Square Reveals Plans To Build Decentralized BTC Exchange

Square reveals plans to build a decentralized Bitcoin exchange as the CEO of the platform Jack Dorsey revealed and helped onboard more users into BTC thanks to his initiative as we are reading more in our latest bitcoin news today.

Square’s new TBD division is working on a BTC-centric decentralized exchange and the planned DX will be permissionless and open-source but will allow users to fund any wallet using fiat currency. Square’s Cash app is a popular way for people to buy and sell BTC but the CEO of the platform has a huge love for the leading cryptocurrency and the financial services company now plans to do a lot more in this space. Dorsey announced a new BTC-centric division called TBD and he revealed that this is going to be a decentralized exchange of sorts.

We’ve determined @TDB54566975’s direction: help us build an open platform to create a decentralized exchange for #Bitcoin https://t.co/jHYWHy1qmu

— jack⚡️ (@jack) August 27, 2021

Decentralized exchanges based on other blockchains are also well established like SushiSwap, Uniswap, and PancakeSwap so the TBD initiative aims to make a fully permissionless and decentralized exchange built on BTC but to also provide users a wide array of on-ramps for exchanging fiat for BTC:

“We’ve determined [TBD’s] direction: help us build an open platform to create a decentralized exchange for Bitcoin.”

A DEX has no centralized intermediary overseeing the token swaps as they happen between the users. You cannot use fiat currency in a DEX because you would need an on-ramp to a traditional financial institution. Square reveals plans for something different as its vision is to forge a different path. Dorsey linked an extensive thread from Mike Brock, the TBD project head who detailed the paths ahead:

“We believe Bitcoin will be the native currency of the internet. While there are many projects to help make the internet more decentralized, our focus is solely on a sound global monetary system for all. But including all requires a few pieces we think are missing.”

There’s been a lot of speculation about what TBD is and isn’t. Over the last few weeks our team has been determining what needs to be determined. We wanted to finally share our direction, and we have some questions.

— Mike Brock (@brockm) August 27, 2021

Jack Dorsey is a BTC maximalist and means that he shuns all of the other cryptocurrencies and it’s no surprise that Square has plans to develop the project using the Bitcoin infrastructure. Brock called our RSK as a smart contract platform secure by Bitcoin’s blockchain as the main option here but also admitted that some pieces of the puzzle could require the use of other blockchains:

“The gaps needed to build this may be too large, which would also have us consider other chains as a bridge.”

Brock noted that the BTC-based Lightning NEtwork is solving the issues of scalability when it comes to payments but that similar infrastructure is required to exchange stablecoins for example. He called out current projects that could help solve any gaps in the infrastructure for building TBD.