Bitcoin’s creation was intended to break the centralized nature of currency and money, however, even though digital currencies are for the most part decentralized, they are still under the influence of the exchanges that they are traded on.
Fees, waiting times and identification are all parts of traditional banking that exchanges have brought through to digital currencies. And while this may not be un-decentralizing digital currencies, it is making the users very beholden to exchanges while they suffer extra costs.
Back to basics
Digitalized currencies have formed their own economy which has appealed to people’s desire to go away from unnecessary commissions and fees. Additionally, it is their decentralized nature that also appeals to people’s mistrust of third parties.
Face-to-face meetings for people in the same locality can lead to an agreement of terms, prices and even payment methods in order to avoid the control that banks have over their money. This removes fees, waiting times and other nasty surprises that come with utilizing banks for exchanges and trades.
This becomes a little more difficult when it comes to digital currencies as it is the centralized exchanges where these coins mostly operate that hold all the cards.
There are of course services, like LocalBitcoins that aim to solve this as a peer-to-peer network is set up in localized areas. But what about the boom of altcoins and the desire for quick exchanges?
Globalized locality
Qvolta has taken on an ambitious project, to try and compete with the hegemony of exchanges, trying to improve on LocalBitcoins’ market space.
Qvolta’s aim is to make buying and selling cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, as basic as a peer-to-peer trade. If they can succeed at this, Qvolta believes they will attract a large portion of the new booming market currently left out by the complicated nature of digital currency.
A peer-to-peer marketplace will ideally be set up by Qvolta that lets buyers and sellers put their coins up at a fixed price, rather than one defined by constantly moving markets. As such, the belief is people will be attracted to a simple click-and-buy/sell system.
In essence, the idea is similar to LocalBitcoins, as on Qvolta the parties can agree to the payment method, including credit card, bank transfer, but as well as trickier ones like PayPal, Skrill and other well-known digital payment methods.
The guarantor
Qvolta expects to take things a little further by acting as a bit of a big brother in the middle. By inserting itself as a guarantor for the trades executed on the platform, Qvolta will ensure payments and trades, but without actually taking control of the funds.
Although Qvolta doesn't hold fiat money, it may have many worrying that they are indeed acting a little too much like a centralized bank for instance. Their belief is that this protection will allow for the idea of ‘LocalBitcoin’ to go global.
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