eXch - instant exchange BTC / LN / XMR / LTC / ETH / ERC20

[icopress]

Do you provide required info (as far as I see only thing you collect is receiver wallet address tho) in such obvious hack cases?

The publication of this screenshot clearly implies maximum distancing from any three-letter agencies ^{[for any question]}.  

[bitmover]

Any updates on the 5% fees to buy and sell XMR?

I think the xmr volatility is low now. Any reason for this fee in this specific coin?

[paid2]

Any updates on the 5% fees to buy and sell XMR?

I think the xmr volatility is low now. Any reason for this fee in this specific coin?

OP wrote about it recently, I think it should answer your question:

Another theory is that a large holder switched to Monero, or simply makes usage of this internal function as a mixer. eXch is really attractive for an anonymous entity. No KYC and supports Tor. It reduces some risks of de-anonymization by just sending and receiving bitcoin via Tor Browser, than to use a less reviewed, more complicated software like Bisq. (And it might be cheaper as well)

The service fee increase is a loss prevention mechanism of our exchange and usually only affects highly volatile coins, which in that case was XMR. Don't forget that we don't resell Binance like other swappers, so charging 0.5% which often causes a loss of our own reserves is not always an option.

The first service fee spike for XMR pairs was caused by OKX delisting XMR.

The second service fee spike for XMR pairs was caused by Binance attacking XMR by delisting announcement and price manipulation involving various techniques not obvious to most people (except ones who have been here enough to know how all this speculative market works and has nothing in common with tech)

As a service that provides its own liquidity for trades, we have to protect our liquidity from extreme volatily in order to prevent losing our capital.

If we increase a price by 5% 10% or 22% it means we only do it to protect ourselves from some factors currently affecting the coin's price and not to make extra gains.

We are barely able to make any profits even with a current 5% service fee but it's at least a good (and only) mean of protection against high volatility.

However, we are considering to keep 5% on selling XMR in future because our service is now used by many other services with a purpose of mixing, therefore it's absolutely inconvenient for us to work hard acquiring XMR then give it away for nothing to some other service that makes considerable gains based off our hard work acquiring XMR. Same for users who only use eXch for mixing their BTC through XMR - we don't consider it honest when some of them complain about 5% for the level anonymity they will take from our service without recurring to chaining their funds flow through different services that might cost them far more than just 5% (and who are often eXch's resellers).

I wonder why recently some pairs BTC-XMR for example charge 5% fees on eXch when just few months ago it was 0.5% fee ?
OP does all the pairs will soon be at 5% fee? or it will stay only for ETH-XMR BTC-XMR ?
It's sad this eXch was the best in the industry until it became overpriced just recently..

I understand i just hope this 5% fee will not apply to all the pairs in the future, and it is indeed for re-balancing the liquidity.

A price increase of 5% on XMR won't make us worse for sure, because first of all it's justified and secondly we are the only service offering a set of unique privacy/anonymity options and features.

And no, we do not plan to impose a 5% service fee to other pairs unless it becomes necessary, like it was/is in case of XMR.

[bitmover]

OP wrote about it recently, I think it should answer your question:

However, we are considering to keep 5% on selling XMR in future because our service is now used by many other services with a purpose of mixing, therefore it's absolutely inconvenient for us to work hard acquiring XMR then give it away for nothing to some other service that makes considerable gains based off our hard work acquiring XMR. Same for users who only use eXch for mixing their BTC through XMR - we don't consider it honest when some of them complain about 5% for the level anonymity they will take from our service without recurring to chaining their funds flow through different services that might cost them far more than just 5% (and who are often eXch's resellers).

Thanks paid2.

I understand the 5% when they are giving away their XMR, but not when they are receiving xmr. I see 5% on both sides.

Maybe lowering the cost when they are receiving xmr might be a good way to acquire more xmr.

