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It is no secret that the crypto sphere has become a hotbed for illicit activities, such as money laundering, and you may not want to be in the same club as these kinds of users. However, you can assume that not all banks and financial institutions that are supposedly reputable are innocent, and not all digital exchanges are bad.
The crypto industry is often criticized for being a breeding ground for illicit activities. According to a Chainanalysis report, the numbers are not as bad as you would expect. According to their report, only 1.1% of all cryptocurrency transactions are illicit. This was not always the case though, in its infancy Bitcoin was heavily linked with the Silk Road, which is an online darknet marketplace, offering visitors the chance to buy weapons and drugs with absolute anonymity.
But as the industry grows, exchanges like LocalBitcoins and wallets are increasingly taking a zero-tolerance approach to illicit activities, and it is now easier than ever to follow the movement of cryptos across public blockchains. More so than offshore bank accounts even.
There is a way to trade cryptocurrencies safely and securely in environments that are healthy. But first, let’s understand what OTC trading is. Quite simply, it is a trade made directly between two parties, the buyer and the seller, where one side is often the company offering the platform e.g., the OTC desk.
There is no intermediary in the middle, just the maker and the taker. This is sometimes called peer-to-peer trading. The two sides of the trade can be crypto-crypto trades or fiat-crypto. These can be considered healthy trading environments, as they are unmanipulable and include peer-to-peer exchanges and those using escrow as a means to safely hold funds until transactions are complete.
ethbox is a smart contract-based project on the Ethereum blockchain that promises its users safety through their decentralized escrow process, and can be a great tool to have on the ready when buying crypto OTC.
The money is transferred only once the two parties have completed their side of the trade. This opens up an OTC environment that is unimpeachable to fraud or scams. Plus, It is easier than you might think to send crypto to the wrong address, and ethbox has taken this off the table with its innovative approach to crypto transactions. Using ethbox you are able to guarantee that only the designated recipient of a transaction is able to receive the funds, the ethbox smart contract takes the recipient’s address as one part of a two-factor authentication and the other part is a passphrase, that is swiftly chosen by the sender of a transaction.
Sending crypto assets to the wrong address has cost millions of dollars for hapless users, and unlike certain eWallets, chargebacks are just not possible. If you send your crypto to the wrong person, you will need to contact them directly in order to get it back and rely on their goodwill.
If you send it to the wrong address using an exchange, you might be out of luck. Some exchanges charge huge fines to refund your holdings. Some stories state that users have paid $1000 or more for mistaken transactions (sometimes more than the actual deal). Other exchanges will simply not comply by refunding your transaction.
In terms of secure exchanges, many people quote Coinbase. That’s because it has successfully managed to protect its users’ holdings without any breaches. That is a big thing in an industry where crime is commonplace. Going forward, the industry is cleaning up its name and ensuring that users are well-protected and above all else safe.
