Bitcoin Forum

Coinffeine has announced that they are already in real-money closed beta and will be in open beta in a few weeks.

http://blog.coinffeine.com/2015/06/17/objective-bitcoin-exchange-china-during-summer/

They aim to have a fully working exchange, that is accessible in 70 countries (including China) from day 1.

Coinffeine allows you to trade bitcoins for fiat, with a full order book, limit and market orders, etc... with No Account Needed. No registration. No giving up personal data.

They never control your coins! You hold them at all times in your own wallet, with your private keys known only to you.


We have been waiting for this for such a long time! It's finally almost here.

(You do have to trust the payment processor that holds the fiat, but you will be able to pick from a number of them... )

Hi, do you know if there are some possibility to add bitcoins-altcoins exchange in it?

There is, but it is not the current development priority.

http://blog.coinffeine.com/2015/06/24/using-coinffeine-with-real-money-first-experiences/

Looks good, I will try it after it launches.

Open Beta launching this week.

This would be great, please post the website link here when done or send it via PM, I will also like to see different form of fiat like perfectmoney, okpay and the rest on your website when lunched.

Hmm..

The Technical WIKI says you need to create a REFUNDABLE BTC deposit.. This is currently NOT possible with Bitcoin as you have TXN malleability issues.. ? They don't mention this in 'Threats and Mitigation' section. 

Also - they say you need to use a FIAT payment processor that does not support chargebacks.. That's up to the BANKS isn't it ? I don't know of any fiat processor that does this. And if you need to use Kraken or another exchange, they WILL require KYC ?

And finally - in the example they use 100 steps to transfer $100 - $1 at a time.. the fees on that will be monstrous.. since the min fee will be a huge amount of the $1 transfers ?

Transferring 1BTC in 100 steps will incur 100 * fees. This is not a small amount.

I really hope they can get this to work, it's way cool, but currently, i don't see it..  ???

How to participate?

You can go to the site, here: http://www.coinffeine.com/

Download links!

http://www.coinffeine.com/download.html

I tried it yesterday. It works!

It takes some getting used to because instead of waiting days to verify an account and wire money to an exchange, but then having instant order execution, with Coinffeine you don't need to register or verify, you can be using it right away... but orders take time (10-20 minutes) to be executed (because they have to wait for blocks to be confirmed).

http://blog.coinffeine.com/2015/07/21/coinffeine-launches-worlds-first-decentralized-bitcoin-exchange-70-countries/

Instrunctions for Okpay:
http://support.coinffeine.com/knowledgebase/articles/626628-how-to-set-up-your-okpay-account-in-coinffeine

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKcA4KuUMAA8Q05.jpg:large

30 peers online

I've downloaded it for archlinux.. was trying to register for okpay but they require like 5 types of verification and they have really high withdrawal fees; (3% USD + 5 USD to visa/mastercard) thats 35 USD per 1000 usd

Do you have the addition of other payment processors in the roadmap? OKPay doesn't support US users at the moment.

Does anyone have any pointers as to how they get "refundable transactions" working if lock_time transactions can fail to be redeemable when they become final due to malleability?  Or have I missundstood something?

Only those payment processors can be added to Coinffeine, which fulfils the following criteria...

i. FIAT payment is irreversible.

ii. An API that notifies instantly about send/receive of FIAT along with the amount associated.

Is there any such payment processor in USA ?

OKpay balance is _.__EUR in Coinffeine but I have EUR in my OKpay wallet.

Changed wallet - deleted user-settings.conf went through setup wizard again.

Still no EUR

I think that you can do up to $300 without verification.

Same thing happened to me. Try this:


Input your OKPay account ID and password manually.

Thanks for the info.

Tried this, even setup a wallet just for Coinffeine. Still getting _.__EUR

Watching  8)

I have bought a few bitcents and I have sold some. It seems to work fine, with a few delays. I have never waited so intently for block confirmations!

It seems that orders go from submitting --> in market --> matching --> processing --> completed

...but if my computer goes to sleep in the meantime, it seems that I have to start all over again. Once order is "matching" you have to wait for a block confirmation for it to go into "processing".


Can somebody from the @Coinffeine team please confirm what happens to orders if you drop off at any of these stages?

When do you lose the BTC escrow?

What happens if an order is only partially filled?

Why can't you cancel market orders like you can cancel limit orders?

Another important thing.. don't forget to set your OKPay "publicity level" to anonymous.. otherwise your Coinffeine counterparties will see your name in their activity log!


...and also set your options to not show your e-mail address!

Hello!

Yes, there are many payment processors like that in USA. For example Dwolla, PayPal, etc. Yes!, PayPal. After talk with them we will integrate PayPal in Coinffeine soon using non reversible payments.

