The following is a contributed article from a content partner of Benzinga
One of the main challenges currently seen in the blockchain industry is the difficulty of finding reliable crypto on/off ramps around the world. While transacting cryptocurrency is fast and relatively easy, it is not always easy to convert it back into a local currency. This is true even in the United States, Europe, and Asia where only a handful of exchanges in each offer direct bank transaction support.
One startup, XanPool, is looking to solve this issue and help bridge the gap between traditional and crypto banking by providing a unique omnichannel solution to make the onboarding and offboarding process in crypto much more user friendly and resilient against single channel dependency. They do this by integrating retail, institutions, and crypto and fiat liquidity providers into the XanPool Network.
XanPool’s CEO, Jeffery Liu, has been active in the industry since 2013 and has seen the industry evolve and grow to where it is today. Despite the advances that have been made, Liu has not seen a major improvement in the way users buy, sell, and change cryptocurrencies with fiat currencies. This was a major pain point that eventually led him to found XanPool and directly find a solution with Asia as a main focus.
“Simply put, XanPool is Plaid meets Local Bitcoins,” said Liu. “We’ve built the integrations into local banking and payment infrastructure so that users can transact peer-to-peer (P2P) automatically. This means customers transact directly with each other, while our software makes sure that both sides get their assets instantly. There is no custody risk in this model compared to traditional exchanges.”
Recently, XanPool has finished the development of its newly launched Liquidity Portal, which according to Liu, is a product the market has been waiting on for a long time.
“XanPool’s Liquidity Portal is a product built on top of our P2P fiat gateway. It requires XanPool to integrate with a specific exchange, DEX or liquidity pool (like Uniswap). This will allow our existing users to both buy and sell tokens that the P2P counterparty participants support and buy and sell any of the coins that the specific exchange supports, directly via their own local currency.”
The Liquidity Portal is targeting a well-known pain point across Asia. “Buying altcoins that are not top 5 cryptocurrencies in a local currency across Asia is very troublesome,” Liu said. “Usually, the person has to purchase Bitcoin first, then transfer the Bitcoin to a specific exchange or DEX, and then purchase an altcoin with Bitcoin. This process is true even in Hong Kong — a first-world financial hub. In developing markets, the process would be even more complex and fee ridden. Our Liquidity Portal allows any person in any of the regions we support to directly purchase a non-top 5 altcoin, directly with their local currency. Once they wish to sell, they can sell that altcoin directly into their local currency.”
XanPool currently supports Hong Kong, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and India. “By the end of the year, we aim to also support Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. This includes our non-custodial fiat gateway, as well as our Liquidity Portal,” Liu added.
Liu believes that the future of crypto lies in the removal of counter-parties. In this, he is incredibly excited about the recent growth in DEXes (Decentralized Exchanges).
“Once someone already owns cryptocurrency and simply wants to transact in the realm of crypto, they should not have to onboard into a centralized exchange that comes with data breach risks, custody risks, and lack of transparency. The future for non-custodial crypto to crypto trading is inevitable,” Liu explained. “We will continue to build, research, and deploy new and antifragile fiat gateway technology in the industry, truly realizing the aim of what Bitcoin and crypto were invented for, the reducing of financial intermediaries.”
Image courtesy of XanPool
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