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Exchanges are often criticized as a central point of failure of the cryptocurrency space. This isn't without justification as, in recent years, we have seen a number of exchanges get hacked, robbed, or embezzled by their founders, which is far from insignificant. One proposed alternative are decentralized exchanges that would allow people make peer-to-peer trades using sophisticated smart contracts. However, there remains the fundamental challenge of interfacing with the legacy banking system.

Manfred Karrer joins us for a lengthy discussion on Bitsquare, a decentralized cryptocyrrency exchange which supports most fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies. Built to be a decentralized equivalent of LocalBitcoins, the Bitsquare client, which connects to the peer-to-peer network, uses Tor by default, which makes it almost completely anonymous. There are also a number of safeguards in place to eliminate the potential for fraud and theft, as well as an arbitration system to resolve disputes between traders.

Topics discussed in this episode include:

The motivation behind Bitsquare

The Bitsquare client and user experience

A walkthrough of a typical trade

The mechanics of the order book

The fiat currency transfer mechanism

The current and future arbitration process

Manfred's thoughts on DAOs

Bitsquare's product roadmap

Links mentioned in this episode:

Sponsors:

Jaxx: Wallets that Unify the Blockchain Experience Across Devices http://jaxx.io

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Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain, Sébastien Couture & Meher Roy.

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