Over the past year, there have been reports about stricter cryptocurrency regulations, not least after Facebook announced its plans to launch the stablecoin libra. The world’s crypto exchanges may also soon be more strictly regulated.
The reason for the latter is, among other things, that the world’s governments want to curb money laundering and other crimes. But for those who want to trade with bitcoin without being discovered by the state, there is an alternative, technology site Trustnodes reports.
No intermediary
It’s the so-called decentralized exchanges (DEX), where users buy and sell cryptocurrencies from each other instead of going through an intermediary such as Coinbase or Binance.
There are levels of how decentralized an exchange can be. On one side of the spectrum is the popular exchange Localbitcoins, a website where users can buy and sell bitcoin from each other.
Localbitcoins has become a popular website in, for example, dictatorships where cryptocurrency trading is prohibited, but the exchange still has some user overview. To a certain extent, they also collaborate with governments, according to Bitcoinist.
Completely anonymous
Then there are the DEXs that are run through programs on users’ computers rather than on websites and that use the darknet to enable transactions.
One of these is Bisq, an exchange that supposedly is completely anonymous and has no authority other than the users themselves. Recently, it has become increasingly popular and handles transfers of millions of dollars each week.
Because the system relies entirely on users’ computing power to operate, transactions take longer to go through than on a centralized exchange. But if you use a reasonably fast computer and have a good internet connection, you should still be able to buy and sell for example bitcoin at a reasonably high speed, Trustnodes writes.
