A new vision of the cryptocurrency exchange has been realized, one in which P2P trading is available with the security to match.

Enter the curiously named Coinffeine, a service designed to eliminate the need for centralized exchanges altogether. The Spanish-built exchange seeks to embody the Bitcoin ideal as far as possible by facilitating direct trading between buyer and seller, and claims it has developed a system which provides for P2P transactions to be made in complete security.

Faith in zero trust

Coinffeine’s concept works on a “zero trust” deposit system. Payments are taken in sections along with a deposit from both parties, which designers say ensures protection from fraud by obliging both buyer and seller to commit to the transaction. Once payment has been taken from the seller, the deposits are refunded.

CTO & Cofounder Ximo Guanter told Cointelegraph however that the central design is not the only part of the exchange infrastructure to give priority to issues of security.

“We believe our approach has two main advantages over traditional centralized exchanges. The first one is higher security for our users, since they are always in control of their bitcoins. Given that we never access our user's bitcoins, any cyber-attacks we might suffer won't affect them.
The second advantage is that we are completely decentralized, so even if we disappear as a company the network will live on as long as there are active users on it.”

Coinffeine also promises further advantages over the standard exchange format, such as the ability to receive bitcoins directly to a wallet and fiat directly to the payment processor account. In terms of accessibility, the exchange uses OKPay as the payment processor.

Not for everyone?

There is a drawback, however, in that users with no Bitcoins cannot use the service as the deposit required for each transaction must be supplied in BTC. New users hence are first required to obtain Bitcoin using the very “traditional” exchanges Coinffeine is seeking to overtake.

“We are working on different bootstrapping strategies to enable people with no bitcoins to use Coinffeine without having to resort to other exchanges,” its website states with regard to the problem.

Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that Coinffeine’s concept has the potential to be revolutionary if it is demonstrated to be bulletproof and gains significant patronage, and sentiment among the community is positive.

“I don't think people realize how important open source exchanges like this are,” commented user u/ForestOfGrins on Reddit, “…Also it will make the LocalBitcoins/Mycelium trader movement more diverse and innovative and speeding up and making the process more safe.”

“Way to go Spain! This is actually good news, I hope they succeed. Hopefully it will allow cross coin exchange at some point,” continued u/guffenberg.

It is as yet early days for the project, but with the promise it shows combined with a rare uncritical Reddit reception in spite of its pitfalls, any subsequent developments will be an exciting spectacle to behold.

In the meantime, more information can be found here.