Altcoin IO exchange with atomic swaps will be launching their DEX next week. Sign up early:
https://www.altcoin.io?kid=P2FZ6
Peer-to-peer trading allows traders within the altcoin.io exchange to trade directly with each other. The exchange removes the “middleman” and allows you to trade without ever losing control of your funds.
What makes Altcoin IO exchange different
Atomic swaps give the crypto community a safe way to trade across different blockchains, quickly and with minimal fees. Although not a new idea — bitcointalk forumites debated them in 2013 — the technology has overcome some big hurdles in the last few months, with several successful real-world tests.
I personally believe atomic swaps are an important key to decentralized trading where you are fully in control of your tokens at all times. I believe they’ll change how you trade for the better.
What are atomic swaps?
An atomic swap is atomic in the sense that if the swap isn’t successful, neither party loses out. The swap takes place or it doesn’t — there are no half measures. There are two kinds of atomic swap: on-chain and off-chain. On-chain swaps are great, but off-chain swaps take this concept to another level as they’re nearly instant, private, and require almost zero fees.Both kinds use hashed-time-locked-contracts, or HTLCs. These ensure that neither party can take the offered funds without first offering their own. For example, let’s assume Alice and Bob want to exchange BTC for ETH. Alice sends her BTC, Bob sends his ETH, and each declares receipt of their new coins by confirming a cryptographic code, issued by the HTLC. If neither or only one of them confirms the code within a set timeframe, both sets of coins return to their original owners and the exchange is cancelled.
Centralized exchanges are putting your altcoins at risk
Since 2011, dozens of centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have been hacked — with more being added to the list every month. The combined losses of these exchanges are in the billions.Centralized exchanges are virtual honeypots for hackers. Beneath a veneer of by-passable security, lies a cache worth billions of dollars. All they need do is exploit a single weakness to access the funds of every trader doing business on that platform.And what do you know about your centralized exchange? Who runs it? What security protocols do they use? Is there a business interruption plan? Do they underwrite any of your risk? Many centralized exchanges keep you in the dark, leaving no-one accountable when things go wrong. It’s like handing your car keys to a stranger and asking them to park your car for you. They could crash it, steal it, park it in the wrong place, lose the keys or sell them to someone else. Once they’ve taken the keys, you’ve got no control, no transparency, and no guarantees.
Decentralizing risk
At Altcoin.io, they believe the centralized exchange model has had its day. Using Atomic Swap technology, htey are creating a decentralized exchange (DEX) that guarantees the security of your funds.You might already know the benefits of decentralized exchanges.
DEXs have been around for some time. As far back as 2015, BitShares DEX, Coinffeine, and OpenLedger all claimed the coveted world’s first decentralized exchange title. EtherDelta, 0x, Kyber Network, AirSwap, and a number of others have joined the fray since. While they’ve generally offered better security, they’re far from perfect. Most DEXs store your private keys on Ethereum smart contracts (using the ERC20 standard), relying on off-chain order books to fulfill your trades. This restricts the number of tradeable tokens, and slows everything down.And as the DAO hack proved, while smart contracts are safer than centralized exchanges, they’re still vulnerable to theft.
