Centralized exchanges and gateways are a huge liability to the Nu network.
After all these recent hits: BTER, Excoin, CCEDK, I think it would be fair to say Nu should focus on decentralized exchanges where possible (NXT MGW, Mercury, Coinffeine, etc)
Looking forward to Mercury moving into Beta and becoming a viable alternative to centralized exchanges. Check this out:
i don’t see how fiat tradings can be decentrilized!
coinffeine will use payment processors! (fail)
i don’t like payment processors or fiat
what i like is to pay and be payed with cryptos, that’s all
It is impossible to match trades on a blockchain, such that a central exchange will not be vastly more efficient. Each block can produce only one efficient price. Exchanges match in realtime. Exchange matches between N people in a fair order, while blockchains generally allow the transfer between 2 people (1:1 or multisig).
There are many reasons why decentral exchanges in the current model of just using blocks for matching trades can’t work. Nxt MGW makes a bit more sense, because it does not have blocks. Also there is no AML/KYC - which means there can’t be any fiat trades. Ripple is somewhat of a competitor to Nu and has a completely different topology, but aims at being an exchange of sorts. It’s not clear what decentral exchanges could even look like. One needs a lot of knowledge of exchanges, and can’t just take a blockchain and tags things on to it. Blockchains are designed for a completely different purpose. While Nxt allows to issue assets and match trades in a decentral way, it also shows the limitations.