Template:MainPage Reasons
Exchanges play a critical role in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Without them, it would be nearly impossible to buy or sell bitcoin for euros, dollars, yen or yuan. The bitcoin market would have no liquidity, and bitcoin would be worthless.
Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin to solve the problems of centralized payment systems, so it seems inconsistent for 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 current Bitcoin ecosystem.
There is much talk about decentralization in the Bitcoin space, and various attempts at creating decentralized exchanges to address this weakness.
Bisq is one solution built on pure P2P infrastructure: desktop software, Tor, local wallets, and no central accounts. While the transfer of national currency requires traditional payment channels like banks and payment processors, Bisq is not dependent on any particular one. 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 crypto currencies for bitcoin.
- Do not want to trust any exchange for holding 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.
- You can find out more about the philosophy of Bisq and how it makes trading bitcoin private, secure, and easy in our Introduction doc:
