The global marketplace has evolved a lot from the previous century to what it is now. Prior to the Internet, investors had to place orders through stockbrokers, in person or via telephone. The brokerage firm then entered the order in their system, which was linked to trading floors and exchanges. Brokers and traders would have to personally go to a bourse, stock exchange or security exchange to buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock and bonds, among other financial instruments. You have probably heard of NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange, or London Stock Exchange.
I believe everyone born in the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s has that mental image of hundreds of men holding two telephones, on each ear, analyzing market charts and shouting crazily to close deals on spot. You would see those images every time any television news program would report on the financial market and current local and global economies. But the face of trading has changed from how it used to be.
Nowadays, brokers and traders don’t need to leave their offices or even their homes to trade stocks or currencies. They can do it from anywhere using the internet. There are hundreds, if not thousands of online forex exchanges out there, and those exchanges enabled anyone to open an online account and become a trader. Trading is now on your fingertips
Those online exchanges have revolutionized the financial marketplace, but there were and still are many pain points for traders, such as the high trading fees and depositing Fiat currency using credit or debit cards, or through bank transfers. Debit and credit cards also charge their transaction fees so, their fees plus trading fees make online exchanges more suitable to traders with high trading volume, and not for those trading small amounts.
Fiat money originated in 11th century in China, and its use became widespread during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, but the Song Dynasty in China was the first to issue paper money, jiaozi, around the 10th century AD. Although the notes were valued at a certain exchange rate for gold, silver, or silk, conversion was never allowed in practice. The notes were initially to be redeemed after three years' service, to be replaced by new notes for a 3% service charge, but, as more of them were printed without notes being retired, inflation became evident. The government made several attempts to support the paper by demanding taxes partly in currency and making other laws, but the damage had been done, and the notes fell out of favor. Nowadays there is a new technology that came to solves the problem of inflation: the Blockchain.
The paper Fiat money people use to buy goods and services changes value every second since it’s not backed by anything else but the perceived value of that note. Just look at exchange rates for example. If we used real gold and silver as money, there would be no need for exchange rates! Fiat is in short, a tax and a form of control. Whenever a reserve bank prints more money (quantitative easing) they are effectively taking money from you. This happens because governments and banks control the money supply. A third party that has a hand in every transaction you'll ever make. This is also the reason for the push to a cashless society.also the reason for the push to a cashless society.
The Blockchain came to also solve that ’control’ problem. There is a chance that you never heard of the Blockchain but, you have for sure heard of Bitcoin and they have everything to do with each other.
A Blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. Constantly growing as ‘completed’ blocks (the most recent transactions) are recorded and added to it in chronological order. It allows market participants to keep track of digital currency transactions without central recordkeeping. Each node (a computer connected to the network) gets a copy of the blockchain, which is downloaded automatically.
Digital currencies or cryptocurrencies cannot simply be brought into existence. Cryptocurrencies normally have a fixed supply or a fixed set of rules that determine how much new currency is created. Bitcoin for example has a fixed supply of 21 million coins that must be mined into existence. Ethereum is also mined, but it doesn't have a fixed amount of coins that can be created. The key thing here is that crypto is decentralized and isn't controlled by a central authority. This is a big deal! It means that the value of the currency can't be manipulated as easily as Fiat currency.
And, with the advent of Blockchain and cryptocurrencies, came the natural need of a new way of trading using cryptocurrencies. Therefore, cryptocurrency enthusiasts and firms have brought to life online crypto-asset trading platforms or only exchanges.
There are already hundreds of cryptocurrency exchanges all over the world, but just a few attract so many users that put them on the top 10 or 20 in the ranking of cryptocurrency exchanges based on daily trade volume. It doesn’t really matter how long they’ve been in operation, since it is a recent trend. What matters is the level of service and security they offer. One exchange that has stood out among all the others during the past month or so is BitForex.
BitForex is for sure the fastest growing crypto-asset trading platform in the world. Based on recent data from CoinMarketCap, in May BitForex ranked 63 among other platforms. Now, only one month later, BitForex ranks 11. It is soon to be among the top ten and consecutively among the top 5 crypto exchanges in the world.
The reason for such unprecedent growth is a combination of expertise and high-level of customer service. BitForex’s team members bring their experience and expertise from renowned companies such as Merrill Lynch, McKinsey, Microsoft, Tencent and Lenovo, and they are alumni of universities such as Cambridge, Columbia and MIT. This is a perfect combination to create the most professional exchange out there.
The platform is user-friendly and very easy to use. Anyone can be a trader at BitForex by opening a free account, depositing cryptocurrency and choosing among one of their over one hundred cryptocurrencies listed to trade. And those currencies were hand-picked by BitForex’s team. It’s a ‘only high-quality allowed’ kind of company.
A huge update on their online platform is on the way. You can expect to notice the difference from July on. Just open an account and stay tuned! There are other great things coming up also from July, such as partnerships with crypto-world celebrities/leaders and the launching of a new product… but that is subject for another article.
By: Daniel Rufini