Waves DEX new killer-feature: Monero (XMR) trading 🤩Monero-strength Bitcoin Tumbling, fully decentralized 🤩

I've never thought much of Waves until now, after reading the latest news that it is now possible to trade Monero (XMR) on the Waves Decentralized Exchange. That means that for the first time, as far as I know, it is now possible to trade Monero (XMR) in a decentralized manner that maintains privacy. I believe this is huge.

MONERO-STRENGTH BITCOIN TUMBLER

Bitcoin? Monero? I thought we were talking about Waves? Bear with me. It's almost counter-intuitive to think that Waves' killer feature may in fact be the solution of one of the biggest problems of two other major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC) and Monero (XMR).

Monero (XMR) is well-known for being the king of privacy coins, offering the most innovative and serious privacy features of any cryptocurrency in the market. Monero anonymizes practically every aspect of handling the currency, and is even going as far as creating wallets that automatically shield IP addresses and so on. No matter how good your privacy features are, however, there has always been one problem with Monero: You can't spend it anywhere really. In order to spend your Monero you usually end up going to an exchange to trade it for BTC which you can then spend, but by going through the exchange you sacrifice all of the privacy that Monero offered.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is the most widely adopted cryptocurrency in the world and any merchant that accepts crypto will primarily accept Bitcoin. It also has a problem though: Lack of anonymity. Since the blockchain is 100% transparant and traceable, anyone can trace all your financial history completely back to where you originally purchased your first Bitcoin from. Thanks to KYC on exchanges, your privacy is easily done away with.

It would be great if there was a way to somehow be able to trade XMR with BTC and vice versa, without having to sacrifice your privacy due to KYC!

Fortunately, that is exactly what Waves Exchange now offers, and that is huge if you ask me.

HOW IT WORKS

Waves DEX is like any other DEX, you only need to a private key in order to access and start trading. Waves even has FIAT gateways that do require KYC, but crypto-to-crypto is completely pseudonymous. I say pseudonymous, and not anonymous, because the Waves blockchain is transparant as well. That does not really matter in the grand scheme of things. Let me explain.

Anonymizing Bitcoin: If you have Bitcoin and fear your financial privacy has been compromised and you want it back, there is now a way. You start by depositing your Bitcoin to your Waves exchange wallet. Once it is there, you make the trade into Monero. You then withdraw your Monero from the Waves exchange. You now own anonymous Monero. Now you make a second Waves Exchange account, unrelated to the first. You deposit your Monero to this second account, and then you trade it back into Bitcoin. You now withdraw your Bitcoin to a new, fresh wallet. There is now no way to trace your original Bitcoin address to the new Bitcoin address, and you have regained your privacy.

Anonymous spending of Monero: Since you can make as many accounts on Waves as you want, and none of them require KYC, this means you can easily deposit Monero and trade it on the exchange for Bitcoin, which is then anonymous per the above. You now have spendable crypto, that is still secured by the privacy of Monero.

Essentially, by providing non-KYC trading between BTC<->XMR, Waves has set up a Bitcoin Tumbler with the privacy strength of Monero: an absolute killer-feature and definitive upgrade for both cryptocurrencies.

I have never thought much of Waves before and have often dismissed it, but with their addition of Monero trading I think they've finally done something that has seriously captured my attention. At the same time I have serious concerns regarding the legality of this all with regards to AML regulations - I imagine this is a good way for hackers to anonymize stolen BTC and get away with the theft. Or perhaps there are aspects of the Waves Exchange that I'm not familiar with, like IP logging or something similar. Perhaps one of you ( @cryptotem ?! 😉 ) can tell me more about this. If it works the way I think it does, I would not be surprised to see regulators go after this at some point.

Still, XMR interoperability is a big step forward, since it essentially gives these two cryptocurrencies access to the features of the other. And when it comes to privacy, there is simply no better choice than Monero.

I know this Waves article did not mention Waves much at all, but the underlying message I'm trying to convey with this post is that Waves went from 'just another DEX attempt that nobody uses' to 'the only way to decentrally trade Monero' which is a huge use-case. Waves just got a lot more serious and interesting in my eyes. XMR doesn't show up on Coinmarketcap yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it quickly turned into one of the most traded crypto's on the Waves Exchange.

Click here to visit the Waves platform

By the way, Monero (XMR) is awesome. Besides Bitcoin and Ethereum, Monero actually has the most innovative development going on of all the cryptocurrencies. The deeper I delve in, the more I am falling in love with the project.