Regards,

Please check this manual to configure your okpay account manually:

http://support.coinffeine.com/knowledgebase/articles/626628-how-to-set-up-your-okpay-account-in-coinffeine

Regards,

You are right, the status go from submitting --> in market --> matching --> processing --> completed.

An order should go from "in progress" to "in market" and keep in this state if there is no orders matching with your order. When te order is in state "in market" it is just waiting for a cross.

<<Can somebody from the @Coinffeine team please confirm what happens to orders if you drop off at any of these stages?>>

You can cancel your order safely in any moment if there is no active exchanges. The cancel button is disabled when Coinffeine cannot cancel an order because there are active exchanges, so if you are able of clicking the "cancel" button you can cancel the order.
You'll never lose your deposit (2€ in bitcoins) for cancelling an order because orders cannot be cancelled when they are in progress.

If you shutdown Coinffeine app or your computer in the middle of an exchange, the app will continue when you get back. If you don't get back in more than 24h you'll lose your deposit for the exchange in progress: an amount of money of 2€ in bitcoins.

Regards,

<<The Technical WIKI says you need to create a REFUNDABLE BTC deposit.. This is currently NOT possible with Bitcoin as you have TXN malleability issues.. ? They don't mention this in 'Threats and Mitigation' section. >>

This is currently possible with Bitcoin. We are not using the same definition of "refundable deposit" as defined in the Bitcoin wiki.
The malleability issues might affect to exchanges in some cases but it doesn't affect to Coinffeine. Please read about the Coinffeine protocol, what is transaction malleability and how it can be exploited.
https://github.com/Coinffeine/coinffeine/wiki/Exchange-algorithm

<<Also - they say you need to use a FIAT payment processor that does not support chargebacks.. That's up to the BANKS isn't it ? I don't know of any fiat processor that does this. And if you need to use Kraken or another exchange, they WILL require KYC ?>>

All FIAT payments are reversible. We are using payment methods without a arbitration process. In the real life this means "a not reversible payment" and people are using Okpay and Paypal for buying large amount of bitcoins in LocalBitcoins for example.

https://localbitcoins.com/buy-bitcoins-online/usd/paypal/
https://localbitcoins.com/buy-bitcoins-online/usd/okpay/

Think about it.

PayPal invoices is an example of a payment method which is not valid for buying bitcoins, but there are other payment methods in paypal or many other payment processors we can use. By now we are using OkPay and we held meetings many payment processors to discuss about this point, including PayPal.

<<And finally - in the example they use 100 steps to transfer $100 - $1 at a time.. the fees on that will be monstrous.. since the min fee will be a huge amount of the $1 transfers ? >>

Buying 1BTC/100€ in coinffeine has a total fee of 0% for the seller and 0.5% (okpay fees) for te buyer. Try to do the same operation in Coinbase and you will get 1% fee for the buyer and 1% fee for the seller.
So at this moment Coinffeine is 100% cheaper than Coinbase for bitcoin sellers and 50% cheaper for buyers.

This is because transferring 10€ in many transactions of 2€ has a fee of 0.5% for each 2€, which is the same as 0.5% for the total amount.

This is great news! I will download and have a play.

Its success will be based on the fiat options that are offered. OKPay alone won't cut it.

The Coinffeine devs have promised to add other payment processors soon. In theory this tech could be integrated with any system which allows irreversible transfers... including local bank wire settlement systems in some countries.


Which payment processors would you most like to see added?

How do "refundable transactions" deal with malleability?

Followed the manual to configure okpay manually - same result - _.__EUR

Deleted ~/.coinffeine/ started again - coinffeine retrieved the id and token correctly (I checked user-settings.conf) - same result - _.__EUR

Set up different wallet manually and checked user-settings.conf - same result - _.__EUR

I would like to test and use this new service.

Software was installed via https://aur4.archlinux.org/packages/coinffeine/

It's just the list of countries where OKPay works. You'll probably have to dig into their TOS to find it:
https://www.okpay.com/

More countries should be added as other payment processors are...

So far I've done about 10 transactions on Coinffeine. The system seems to work really well, especially with the update to v. 0.11.
http://www.coinffeine.com/download.html


Obviously the one problem right now is that liquidity is tiny. You can buy or sell BTC0.10 , but there isn't enough of a bid-ask that you can easily buy or sell BTC1.00.

Hopefully that will change as more traders start trying it. It is definitely faster, easier and safer than other P2P exchanges like localbitcoins... with none of the hassle of having to worry about a trader's reputation or wait hours for the funds to clear.

