Hi guys, we meet again in a new article. In this article, I'm gonna write about BQT exchange. They're running an ICO right now, and guess how much they've collected so far? A staggering 8 million dollars! An exceptional achievement considering in a bearish market situation like this. Their team is very active in visiting many blockchain/crypto related events, so maybe this is one of the reasons why their sale goes very smooth. But, is that the only reason? What about the product itself? Is it good?
Read the what I write below and you'll find why! As always, happy reading!
The New Form of Cryptocurrency Exchange
First thing first, in order to understand what value does BQT has, we have to review what kind of cryptocurrency exchange that currently exists in the status quo. I'll describe in brief and try to explain the core problems or what is lacking in the current status quo that can be fixed with BQT. You can also find more details about this in the BQT whitepaper, and I highly recommend you read it.
So, what kind of cryptocurrency exchange that currently exists? You probably know about it and have been using it since the first time you enter crypto space. There is at least two kinds of cryptocurrency exchange, a decentralized and a centralized exchange. Both of them has their own history, Mt. Gox is probably one of the most famous centralized exchange due to the case of their hacking. Etherdelta or Idex, on the other hand, might be the most famous decentralized exchange, that is now facing a tight competition from other decentralized exchange such as Bancor.
Cryptocurrency trading volume on 2017 according to Coindesk. Source: Coindesk
Decentralized and centralized exchange serve the same purpose, but they have different nature. They have their own general advantages or disadvantages, values, general services, and trading options. Almost every crypto exchange right now based their exchange on order-book setting, matching orders from buyers and sellers. Some of them also offer margin trading, such as Bitfinex or Bitmex, that is not immune to critics because it is rumored to be used by a whale(s) or the owner itself to gain profits from the noob and average traders who wanted to get rich and buy Lambo in one night.
You can choose what kind of crypto exchange that you wanted to use based on the values that you hold. If you prefer security where you can control your funds, and manage your own directly from your wallet, then a decentralized exchange might be the best choice. If you love liquidity, ease of use, speed and fast customer support, a centralized exchange is far ahead of decentralized exchange. Sadly, there is no proper solution for a user who loves privacy and ease of use, so you can't choose both of them at the same time.
Some comparison between DEX and CEX. Source: Torial
Based on what kind of cryptocurrencies that you wanted to trade, you can also decide what kind of exchange that you use. Centralized exchange, for example, in general, has more trading pairs compared to decentralized exchange. That's why they usually have high volume and liquidity because professional traders tend to use them a lot. The atomic swap might be the solution for decentralized exchange in order to trade across different blockchain, but the real implementation and adoption is yet to come.
Amid the dominance of centralized exchange, decentralized exchange in form of P2P trade is gaining its momentum too. Sites or trading platform such as Localbitcoins and Paxful gains more volume lately. Even Binance, the current top 1 centralized exchange in terms of trading volume, is planning to build their own decentralized exchange. This shows that decentralized exchange, or peer-to-peer crypto trading, is still an important market, possibly will be the future of cryptocurrency trading if the problems that they have can be solved quite easily. Which is where BQT comes into play.
Peer-to-peer for the Future
The rising trends of peer-to-peer trading can be interpreted as a general indicator that people still love to trade directly with other users. In fact, there are some important benefits if they trade directly with their peers, such as the options to buy or sell some coins or barter their coins directly without any fees. They can negotiate the price, directly discuss with their peers if they wanted to make a deal, to the point that they can trade with their own rules, and so on.
P2P trading has many benefits, such as expanding your social connections to know other traders in person directly. Rate and share your experience in trading with them, build your own portfolio and share your trading experience with other people directly in order to gain more knowledge and trading abilities. Its provide flexibility, in extreme, every trading that you make with your partner can have its own rules, which is impossible to happen in the centralized exchange.
However, the future of a reliable P2P exchange where people can trade as enjoyable as the centralized exchange is yet to come. There is still a lot of problems that need to be solved, from security issues to customer support services. Before all of those problems are solved, the future where P2P trading dominate the cryptocurrency exchange business is yet to come.
One feature that is lacking on the current exchange, regardless of its types, is the hedging feature. In the traditional stock markets, hedging is described as a way to protect their funds, which is very important especially for traders who don't want to lose too much money. Stop loss (which is not available on every exchange) is still not enough. But, the future of reliable P2P platform for trading might be not that far, because BQT is there.
A preview of BQT platform. Taken from BQT Whitepaper.
One of the most important features that will be implemented in BQT is the option to hedge your crypto assets, directly from your peers. Not only that, BQT will try to provide a trading environment where helping each other and gains benefits from and for the community is the core values. To put it in short, by using the BQT platform, you can help or make profits directly with your peers.
How BQT Hedge trading operates is explained in detail on BQT whitepaper on page 21. I won't repeat what's written here, so I suggest you read it directly. To put it in short, every trader can ask for other crypto assets from other traders, using BQT as the escrow. Other traders can negotiate the offers and finally, the hedge receiver can choose the offers independently. After the end of the hedge period, the hedge receiver can choose to pay back the crypto with the added assets or release the escrow for the partners.
BQT Platform in a nutshell. Taken from BQT Whitepaper.
This will be the first trading platform which offers you direct opportunity to do this. The potential for BQT to be the main trading tools and platform for P2P trading is crystal clear.
The BQTX Token
Running an ICO is useless when your tokens/coins don't have any utility on your product. Rest assured, this won't happen in BQT. BQTX is an ERC20 utility token on the BQT platform. In order to use BQT, you must have BQTX, because trading fees are only payable via BQTX tokens. This will create a high demand for BQTX tokens, especially if the platform is massively adopted. By 'forcing' every' user to get BQTX tokens, the values of BQTX will increase along with its adoption.
The BQTX token can also be used as the main collateral or additional collateral for hedge trading. By doing so, users can choose to use BQTX rather than using their other cryptocurrencies. Because 50% fees from the BQT platform is shared quarterly to top traders and referral affiliate partners, I can say for sure that the demand for BQTX will also high, because everybody who wants to get the share must have a high trading activity and refers other users to this platform, which in turn increase the demand for BQTX tokens.
There will be a lock-up period. Up to 600 million tokens will be frozen by BQT and it will be released up to 10% per year if demanded necessary for expansion, marketing, and loyalty programs. The team and management will reserve up to 20% of the tokens and it will be locked up for 3 years. This will create a scarcity at first so it will help to stabilize, and possibly increase the price gradually. Rest assured, the team looks very committed to this project.
Bottom Line
Cryptocurrency industry is still new. However, slowly but surely they're going to mature. In order to support that growth, an enjoyable trading platform is highly demanded. In the spirit of decentralization, users should be able to trade directly with their peers easily, gain control of their own assets and also able to trade with high flexibility. #BQT will be the first platform that allows a trader to do that. Don't forget to check them out here: https://www.bqt.io/.
Disclaimer
This article is not a financial recommendation. The author, BQT and other parties mentioned in this article is a separate entity. The author writes this article based on his own understanding of BQT. Readers should read the original document of BQT by themselves. The author shouldn't be responsible for any actions taken by the readers, including but not limited to: joining the BQT bounty program, participate in the BQT token sale, and etc.