Bisq is a pillar of decentralization
Do you know Bisq?
You should.
Bisq is the OG decentralized exchange. It used to be called Bitsquare. It allows two parties to enter into a Bitcoin cross-currency trade without having to know anything about their counterparty. There is no KYC. You don't have to give out your social security number or your phone number. You don't have to take a picture of yourself holding a passport. No DNA swab, no iris scan. You can exchange USD for BTC or BTC for ETH, or trade in many other pairs. All you have to do is run the Bisq peer-to-peer application. It communicates with other nodes and Bitcoin nodes via Tor v3 so your activity is nobody's business but yours and you are anonymous to other participants. Once you've got the app running, you'll set up a crypto wallet and initiate a trade. For example "I want to buy 100 EUR-worth of Bitcoin via SEPA" (tutorial video). Yes, fiat money is supported. You can put a price limit or have your offer follow the last trading price. Isn't this wonderful?
I should be upfront about a few caveats:
- It's a bit cumbersome. The app is slightly on the heavy side. Keep an open mind when first using it. There is a great community ready to help. Just be ready for a bit of a learning curve.
- It's not fast. It can take hours, sometimes days for a trade to complete. And you have to keep that computer running - not sleeping or hibernating - the whole time.
- It might be pricier. There isn't as much liquidity on Bisq as can be found on centralized high-volume exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, or Binance. The spread between the bid and ask can be pretty big or even sometimes cross.
- There are trading limits. And they vary based on your payment method.
"Hold on a minute, these are a lot of downsides to using Bisq", you might be thinking to yourself. You might be wondering "why should I go through all these hurdles just to get some crypto?" Fair questions. Consider a few use cases:
- maybe you live in a country where acquiring bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has been banned outright
- maybe you live in a country where acquiring bitcoin is tolerated but, as an individual, you are not allowed to do it because you need to have a bank account or you are too young
- maybe your spouse or another family member has control and oversight over your finances
- maybe you don't feel that sacrificing your privacy is worth it when all you want to do is take part in the next technological tsunami and tinker with blockchain assets
- maybe you don't need Bisq now but you see a future where Bisq might become indispensable
- maybe you just want to, for a bit, live by the cypherpunk values
I love Bisq. You should use it.