To all of you saying cryptocurrency will be doomed if they ban the exchanges, atomic swap was tested and it was successful. Quoting bitcoin magazine:
Atomic Swaps
"Interoperability between Bitcoin and altcoins is not new. So-called atomic swaps (or atomic cross-chain trading) were first described by Tier Nolan back in 2013.
Let’s say Alice has 200 litecoins, but prefers 1 bitcoin. And Bob has 1 bitcoin, but prefers 200 litecoins. So Alice and Bob agree to trade. But neither Alice nor Bob trust each other, so neither wants to be the first to send over the coins. The other may not return the favor.
That’s why Alice and Bob set up an atomic swap.
Atomic swaps utilize a clever trick known as a hash time-locked contract, which in turn leverages the potential of multisignature addresses and time-locks. All this is enabled by the basic scripting language found in Bitcoin and most altcoins, including Litecoin.
In short, Alice and Bob submit transactions to both blockchains: one on Bitcoin and one on Litecoin. The Bitcoin transaction sends 1 bitcoin from Bob to Alice, but Alice can only claim this bitcoin if she reveals a secret number only she knows. The Litecoin transaction sends 200 litecoins from Alice to Bob, but requires the same secret number on both chains.
When Alice claims her bitcoin, she reveals her secret number on the Bitcoin blockchain. And with that same secret number, Bob can, in turn, claim his 200 litecoins.
Even though the transactions are on completely different blockchains, they are effectively linked. Bob just needs to monitor the Bitcoin blockchain to see if Alice claimed her bitcoin so that he can claim his litecoins.
All this works today. But it is a bit of a hassle. Alice and Bob need to find each other to set up the atomic swap, which then requires several transactions on multiple blockchains.
This can be improved.
(Note: there are some extra steps to ensure that Alice actually does claim her bitcoin within a limited amount of time so that Bob can also claim his litecoins in a timely manner. The specifics are beyond the scope of this article; however, for details on how hash time-locked contracts work, see Understanding the Lightning Network, Part 2: Creating the Network.)"
And that's why banning the exchanges won't kill cryptocurrency.
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