thoughts of officials that may not concur with my own. I accept no restrictions. I am eager to make my choices myself! BitXBay frees people of all the prohibitions and destroys the chance of influencing free people’s decisions!"

While BitXBay could easily be compared to similar projects such as OpenBazaar, Clinton noted, "Unlike BitXBay, it is not entirely decentralized because it’s connected with servers in many respects. Such decision has its advantages and disadvantages. BitXBay is also more tolerant as it has no blocking methods for any suggestions."

Clinton said the community responded very positively to his project on the whole, although he suggested a couple changes and features, as well as a "Lite version of the software for widespread use.”

Even though, a fully working version is available, Clinton stressed there is still work ahead for BitXBay, noting that the main problem was the Bitmessage network instability. He also added that a mobile app would be released once the next Bitmessage version will be available.

Unfortunately, because Clinton is funding the whole project on his own, BitXBay is developing slowly and not in full.

This Youtube video shows the software in action:

For technical details, visit the BitXBay thread on BitcoinTalk. Donations are welcome to both addresses 1FAvch92vioLKene4iu6wEjsPWdm67nGJK and 16mvEuRpiDSLM7febL4okhosNSz2ybRWfM. 

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