[joker_josue]

FixedFloat was hacked.
snip

Thank you for the transparency regarding this communication. I saw that you omitted the name of the person that got in contact with you but you left his name on the e-mail. Perhaps it would be better to hide it as well.

This is really not good. With a little research, you get to the guy.
You should review that. If the image was used on TalkImg, I can try to help if I receive a PM.

[nutildah]

Thank you for the transparency regarding this communication. I saw that you omitted the name of the person that got in contact with you but you left his name on the e-mail. Perhaps it would be better to hide it as well.

This is really not good. With a little research, you get to the guy.

Yeah except he is an IRS agent, not a customer. He could post the whole email if he wanted to as its not really any sort of breach of customer confidentiality. He did the agent a favor by not leaving the email address in there.

[joker_josue]

Thank you for the transparency regarding this communication. I saw that you omitted the name of the person that got in contact with you but you left his name on the e-mail. Perhaps it would be better to hide it as well.

This is really not good. With a little research, you get to the guy.

Yeah except he is an IRS agent, not a customer. He could post the whole email if he wanted to as its not really any sort of breach of customer confidentiality. He did the agent a favor by not leaving the email address in there.

Even though it is not from a client, it is still private correspondence. Exposing this email, identifying its origin, unauthorized, is condemnable. And even though we haven't exposed his email, with a little research it's possible to contact him.

I'm not saying he shouldn't share the email he received, just that he should have been more careful.

[Pmalek]

I have a question about the reserves you display on your website. My apologies if it was already asked, but this thread has 16 pages, so it's quite time-consuming going through each one looking for the exact thing I want to ask. I have noticed that you always display your XRM reserves as 0, but in the 24h trading volume, we can see how much Monero was exchanged. Is the total Monero reserve a secret or can't the site display it for some other reason? 

[paid2]

I have a question about the reserves you display on your website. My apologies if it was already asked, but this thread has 16 pages, so it's quite time-consuming going through each one looking for the exact thing I want to ask. I have noticed that you always display your XRM reserves as 0, but in the 24h trading volume, we can see how much Monero was exchanged. Is the total Monero reserve a secret or can't the site display it for some other reason?  

Nope the reserves of XMR are accurate, but indeed XMR is often empty. But it is for sure not a secret and well displayed.

For example right now:

[Pmalek]

Nope the reserves of XMR are accurate, but indeed XMR is often empty. But it is for sure not a secret and well displayed.

Every time I visited the exchange website in the last couple of days, XMR was always at 0. But you are right. It was showing a little bit above 121 when I saw your quote. A few minutes later and it's back to 0 again. There is great demand for no-KYC monero.

[eXch]

For sites I could actually never visit because of CloudFlare it helped to click around on the verify-dialog (or moving your finger around on mobile). Maybe it's just superstition, but at least it always worked for this site with Tor Browser. If it doesn't work there is not much lost.

Thank you for a tip, but due to the nature of our business, our anonymity setup requires a lot more than just a Tor Browser. We do not use Tor Browser to access the Tor network and use a bit more complex solutions such as Whonix Gateway along with multirouted and fully isolated systems.

Cloudflare actually can detect when you use the Tor Browser (yes, that browser specifically) and facilitate access for it, however, when it couldn't determine which setup is used and when it assumes your anonymity is too strong, its detection systems start to be more hostile, specially when you have a Tor exit IP but no Tor Browser detected.

We also do not use mobile devices for this project due to high risks of exposure to possible firmware backdoors implemented during manufacture (this is independently of whether you use clean AOSP builds such as Lineage OS or not). Some desktop platforms are safer in this regards.

I have however decided to use a residential proxy on top of my setup to access this forum from now. Hopefully theymos will consider some better alternative to Cloudflare within next years or at least could re-configure the current Cloudflare settings to facilitate access to users with complex Tor setups. We are also ready to provide technical assistance in Cloudflare-less DDoS protection setup if it's the case.

