Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin to solve the problems of centralized payment systems, so it seems inconsistent for corporate, centralized bitcoin exchanges to be the primary way to acquire bitcoin. It often seems the dominance and vulnerability of centralized exchanges is the Achilles heel in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Bisq is built on pure P2P infrastructure: desktop software, Tor, local wallets, and no central accounts. Furthermore, it is not a company, and its governance model actually incentivizes the protection of user privacy and freedoms.
While the transfer of national currency requires traditional payment channels like banks and payment processors, Bisq is not dependent on any particular provider. The role of these payment channels is limited to what it should be: transferring national currency. That's it—no censoring, confiscating, monitoring, or controlling your financial transactions.
Bisq is built for those who:
- Want to exchange a national currency such as dollars, euros, or yen for bitcoin.
- Want to exchange a wide range of alternative cryptocurrencies for bitcoin.
- Do not want to trust any entity to hold their funds.
- Do not want to forfeit control or privacy to a central authority in order to trade with other individuals.
- Regard financial transactions as a form of private speech that should be protected from surveillance by banks, governments, and other institutions.
