Why did we start yet another exchange?
It’s December 2017. I’m trading crypto all day and one exchange is not crediting 4.1 bitcoin I sent. After 4 weeks they respond to my support ticket. “We’re too busy, so we’ve closed your ticket. Open a new one if you still have a problem.”
Another exchange has my 1.5 million TRON stuck in withdrawal, while I see the price slide to half.
Exchanges are getting hacked, go down for several days, have no support and don’t communicate. I go to bed at night, not knowing which exchanges will still be around when I wake up. It feels like Russian exchange roulette.
And I start thinking, why isn’t there an exchange that:
- Cares about me as their customer and resolves my support tickets.
- Is transparent about their operations, so I can go to sleep at night without having to wonder if my crypto will still be there in the morning.
- Is designed from the ground up to keep my funds safe from hackers and other criminals.
- Gives me information about what I’m trading.
- Doesn’t feel like a casino.
If only there was an exchange like that… but all the exchanges that came around seemed like carbon copies of the existing ones. Many seemed too busy to look after their customers while raising as much as possible through their ICOs.
As Napoleon said: “If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.” So we did.
We set out to rethink what a crypto exchange should look like.
Security, security, security…
Something that many of the recent exchange hacks have in common is that their hot wallet got compromised. By now it’s pretty clear that keeping hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto connected to the internet isn’t the smartest thing to do. Fast withdrawals are great, until some hacker quickly withdraws all customer funds.
Therefore, we decided to keep all customer funds in cold storage, physically disconnected from the internet. Not 95%, not 98%, but the full 100%. We plan to introduce a hot wallet later in the year, using company funds only, so our customers can still make fast withdrawals without putting customer funds at risk.
And more security…
Our customers are not security experts, and we don’t expect them to be. We shouldn’t have to educate about green bars, 2FA OTPs and long secure passwords. Instead, we assume passwords are weak and people lose their phones regularly.
To keep your account secure, we introduced XSKeys. Simply put, the computer you sign up from is the only one you can trade from. So unless someone is physically using your computer, they can’t do much even if they have your password.
If you want to trade from another computer, phone or tablet, you can easily authorize the new computer from the old one.
This system gives improved protection against many common types of hacks and phishing scams and doesn’t create a problem when you lose or break your phone.
Market Stop Order Price?!
Some of us are experienced stock traders, but in crypto, a lot of us just want to manage a portfolio of coins. Sell some, hodl some, buy the dip and go to the moon.
To keep thing simple, we avoid trading jargon as much as possible and use plain English instead.
Show us the Money!
When you keep crypto at an exchange, you want to know they are actually holding it for you, but none of the major exchanges seem provide much transparency.
To give our customers peace of mind, we provide regular Proof of Solvency, confirming the customer deposits we hold and the addresses of our cold wallets where we hold it.
Support Driven Development
We know from experience how frustrating it can be when your funds are in limbo and you’re waiting days or weeks to get any support response. For that reason, if our average response times ever go over 24 hours, we will stop adding new customers.
We don’t believe the support journey ends when a ticket is resolved, it’s just the beginning. Every support ticket means we failed at something, somewhere. So we have something to fix.
After we resolve a support ticket, we have to consider:
- What failure on our end caused this ticket?
- Can we improve the website or app in a way that this question doesn’t need to be asked again?
- Can we provide an article in our FAQ, so the customer can find the answer themselves?
We believe support tickets are valuable. Every ticket can help us make a better service for our customers.
Independent and Fair
We didn’t do an ICO or take investment. Instead we self-funded so we can stay independent, because it shouldn’t take tens of millions of dollars to build a great exchange. This allows us to stay focused on providing the best service for our customers.
Our fee structure is simple: 0.1% on trades and fair withdrawal fees. Withdrawal fees aren’t something we profit from. Our Bitcoin Withdrawal fee is currently 0.0001 BTC. We are generally at least 5 times cheaper than most major exchanges.
There are no special deals for whales (customers with large amounts of crypto) or market makers. Everyone trades by the same rules.
Knowledge is Power
Questions like “Does BAT mean Basic Attention Token or BATCoin?” shouldn’t be necessary. This is why we put a lot of effort into news and information on our platform.
We aggregate news from around 50 different sites such as CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph and Bloomberg as well as Twitter, Reddit and Medium feeds.
For coins, we collect links and basic information from many online sources to provide a good starting-point for customers to do their own research.
And we’re not done yet. We aim to add more information sources, such as upcoming events, ratings, ICO information, roadmaps, data on the companies and foundations involved and more.
The Team
Building a great exchange takes expertise in a wide range of disciplines, so we put together a team of experts with decades of experience in entrepreneurship, computer programming, legal, app development and graphic design.
Check it out!
So we feel that while we’re another exchange, we’re certainly not just another exchange. We invite you to check us out and ask questions, give suggestions, open support tickets, tell us what you think, good or bad. We’re listening.
The exchange is live at https://xs2.exchange, where you can check out all the features, and on the App Store. Our Android app is coming soon.
Happy trading!
Bart Jellema — CEO
bart@xs2.exchange