Is it possible to receive LN BTC from eXch to Blixt wallet? I always got an error message that was along the lines of "the expiration date is too soon" and I am also pretty sure the invoice was not zero-amount. And I found no option to change either.

It should be possible. LN is a relatively new currency added on eXch therefore there might be some issues still which are being fixed. Some wallets still have many issues as well, but that's mostly because most of them use LND instead of Core Lightning as their backend. LND is prone to feature implementation delays, because most people who standartize and implement Lightning protocol are Core Lightning developers.

[...]
With this information displayed it would be up to the user of the service to decide and to balance out their current needs (do I need immediate help that I feel comfortable using a ticketing system for? Can I wait a bit longer and use email with PGP?) in order to choose the available options. At the end of the day this would just be another layer of transparency, which is always great from my perspective.

Thank you for the suggestions! We will definitely add that information.

[...] Perhaps it would be better to hide it as well.

I have replied to your PM in this regards.

Do you provide required info (as far as I see only thing you collect is receiver wallet address tho) in such obvious hack cases?

No.

I understand the 5% when they are giving away their XMR, but not when they are receiving xmr. I see 5% on both sides.

Maybe lowering the cost when they are receiving xmr might be a good way to acquire more xmr.

It is back to normal now.

This is really not good. With a little research, you get to the guy.
You should review that. If the image was used on TalkImg, I can try to help if I receive a PM.

Even though it is not from a client, it is still private correspondence. Exposing this email, identifying its origin, unauthorized, is condemnable. And even though we haven't exposed his email, with a little research it's possible to contact him.

I'm not saying he shouldn't share the email he received, just that he should have been more careful.

Thank you for your concerns. It's all good and the agent will be fine. Don't worry.

Yeah except he is an IRS agent, not a customer. He could post the whole email if he wanted to as its not really any sort of breach of customer confidentiality. He did the agent a favor by not leaving the email address in there.

Correct.

We actually provided a proof of good work of that agent and made him a big favor so he can get promoted in the name of the god-blessed United States of America. He should be honored for making that effort and working on Saturday evening.

Moreover, we were not asked to keep this communication in secret and we have a right to disclose any communications coming from the federal agencies to the degree that we find acceptable. This was an unofficial request, but still from a federal entity we have absolutely no relations with.

I have a question about the reserves you display on your website. My apologies if it was already asked, but this thread has 16 pages, so it's quite time-consuming going through each one looking for the exact thing I want to ask. I have noticed that you always display your XRM reserves as 0, but in the 24h trading volume, we can see how much Monero was exchanged. Is the total Monero reserve a secret or can't the site display it for some other reason? 

Answered in full by paid2

Every time I visited the exchange website in the last couple of days, XMR was always at 0. But you are right. It was showing a little bit above 121 when I saw your quote. A few minutes later and it's back to 0 again. There is great demand for no-KYC monero.

Absolutely. We can load 15000 XMR right now and it will be sold in just a few hours at 5%. At 0.5% in less than 1 hour. This situation has repeated many times already.

Some time ago we were using exchanges like Binance and Kraken to acquire XMR liquidity periodically, but we stopped doing so because they became very uncomfortable with us draining so much liquidity from them, because it became an infinite process.

We are now temporarily back to our old model (customer-provided liquidity only), but expect to resume having constant XMR liquidity soon once we acquire a good and reliable source.

[bitmover]

Every time I visited the exchange website in the last couple of days, XMR was always at 0. But you are right. It was showing a little bit above 121 when I saw your quote. A few minutes later and it's back to 0 again. There is great demand for no-KYC monero.

Absolutely. We can load 15000 XMR right now and it will be sold in just a few hours at 5%. At 0.5% in less than 1 hour. This situation has repeated many times already.

Some time ago we were using exchanges like Binance and Kraken to acquire XMR liquidity periodically, but we stopped doing so because they became very uncomfortable with us draining so much liquidity from them, because it became an infinite process.

