Review of Bisq Decentralized trading platform

Bisq is an app that you download to your computer and uses the Tor network to offer private bitcoin and altcoin trading.

Our first impression is that Bisq is NOT for the bitcoin novice. The setup process is complicated. There is substantial documentation but the setup is very involved and it would be easy to make a mistake.

The pluses for Bisq is that it is amazingly anonymous and allows a psuedo escrow for bitcoin trading with arbitration in case of a dispute

One issue is for Bisq to work, your ads to stay up, your computer must stay online. If your computer disconnects from the internet, so do your ads.

That also means any bitcoin you want to sell has to be locked into a wallet you can’t take with you. You put your btc in the bisq wallet. You can’t take your laptop with you because your ads go down the moment it goes offline.

The biggest issue with Bisq is that they warn when setting up a “Face2Face” ad that unless there is undeniable proof of what happened, your coin can be locked in that escrow forever. They say they will leave it locked until both parties come to an agreement.

Think about that for a second. A scammer opens a trade for 1BTC and agrees to meet you but never shows up. He can lie and make up stories saying he was there. He can say you took his money and didn’t give him the coin. Then they lock your coin forever. Unless you can get security footage of the parking lot you where supposed to meet in, there is no way to prove he wasn’t there. The scammer hasn’t lost anything but you have lost it all.

Bisq may be work for online trades but it isn’t the Localbitcoins replacement everyone is looking for.

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