Square’s tbDEX Decentralized Bitcoin Exchange to Fight Financial Inequality
U.S. digital payment company Square has debuted plans for a decentralized bitcoin exchange, tbDEX, according to an 18-page white paper by the company.
The paper says tbDEX is a protocol “for discovering liquidity and exchanging assets (such as bitcoin, fiat money, or real-world goods) when the existence of social trust is an intractable element of managing transaction risk.”
It goes on to describe the way tbDEX will be able to make infrastructure for a network of on- and off-ramps to make connections between fiat and crypto systems.
This will allow crypto assets and decentralized financial services to become more accessible to everyone.
In the white paper, Square posits that the financial system is at a “crossroads,” where the new kinds of decentralized networks can make it possible for a world of commerce without financial intermediaries.
The report says that the tbDEX innovation intends to fight back against the fact that 1.7 billion adults around the world don’t have access to a banking system, and that instead, those people could benefit from access to mobile finance services.
TbDEX was formed as a way to help get more inclusion, and the white paper says the way bitcoin and other cryptos have developed is “still beyond the reach” of many — going though a centralized exchange requires numerous asset transfers, transaction fees and other gatekeeping aspects.
So tbDEX purports to be able to make an easier way to get access to various forms of currency, with a secure exchange and regulatory compliance.
Square has also recently rolled out an app to let online sellers take high-quality product photos from a mobile device, syncing them to a Square item catalog or online store. The idea came from the fact that retail merchants have said that 94% of their first orders came with product images.
Read more: Square New Photo App Links Images to Merchant's Store, Catalog