We are now temporarily back to our old model (customer-provided liquidity only), but expect to resume having constant XMR liquidity soon once we acquire a good and reliable source.

I didn`t know about this XMR scarcity. This is new to me.

What intrigues me about this, is that XMR performance is very poor compared to other cryptocurrency. It used to top in top 10 coins (in marketcap) just 5 years ago, and it is nearly 50th now (46th in time of writing). This means losing much of its valuale compared to BTC.

Something is not right. XMR price is not showing this scarcity. Maybe XMR price will be adjusted in the future?

[Pmalek]

What intrigues me about this, is that XMR performance is very poor compared to other cryptocurrency. It used to top in top 10 coins (in marketcap) just 5 years ago, and it is nearly 50th now (46th in time of writing). This means losing much of its valuale compared to BTC.

Something is not right. XMR price is not showing this scarcity. Maybe XMR price will be adjusted in the future?

Monero has been battered lately after Binance announced that it would soon delist it from their platform. That caused a big downward trend for the value of the coin. Binance is just the latest big exchange that has turned its back on Monero, many others before it did. Privacy coins are constantly under attack by regulators and governments that see them as a bigger threat than stablecoins. Whatever bitcoin is going through, in terms of being called a haven for scammers and thieves, monero is subjected to double of that. All of that has affected the price and overall interest for the coin.

[d5000]

What intrigues me about this, is that XMR performance is very poor compared to other cryptocurrency. It used to top in top 10 coins (in marketcap) just 5 years ago, and it is nearly 50th now (46th in time of writing). This means losing much of its valuale compared to BTC.

Something is not right. XMR price is not showing this scarcity. Maybe XMR price will be adjusted in the future?

My theory is that the XMR price is been "set" on the big exchanges, but on these platforms it's not a popular cryptocurrency because the typical public of these platform (retail speculative "altcoin investors") prefer generally coins with hype potential and big marketing expenses, and Monero lacks these characteristics. Instead, it has a different public and is traded mainly at lesser known exchanges like Exch, or even via atomic swaps and P2P. But these platforms tend to follow the price of the big exchanges and have no capacity of being "price makers". Instant exchanges like Exch can select the price but they can't diverge that much from the big CEXes (they make money from fees mainly so they need to stay attractive).

So we have a situation where XMR is very popular on exchanges which do have only a very minor influence on the prices which are shown on Coinmarketcap et al, while not being popular at the "price making" exchanges. This could have a damping effect on its price, and also reduces the "hype potential" even further.

A question remains if it would be more convenient for Exch to simply increase their XMR price 4,5% and charge 0,5% fees again, instead of 5% fees and following the Coinmarketcap price, or if this would drive away potential customers more than the high fees? The revenue for the exchange would be the same, but the price would then reflect the scarcity.

[LoyceV]

A question remains if it would be more convenient for Exch to simply increase their XMR price 4,5% and charge 0,5% fees again

That makes arbitrage trading in the other direction possible. Say: buy XMR at Kraken, sell at eXch. I'm not sure what repercussions that would have.

[bitmover]

I still think there is something missing here.

Monero performance is very poor. 

Takee a look at this website with historical coins price.
https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/evolution-of-top-10-coins-in-cmcs-history

This image is from 2017, after that, monero is gone from top 10 (to be replaced with bsv, bch, tron, whatever)



In 2017, bitcoin was worth 2000 usd and monero 34.
Bitcoin is now worth 52k (26x) while xmr is worth 120 (3.5x)

This means, that if you invested 1 btc in monero  in 2018 you would have now 0.13 BTC.
Nearly 80% loss.

If monero had now a marketcap similar to Tron , it would be worth 6x more  which would lead to 720 usd.

Monero  price might be a big opportunity? Or it is just doomed because bureaucrats don't like we to have it?

[LoyceV]

Monero  price might be a big opportunity? Or it is just doomed because bureaucrats don't like we to have it?

