The South Korean government aims to impose additional regulations to cryptocurrency exchanges, including identity requirements.
In the wake of the Youbit hack in early December, government officials have performed onsite inspections of all the major cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea. Regulators concluded that security measures were inadequate, and announced on Thursday that additional measures will be put in place, including an end to anonymous cryptocurrency trading accounts.
Private exchanges are still account for low volume
While regulations on exchanges make anonymity increasingly difficult, a number of alternatives exist for traders seeking to maintain their privacy. However, at present activity is relatively low across these platforms. Accounting purely for Bitcoin due to a lack of available data for the rest of the market, LocalBitcoins accounted for about $134 million in peer-to-peer trades this last week. Paxful, which allows some private options for buying such as Western Union and Amazon gift cards, accounted for about $9.88 million. Finally, peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading client Bisq, the most decentralized option available, amounted to only $587,000. Altogether that makes about $144.4 million for the week.
Meanwhile, across centralized exchanges, Bitcoin counted over $12 billion in 24-hour volume, compared to decentralized exchanges approximately $20.6 million. This means that decentralized and private means of acquiring Bitcoin only amount to 0.17% of total volume.
Dash’s private buying economy is still small, but multiple options exist
The peer-to-peer trading economy is relatively underdeveloped, and that tends to ring even more true as it extends to newer coins. While Dash is still predominantly traded on larger centralized exchanges, a wide variety of peer-to-peer, decentralized, and private options remain. Dashous, DashNearby, and LiberalCoins, while currently low in volume, offer options to buy and sell Dash peer-to-peer. Wall of Coins, likely the most used of all options, allows a more streamlined experience for peer-to-peer buying and selling through a simplified escrow system. Finally, trading client Bisq also supports Dash as a base currency.