Plus it's really amazing that Coinffeine does not ask you for a single piece of personal information. They don't hold your funds and cannot block them, nor do they have access to your private keys. So it is impossible to be "Goxxed" by Coinffeine. (You still have to trust your payment processor.... )

Hmmm.. I was just told that OKPay does not work for US citizens...


Can anybody from the US confirm this?

Localbitcoins, Kraken, Bitfinex, Paxful... all have left New York because of the dreaded BitLicense.

At the same time, the guys at Coinffeine a P2P exchange that is uncensorable and works like Bittorrent, complain that they do not have enough beta testers and that there is tiny liquidity on their market because they don't know how to get traders to try it out.

So here I am making a call to any Bitcoin trader from New York, Germany, China or any of the other jurisdictions that have restricted access to download the Coinffeine Beta and place a limit order on the market, even if it is at a price that will not be executed.

For maximum effect let's all do so at the same time: Thursday 13th August at 11 am New York Time.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3gquau/bitcoin_has_no_borders_neither_should_a_bitcoin/

hmmm... New York might be a problem as long as they only use OKPay:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CMPKJouVEAA_NcV.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CMPKJoPUkAUHsMk.jpg

Although there is an easy workaround, especially since you can do up to $300 without verifying or providing PoA... still, not optimal.

Hopefully they will add more payment processors soon.

Interview with the Coinffeine team:
https://www.bitcoin.com/news/coinffeine-next-gen-bitcoin-exchange/

I have been trying Coinffeine since they launched their open beta. I am quite surprised by how few nodes are running and how few orders there are on the order book. I have been thinking why... so here's my take. I wish the Coinffeine guys the best, please take this as constructive criticism!


Why are potential users not trying out Coinffeine?


1. Must install a desktop program.
This is a massive turnoff for casual users and bitcoin newbies (but these potential users don't care much about decentralised exchanges anyway).

2. Only OKPay available as payment processor.
This excludes (in theory) US users which are still a very large part of the Bitcoin world.
It also excludes users who do not like OKPay's KYC and lack of user privacy (which is one big reason to go P2P in the first place)

3. It takes an average of 20 minutes to execute an order (Must wait for 1 block confirmation to open payment channel)
This excludes any high frequency traders or anyone who needs an immediate one-click execution.

4. Low liquidity. It is hard to buy/sell more than a few bitcents right now.
Excludes everyone. (but should be easy to fix)


The good news is that 2. and 4. should be easy to fix for the Coinffeine team. They just need to get a few market makers in there and add other payment processors... which they have promised are coming soon.

So if Coinffeine manages to solve 4. they should be able to compete with Localbitcoins.com at least for those users that already use OKPay... and actually offer better value since Coinffeine's execution time is faster than LBC and there are no escrow or account blocking issues that are often the case with LBC, as well as no scammers.

Eventually, as they fix 2. by adding other payment methods they will be able to reach a much larger market.

They might even be able to fix 3.... although that would take a lot more work and increasing their use of multisig escrow....

this is pretty cool!

They really need to add a table of the order book instead of the graph.

Nice and very good news  ;) Hope new BTC exchange will start to work soon  ;D

Most exchanges have both depth chart and order table. See:
https://www.kraken.com/charts

Also, a history of executed trades is very useful (for charts and adding to http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ )

Right now, all that Coinffeine would need to start getting traction is to beat the localbitcoins EUR Bid-Ask:

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/localbtcEUR.html

https://localbitcoins.com/buy-bitcoins-online/eur/okpay/
https://localbitcoins.com/sell-bitcoins-online/eur/okpay


If we believe the numbers on bitcoincharts, LocalbtcEUR does an average volume of BTC 300 a day. That is a juicy market for a startup in beta....


(Of course localbtcUSd does BTC 3000+ a day, so adding $ should be a no-brainer next step if they manage to get € working...http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/localbtcUSD.html).

Wow!

This:
https://twitter.com/coinffeine/status/638284866455490560

So i need an OKpay account to collect my API token? registration process is not clear.

Apparently Coinffeine is already working on integrating Paypal. There is Paypal irreversible transaction system called  "Send money to friends or family" which would make it possible to use Coinffeine's market in incremental, api-driven, low-risk payments in the same way that they already do with OKPay.

https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/helpcenter/helphub/article/?solutionId=FAQ2398

No, it will not work. Even "Send money to friends or family" is revertible, I assure you.

Then I don't understand what they intend to use. I guess we'll have to wait from somebody from Coinffeine to come out with an official announcement...

Apparently Coinffeine is closing shop.


Hopefully somebody will pick up where they left off and make some use of their open source software to build a fully functional, liquid decentralised exchange.

The good thing about open source projects is that they can survive the company that started them. Let's hope that this is what happens here:

https://github.com/Coinffeine/coinffeine

We still very much need a decentralised p2p exchange which does not touch user BTC or $. We still need an exchange that is global, distributed and uncensorable.

