What is Bitsquare?

Bitsquare is a cross-platform desktop application that allows users to trade national currency (dollars, euros, etc) for bitcoin without relying on centralized exchanges such as Coinbase, Bitstamp or (the former) Mt. Gox.

By running Bitsquare on their local machines, users form a peer-to-peer network. Offers to buy and sell bitcoin are broadcast to that network, and through the process of offering and accepting these trades via the Bitsquare UI, a market is established.

There are no central points of control or failure in the Bitsquare network. There are no trusted third parties. When two parties agree to trade national currency for bitcoin, the bitcoin to be bought or sold is held in escrow using multisignature transaction capabilities native to the bitcoin protocol.

Because the national currency portion of any trade must be transferred via traditional means such as a wire transfer, Bitsquare incorporates first-class support for human arbitration to resolve any errors or disputes.

You can read about all of this and more in the whitepaper, arbitration and risk analysis documents. Several videos are available as well.

Status

Pre-alpha and under heavy development.

Building from source

1. Install the latest JDK (8u20 or better)
2. Clone this repository
3. Build and launch the Bitsquare JavaFX client by running:

./gradlew run

Pass command line arguments to the app via the Gradle -Pargs property as follows:

./gradlew run -Pargs="--help"

Or, build an executable jar with the appJar task:

./gradlew appJar

Run the app as follows:

java -jar build/libs/bitsquare-<version>-app.jar

Pass the --help flag to see what options are available:

java -jar build/libs/bitsquare-<version>-app.jar --help

To build a headless bootstrap node jar, run the bootstrapNodeJar task:

./gradlew bootstrapNodeJar

Run the bootstrap node:

java -jar build/libs/bitsquare-<version>-bootstrapNode.jar

See doc/build.md for additional information.

Staying in Touch

Contact the team and keep up to date using any of the following:

• The Bitsquare Website
• The #bitsquare IRC channel on Freenode (logs)
• Our mailing list
• @bitsquare_ on Twitter
• Get in contact with us
• GitHub Issues

License

Bitsquare is free software, licensed under version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License.

In short, this means you are free to fork this repository and do anything with it that you please. However, if you distribute your changes, i.e. create your own build of the software and make it available for others to use, you must:

1. Publish your changes under the same license, so as to ensure the software remains free.
2. Use a name and logo substantially different than "Bitsquare" and the Bitsquare logo seen here. This allows for competition without confusion.

See LICENSE for complete details.