A new vision of thecryptocurrency exchange has been realized, one in which P2P trading isavailable with the security to match.
Enter the curiouslynamed Coinffeine, a service designed to eliminate the need for centralizedexchanges altogether. The Spanish-built exchange seeks to embody the Bitcoinideal as far as possible by facilitating direct trading between buyer andseller, and claims it has developed a system which provides for P2Ptransactions to be made in complete security.
Faith in zero trust
Coinffeine’s conceptworks on a “zero trust” deposit system. Payments are taken in sections alongwith a deposit from both parties, which designers say ensures protection fromfraud by obliging both buyer and seller to commit to the transaction. Oncepayment has been taken from the seller, the deposits are refunded.
CTO & CofounderXimo Guanter told Cointelegraph however that the central design is not the onlypart of the exchange infrastructure to give priority to issues of security.
“We believe our approach has two mainadvantages over traditional centralized exchanges. The first one is highersecurity 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 mightsuffer won't affect them.
The second advantage is that we are completelydecentralized, so even if we disappear as a company the network will live on aslong as there are active users on it.”
Coinffeine alsopromises further advantages over the standard exchange format, such as theability to receive bitcoins directly to a wallet and fiat directly to thepayment processor account. In terms of accessibility, the exchange uses OKPayas the payment processor.
Not for everyone?
There is a drawback,however, in that users with no Bitcoins cannot use the service as the depositrequired for each transaction must be supplied in BTC. New users hence arefirst required to obtain Bitcoin using the very “traditional” exchangesCoinffeine is seeking to overtake.
“We are working ondifferent bootstrapping strategies to enable people with no bitcoins to useCoinffeine without having to resort to other exchanges,” its website states with regard to the problem.
Nevertheless, it ishard to deny that Coinffeine’s concept has the potential to be revolutionary ifit is demonstrated to be bulletproof and gains significant patronage, andsentiment among the community is positive.
“I don't think peoplerealize how important open source exchanges like this are,” commented user u/ForestOfGrins on Reddit, “…Also it willmake the LocalBitcoins/Mycelium trader movement more diverse and innovative andspeeding up and making the process more safe.”
“Way to go Spain! Thisis actually good news, I hope they succeed. Hopefully it will allow cross coinexchange at some point,” continued u/guffenberg.
It is as yet earlydays for the project, but with the promise it shows combined with a rareuncritical Reddit reception in spite of its pitfalls, any subsequentdevelopments will be an exciting spectacle to behold.
In the meantime, moreinformation can be found here.