Bitcoin.de, the licensed Bitcoin marketplace in Germany and Europe’s largest Bitcoin marketplace with more than 775,000 customers, has announced today that it is expanding its services for “crypto-to-crypto trading” for users. The newly introduced coins will not be paid into the wallets of Bitcoin.de but are sent directly from the seller’s private wallet to the buyer’s private wallet. Bitcoin.de only manages the Bitcoins, which serve as a means of payment for the purchase of the other cryptocurrencies.
Customers of Bitcoin.de will be familiar with the model that has proven itself on Bitcoin.de since 2011: Although the marketplace holds a seller’s Bitcoins in trust, the euros involved in trading are transferred directly from the buyer’s bank account to that of the seller. As soon as the Euro transaction is confirmed, Bitcoin.de releases the reserved Bitcoins to the buyer.
In crypto-to-crypto trading, new cryptocurrencies such as Dash (DASH) or Golem (GNT) take on the role of the euro: they are sent from the seller’s wallet to the buyer’s wallet, while the buyer reserves Bitcoins on Bitcoin.de. The marketplace releases them as soon as a transaction is confirmed, which Bitcoin.de can verify in real time due to the transparency of the blockchains.
One advantage of this model is that customers can react more quickly. With conventional stock exchanges, it is necessary to deposit cryptocurrencies first on a wallet of the stock exchange operator, which can take 10 minutes up to possibly several hours. With crypto-to-crypto trading, customers can accept an offer immediately as soon as they have access to their cryptocurrency.
For customers who are used to crypto-euro trading; however, there is a significant difference: Bitcoin.de no longer manages the cryptocurrencies they trade. While this eliminates the need for a convenient and secure method of storing the cryptocurrencies purchased, it also gives customers an incentive to use their cryptocurrencies in the same way as the actual idea of cryptocurrencies: On their wallet, as the owner of the private keys and with full control.
For Bitcoin.de, this also entails an educational mission: the marketplace will inform its customers about suitable wallets for the various cryptocurrencies and provide instructions to help them manage their coins with appropriate security.
“The crypto-to-crypto trade is a great benefit for both customers and Bitcoin.de. Our customers will be able to trade a much larger number of different cryptocurrencies and tokens in the future. The provision of more and more online wallets would not have been the right way. We are therefore focusing on the main advantage of cryptocurrencies: Decentralization. Owners of cryptocurrencies can be their own bank and do not have to trust a service provider when it comes to storing their coins,” continues Oliver Flaskämper. “In this way, we promote the autonomy of our customers and ultimately the knowledge of how to deal with cryptocurrencies.”
In the future, Bitcoin.de plans besides Bitcoin (BTC) to also offer Ether (ETH) as a means of payment. In addition, numerous further cryptocurrencies are to be certified for the crypto-to-crypto trade. Currently planned are Stellar (XLM), IOTA (IOTA), Litecoin (LTC) and other tokens based on Ethereum and Stellar.
“With the crypto-to-crypto trade, we have expanded our product range to include an important service for our customers. At the same time, we are sending the signal ‘promised and delivered’ to our shareholders and the capital market as a whole. Crypto-to-crypto-trading offers us numerous attractive opportunities to introduce additional currencies and make cryptocurrency transactions more efficient and secure.”
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