Over the past few months, cryptocurrencies have received a tremendous amount of attention from the broader fintech community. With Bitcoin soaring past USD $15,000 and dozens of fledgling companies entering the blockchain battlefield, support for the technology has reached an all time high. There is, however, still an incredible amount of work needed to be done before we see the consumerization and wide-scale adoption of digital assets.
One of the biggest points of friction, plaguing the community, is just how inaccessible coin ownership is to the everyday consumer. There are no secure, standardized marketplaces for users to efficiently buy and sell their digital assets. Without liquidity and stability, cryptocurrencies will never reach consumer scale.
Cointal, the world’s first peer-to-peer cryptocurrency marketplace, hopes to bring crypto to the masses by simplifying the process of purchasing and selling coins. In the past 2 months, they have done over 15 million in trading volume. Their platform, trusted by both experienced and novice traders alike, is extremely intuitive to use and easy to onboard. They have eliminated the hassle of dealing with complicated fees and restrictions, empowering the user with an all-in-one platform to conduct transactions.
Our plan is to restore freedom in the cryptocurrency community by giving power back to the people,” says Mohammed Imad G, Cointal’s CEO and founder. “After experimenting with other makeshift solutions, we saw a clear opportunity to simply give users what they want: a versatile, stable, and secure platform for trading cryptocurrencies.”
Much like a traditional fiat exchange, sellers can easily post their coin offerings to reach thousands of interested buyers within minutes. Buyers can then query the open Cointal marketplace for deals that match their specific requirements. To make the purchase, buyers can choose from a number of payment options, including credit/debit card, bank transfer, Paypal, and Western Union. After the terms are agreed upon by both parties, the transaction goes through a multi-signature, on-chain escrow process that validates the payment.
This portal is monitored and regulated by a third-party service that authenticates the identity of each participant, protecting stakeholders against phishing, spamming, and fraud. As a further form of protection, each and every transaction conducted on the platform is insured with a refund policy, by Cointal, to prevent cyber-hacking. And should some bug or issue come up, Cointal provides a number of 24/7, international support functions, like live chat and that help users find solutions quickly. They have also announced a formal partnership with BitGo, one of the leaders in cryptocurrency enablement, to provide their users with a secured, digital wallet to store their assets.
They are in the midst of preparing the highly anticipated launch of their unity service, that enables users to buy and sell a variety of currencies, including Ripple, IOTA, Bitcoin Cash, etc., using credits cards, ACH bank transfer, and paypal. This is a massive leap forward for the community that widens access to a variety of new entrants.
For the Cointal team, security, convenience and accessibility are more than just complementary features. Rather, they are foundational components of their marketplace that will breed a long
term advantage for years to come.
“Being active in the crypto-community for a while now, we are more than familiar with the legacy process of buying and selling coins,” says Cointal’s Chief Technology Officer, Ahmed Serghini. “Having done our fair share of trading in the past, we became sick and tired of dealing with the abusive charges, lack of transparency and tedious technicalities we continued to find on alternative platforms. Broadly, we knew there must be a better way to make this industry more efficient and optimized. So we decided to build it ourselves.”
Their platform has already begun to receive massive support from the cryptocurrency community, as they have successful facilitated thousands of transactions. Their vision, however, is far larger.
While their platform already allows users to exchange with popular coins, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ripple, Ethereum and Litecoin, their long term mission is to provide a trading hub for each and every currency imaginable. Soon, they will integrate with trending tokens like Dash, NEO, and Ethereum Classic to provide the most encompassing experience for users.
“We are really building something the first of its kind,” says Serghini. “We do not want to rush it, but we are very optimistic in thinking that we can achieve global scale for our platform in the near term future.”
Along with a plan to build out an “Amazon-like” blockchain marketplace, Cointal also revealed they will soon be opening up an API endpoint that grants third parties the ability to integrate with the Cointal wallet. “Cointal as a service” enablement will allow developers and ecommerce stores to begin accepting digital currencies after deploying just a few lines of code. This would be a massive leap forward for both consumers and enterprises, empowering a whole new generation of shopping with digital assets.
As Cointal accelerates their vision of bringing industry-grade accessibility and security to this nascent space, it will be interesting to see how the masses respond.
With momentum building, and more resources pouring into the space, the question is quickly becoming less about “if cryptocurrencies will reach the public” and rather about when. It will be interesting to see which players emerge as victors as competition heats up.
