McAfee Envisions DEX in a World Where Crypto Won’t Be Traded for Fiat

This article has been originally posted on Bitcoin’s website via the link here. We are sharing it entirely below. We do not claim to own intellectual property to this content.

In a recent video posted to Twitter. John McAfee states: “Imagine a world…where fiat currency is diminishing in importance.” Instead of pointing to the adoption of crypto by big money interests, the rogue politician and radical bitcoin proponent talks of a complete flip, where users won’t need to exchange their cryptocurrencies for fiat. Crypto will have become the dominant money. McAfee cites his recently launched decentralized exchange (DEX), mcafeedex.com, and featured stablecoins as evidence this world is coming soon.

No Need to ‘Cash Out’

His recent Twitter update finds McAfee musing on a major problem with otherwise very functional decentralized exchanges: people can’t get their money out in fiat form. The beauty of no KYC, no AML, and no required email address is a double-edged sword that makes it tough to withdraw funds to the legacy financial system so many still depend on. According to McAfee, however, this won’t be an issue for long.

Citing DAI, a decentralized ERC20 stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar via smart contract, the former antivirus tycoon notes that such assets enable greater market stability and encourage crypto commerce. “You can already buy houses and cars and shoes and god knows what with crypto … so we already have the ability to acquire half of what we need with crypto,” McAfee emphasizes:

Soon we’ll have the ability to acquire everything we need with crypto.

A Quick Look at the McAfee DEX

McAfee’s DEX runs on the Ethereum blockchain and is built on the Switchdex smart contract. Creating an account takes only one click, and anyone can add their own ERC20 token to the exchange for zero fees. Users can also be whitelisted for $85 in ETH in order to “trade on McAfeeDex with no platform fees for life.” Regarding other fees and restrictions, McAfee himself emphasized the DEX “Requires no name, no documents, no email, no bank info. Transaction details private. Nothing monitored. Nothing recorded. No restrictions. No listing fees. 0.25% transaction fees. Completely decentralized.”

Volume across the already long list of 1,300+ trading pairs (base pairs being ETH, DAI, WBTC and TUSD) is still extremely limited, with many order books yet showing no activity. McAfee states, “It takes time for enough users to join to make it real, but if you play, and be patient, you will see it’s the door that frees us from the government’s cornerstone of control: Fiat currencies. It can’t be shut down.” Switch (ESH) and ether (ETH) trades currently dominate the DEX with about 100 transactions taking place on the pair since October 16, at press time. The libertarian presidential candidate is also encouraging users to further decentralize the operation by creating their own portals for a fee, an option that is expected to be automated in the future.

DEXs Continue to Evolve

As news.Bitcoin.com has reported, DEXs are evolving quickly and becoming more user-friendly. Not only are technical advances encouraging growth and development, but as McAfee points out, there is an ever-quickening confluence of factors economic, philosophical and otherwise leading to more crypto users jumping ship from the heavily regulated — and some say iceberg-destined — cruise liner of a centralized exchange. If crypto is to truly be a tool of economic sovereignty and survival in this climate of reckless government monetary policy and geopolitical tension, its number one value proposal of being sound, permissionless money must remain intact.