There is no doubt that the future of crypto trading will be led by decentralised exchanges. While centralised exchanges have played an important role in building up mainstream appetite for trading cryptocurrencies, DEXs simply offer a far superior alternative when it comes to security, accessibility and breadth of coin listings. However, that doesn’t explain why Bitspark as a remittance company has launched its own DEX.
To understand that, we need to look at the bigger picture and how the SparkDEX fits in the Bitspark ecosystem which is geared towards solving the challenges of the remittance industry.
Why remittances needed a better alternative?
Before Bitspark introduced its bankless alternative, the remittance industry was locked in an expensive and inefficient system. There were really only two practical options for transferring money back home: transferring through retail remittance channels or directly from bank account to bank account.
Both channels are filled with inefficient procedures and incur extortionate fees that make transferring money abroad, especially towards developing countries with exotic currency pairings, unnecessarily expensive. Worse still, for the 2 billion ‘unbanked’ people across the world, bank transfers aren’t even a viable option.
Businesses servicing remittance customers with cash were under a different form of pressure. In what is called ‘de-risking’, banks started to move away from the cash-based industry by exiting financial relationships with businesses and thereby cutting off their lifeline.
The Bitspark ecosystem solves each of these challenges with a full suite of products, each geared towards optimising the varying moving parts involved with transferring money around the world.
The Bitspark ecosystem
The Bitspark ecosystem is built on the Bitshares blockchain and consists of a web-based platform, mobile app, international vaults, stablecoins, rewards token ZEPH, and a decentralised exchange. Each component has its own distinct function and role as part of the bankless alternative, but they all work in sync servicing different customers across businesses, individual users and crypto traders.
What we’re offering is a cash-in cash-out remittance network that is accessible to anyone anywhere in the world to send money across borders at the best possible rate — including exotic currency pairings.
We do this by tokenising cash deposits within our ecosystem using stablecoins as the transport vehicles for fiat currency to travel across any border and remittance corridor. Stablecoins are essential to exchange any of the world’s 180 fiat currencies at the lowest possible rate in the most efficient way.
But for that to work in the Bitspark ecosystem, we need to drive price discovery and liquidity so that currencies can be easily exchanged against other currencies or turned into cash at inclusion points. That’s where the SparkDEX comes in.
The SparkDEX
Launched in August, 2018, the SparkDEX is the latest addition to our ecosystem. It was the first portal connected to Bitshares launched in Hong Kong, offering a BTC and ETH gateway to the world’s leading decentralised exchange and its many stable coins. In true DEX fashion, users on the SparkDEX own their own funds, trade peer-to-peer at low fees and do not need to go through complicated signing up procedures.
In the context of our ecosystem, the SparkDEX is the trading engine that plugs into our network of international vaults and inclusion points across the world. It is purpose built for trading stablecoins pegged to national currencies to reduce exchange costs and open new markets.
For both our business customers on the web platform as well as individuals using the mobile app, it simply makes it more convenient to access the crypto trading world without having to go to a third-party exchange platform.
But the SparkDEX is not exclusively for the remittance market. Many crypto traders looking for a safer alternative compared to centralised exchanges, or simply a more user-friendly DEX, than most other options available today, have signed on to the SparkDEX. Not only does that provide the traders with a more reliable exchange platform and access to the cash-in cash-out network, it also adds to the liquidity of the coins on our exchange which in turn helps streamline the money transfer operations. All without ever involving any banks.
With our ecosystem, Bitspark offers the infrastructure and services necessary to help people and businesses live without banks and make financial freedom an inclusive option for everyone.
About Bitspark
Bitspark’s easy to use platform and app allows businesses and individuals to transfer money worldwide without banks. Having made the world's first cash-in cash-out Bitcoin transaction in 2014, Bitspark now services six markets across Asia and Africa utilising stablecoins across its product offerings.
Try Bitspark today and send money cheaper, faster and safer.
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