Blockchain projects are well-known for touting their appreciation for privacy. Yet, ironically, the exchanges that support the trade of tokens, that funded privacy-friendly projects, demand extensive amounts of personal information.

While not all exchanges demand a through KYC check (most do), surpassing a certain amount of daily volume requires disclosure of private data. In many cases, surpassing a certain volume limit even requires proof of funds, residence, and provision of extended KYC documentation. All of this doesn’t particularly align with the privacy-cautious Crypto community. Yet, there’s no choice but to put up with these demands as the only alternative to data-demanding centralized exchanges is decentralized exchanges—hold on, even the leading DEX will soon demand documents.

Given the trend of thing, John McAfee, perhaps the most privacy-sensitive person in the Crypto community, and a few other industry titans are working with Ethershift, an exchange dedicated to taking to disclosing no private information from the user.

Exchange Breaches

The Crypto community is quick to take note of the data breaches that take place every year and point out how blockchain technology is the solution. It’s important to note that exchange breaches are just as common; the difference is that exchange breaches are mainly talked of due to the loss of coins that place, but there’s just as much valuable data at risk.

Exchanges aren’t storing our data on decentralized ledgers; if they were, they’d be quick to point it out to score some easy PR points. Instead, this information is at risk of theft and given how often even major exchanges face wallet breaches, it’s not odd to presume that exchanges’ user data is at risk of theft.

Interestingly, Ethershift isn’t pointing its main purpose to counter the risk of data theft prone to existing exchanges. Rather, this new exchange aims to just provide a user-centric experience. Privacy just happens to be one of the premier user-centric pillars of the startup.

Revolving Around You

A very few people have the luxury to afford OTC agents. Those who can face the extreme convenience of not having to find order books that can provide liquidity for their orders; they simply call a trade agent who goes on to settle the buy or sell side and then just fills the order on behalf of the client.

While the wealthy may seek this service for filling out massive orders of established coins, the everyday Crypto holder faces liquidity problems with bags of lesser-known tokens.

Ethershift takes up the task to list any token the day it is listed; this is an ambition that is unlikely to be fulfilled given the pace with which coins are being added to CMC. It is, though, still likely that they can add an abundance of tokens at a rapid pace. As new tokens face limited liquidity, Ethershfit will take up the task to locate liquidity for these tokens for the traders that intend to fill orders with pairs of these tokens. This becomes somewhat easy as Ethershift allows a trader to create a custom trade pair and thus new tokens can be swapped for any other tokens, thereby easing the process of finding buy-side liquidity.

The prime goal of the exchange is to make anonymous trading as easy as possible.

No accounts—simply head to the exchange, choose your order pair, and trade as you would with a typical DEX, the difference being that liquidity issues will be handled by the exchange and the UI/UX would be up to par with modern-day platforms.

Exchanges are Turning into Banks

Exchanges have become incredible profitable, centralized entities. While the blockchain is intended to disrupt the financial system, the most established companies that cater to its community our becoming quite similar to banks.

Crypto exchanges are highly profit-driven and the new trend of private data demands, forced exclusivity of listings, and preferential treatment of institutional clients shows exchanges have become the banks of the Crypto market. An exceptional amount of power is flowing into the hands of exchanges and while banks give ownership to stake to anyone as most of them publicly listed, exchanges only allow stakes via utility tokens---no ownership stake.

Its good to see that, with Ethershift, there’s a turn away from the above-described trend and a stronger focus on uplifting the traits that are characteristic of the blockchain community. Hopefully more exchanges are going to value users’ privacy while exerting a greater focus on being more trader-centric.