My take: Monero, like Bitcoin, is here to stay. If all centralized exchanges delist it, it only becomes closer to how it's supposed to be: private. Who are those people buying and holding privacy coins on a KYC exchange anyway?

[dkbit98]

We also do not use mobile devices for this project due to high risks of exposure to possible firmware backdoors implemented during manufacture (this is independently of whether you use clean AOSP builds such as Lineage OS or not). Some desktop platforms are safer in this regards.

Graphene OS is way better for mobile devices, since it is fully open source and updates are released more often, but I agree that any mobile devices are inferior compared to well secured desktop system.

I have however decided to use a residential proxy on top of my setup to access this forum from now. Hopefully theymos will consider some better alternative to Cloudflare within next years or at least could re-configure the current Cloudflare settings to facilitate access to users with complex Tor setups. We are also ready to provide technical assistance in Cloudflare-less DDoS protection setup if it's the case.

We talked about this several times in forum and we would all like to see good alternative for Cloudlfare.
I am not sure theymos is willing to experiment and break something, but testing is maybe possible with new forum software or epochtalk.

We are now temporarily back to our old model (customer-provided liquidity only), but expect to resume having constant XMR liquidity soon once we acquire a good and reliable source.

Maybe you should consider working directly with miners to get more monero coins.

My theory is that the XMR price is been "set" on the big exchanges, but on these platforms it's not a popular cryptocurrency because the typical public of these platform (retail speculative "altcoin investors") prefer generally coins with hype potential and big marketing expenses, and Monero lacks these characteristics.

They set artificial prices for many coins, not just for monero.
Realistic price should be much higher than now, and most shitcoins should have lower or no value at all.
Imagine that solana crap is ranked so high and they literally had more downtime than old dial-up internet connections  
Meanwhile Bitcoin uptime is 99.98%

My take: Monero, like Bitcoin, is here to stay. If all centralized exchanges delist it, it only becomes closer to how it's supposed to be: private.

Agreed.

Who are those people buying and holding privacy coins on a KYC exchange anyway?

Traders for sure, and people who are speculating with price and don't care at all about privacy.
Note that Binance continues to trade monero futures, so manipulation continues  
https://www.binance.com/en/futures/XMRUSDT

[d5000]

That makes arbitrage trading in the other direction possible. Say: buy XMR at Kraken, sell at eXch. I'm not sure what repercussions that would have.

What I meant was that they could increase the ask price only, while leaving the bid price as it is. The 5% would then simply be the result of the bid/ask spread.

Realistic price should be much higher than now, and most shitcoins should have lower or no value at all.

Yep, while I agree that Monero has much better fundamentals from a cypherpunk perspective, typical altcoin investors search for other characteristics. They see that Solana or Avalanche are described in crypto media (which is full of native advertising, of course) potential "Ethereum killers", but have a much lower market cap, so they buy. Or they invest in memecoins or even BRC-20 tokens

On the other hand, XMR doesn't lose that much value in bear markets. I think on the whole it doesn't perform bad (if we don't take account the Binance delisting-driven dump), it's only less volatile. Solana for example lost 97% in the last bear market. XMR only lost about 80%, not much more than BTC. Tron, which is now hyped again, had its ATH in ... 2018.

[paid2]

--snip--
I have however decided to use a residential proxy on top of my setup to access this forum from now. Hopefully theymos will consider some better alternative to Cloudflare within next years or at least could re-configure the current Cloudflare settings to facilitate access to users with complex Tor setups. We are also ready to provide technical assistance in Cloudflare-less DDoS protection setup if it's the case.

I sincerely hope theymos will read this and consider it.

Cloudflare is far from being a perfect solution. Even though I'm aware that he's saving us from a lot of trouble, I think an alternative would be great for everyone.
In a previous mixer topic (RIP), we wondered whether there were any credible open source alternative to CF, but unfortunately it would appear to be difficult to find.