It is easy to forget that most of the early Bitcoin exchanges were hacked, went broke or ran off with user funds.

I think you addressed all the major reasons for Coinffeine not getting too much traction. If 2 and 4 are being worked on that's great news. The time it takes (3) is the other issue I've heard but 20 minutes is not that bad. I heard it was hours or days. Installing a desktop app is not a problem at all.

Yeah in theory, 3 is not that bad at all... With circle it takes usually 3-4 days to get coins in and that's business days too.  20 minutes is not bad at all compared to other exchanges.  I've just heard about this though, where would one go to download the app? Is the program still in beta?

Coinffeine (the company) is shutting down, as often happens with startups. However the software is open source and distributed, so it can work even if its creators disappear as long as there are a couple of peers running it.

They have taken down the download links on the website:   http://coinffeine.com/download.html

...but the last version 0.12.0 is on github:
https://github.com/Coinffeine/coinffeine

How do you know this? It doesn't mention it any where on their blog.

Wow. This is sad. I didn't know anything about them shutting down, it's a pity because they put in so much good work.

Can anyone confirm this or not??

I saw the CEO during the Barcelona Blockchain Week. He confirmed it.

It is very sad.

An exchange which never touches customer funds (neither BTC nor fiat) and therefore has no legal liability, as well as being global and uncensorable seems absolutely necessary to make Bitcoin more resilient.

The good news is that even if Coinffeine (the company) disappears, their software still works. It just needs users.

I urge anyone who can to get the code for v. 0.12.0 from github, compile it, run a couple of peers and try a few transactions. https://github.com/Coinffeine/coinffeine

I was working on similar software myself (p2p cryptocurrency exchange) and ended up having to shut down as well.

I think what it comes down to is this: consumers care about convenience and speed more than they care about security and decentralization. They will obviously care about security if the Bitcoin exchange gets hacked but that's really something that only becomes evident when it happens (and it's happening a lot less with properly run, venture-backed exchanges.) So really, if the only benefit p2p exchange software can offer to consumers is security (which can also be done by centralized exchanges - as mentioned), and that benefit is completely invisible: then from the consumer's perspective there is literally no reason to use p2p exchange software (Coinffeine had low fees but there will always be some fees when doing fiat exchange.)

In the end Coinffeine didn't fail because they had a bad team, a lack of funding, poor execution, or anything of the sort. They failed because people want things fast and easy, and security slows that down. That is: people don't want p2p exchanges (but love to say they do.) It turns out what people actually want is a properly run centralized exchange that isn't hacked every week (and there are plenty of those now.)

Last but not least: the final reason a p2p exchange won't work comes down to marketing. It's hard enough to get people buying coins and "exchange" sounds scary enough as it is. Some people have smartly called their exchange a "wallet" but that probably doesn't help much when exchange is what everyone searches for. Could lead to confusion, so lets just say there's enough education to have people search for exchange. What exactly is a p2p exchange? Sounds weird and scary. And why do I have to download it? But lets assume they do download it: an exchange requires volume to be an exchange. So exchanges that are already established and have the most volume are going to be far more useful than those that aren't. There is a network effect at play here: everyone tries to sell on the most established exchanges and a p2p exchange would need to someone win those customers to be competitive.

tl; dr, true p2p exchange is dead.

It looks like a very good idea but I don't think it has enough traction.

I agree with many of the points that you make. In fact I never saw the main advantage of this to be for final users, but rather for b2b and professionals. If you run a website that sells bitcoins in a fast and convenient way to consumers... and you are buying/selling those bitcoins from a centralised exchange... or if you manage a number of ATMs... then you do care a lot about security.

Another clear advantage is the uncensorable part. Even Localbitcoins has had to exclude a number of countries because of regulations. A bittorrent type system could work in those places.

Also the fact that Localbitcoins does as much volume as Kraken means that people do want and need p2p exchanges.
https://bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=ALL&span=24h

Coinffeine transactions are in fact faster than Localbitcoins... so on the convenience front they could have been competitive.

The recent events with Gemini (an arbitrary transaction reversal) again show how important a decentralised P2P exchange is. Somebody should pick up Coinffeine's code and finish the job. 

I am interested but github page is deleted - 404 :(

This is very frustrating.

Hopefully somebody kept a copy. Try contacting the Coinffeine devs, their website is still up: http://www.coinffeine.com/ and they still have a public contact e-mail: info@coinffeine.com.

i read the blog post but i do not really get the difference between coinffeine and other distributed exchanges like instantdex  ???

You can now run your own decentralised exchange node and trade: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1365729