Changing faces of an evolving exchange

As the development team continue to work towards the upcoming platform release date, LocalCoinSwap has already has come a long way. Some of the changes you can see on the surface by now, others you’ll get to see very soon - and still more is going on completely behind the scenes.

The changes are important to contextualise, because like every great business LocalCoinSwap started as an idea, a vision - in this case, for a better way to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Everything new is created twice over, first in the minds of its originators, then in the external world where the problem to be solved exists… And because they were frustrated by the way that crypto exchanges were becoming increasingly vast and centralized, as the industry grew further and further from the libertarian ideals of its original thinkers, and were in real danger of turning into just another set of big financial institutions - a small group of guys(?) in (approx date?) wanted to try a different approach.

Taking trading back to its roots, the idea took shape around the concept of peer-to-peer transacting: the way humans, and indeed their ancestors, first swapped one thing for another in the name of mutual benefit. Peers in this context means a deal between equals - no middle-man, clearing house or central governance, just a way for people to get together and buy and sell to one another. Going a step further, the radical idea to tokenize the ownership of the exchange itself was the demonstrable commitment to true decentralization, and the creation of a true ‘people’s exchange’ - a genuinely innovative approach amongst an emergent wave of DEXs coming to market in 2018.

This has already been a hugely formative year already for LocalCoinSwap, and we have seen many changes, not only in the team but in our business, the core activities we carry out in order to serve our community. We’ve partnered with BlockSparks for our marketing communications - including this blog you are reading now.

We also partnered with Coinomi, to ensure we had top-notch wallet functionality available for users of our forthcoming exchange. And since the funding started to come in from the presale onwards, we’ve been building out the in-house team, to ensure LocalCoinSwap truly delivers on its potential. After all, one significant shift is that many in that community are now true owners of the business, cryptoshare holders, to whom we remain committed and accountable.

That’s one of the reasons we have expanded our community liaison team, to make sure we have cover in our main Telegram group across all timezones - you have probably met Valeria and Chris, depending on what time of day you like to chat online. And they’ve just been joined by Kevin: Continuing the international theme, Kevin is originally from Ireland but found the rain and weather difficult to deal with so now lives in sunny Cyprus. For most of his career Kevin has been working in management, most recently as Head of Retail and Marketing for a multinational but his passion is in Cryptocurrencies and he is delighted now to be a part of the Team.

Kevin is an early investor in Localcoinswap since pre-ICO and is looking forward to supporting the LCS Community on its journey. He will be networking with projects both existing and in ICO to attract them to our platform, as well as acting as Admin in the chat. Bringing the best new projects onboard to benefit our community is a fundamental part of the business plan, and our intention to keep innovating and partnering with other people making a real difference in the blockchain space.

Other team changes are going on on the development side, but you may have noticed we no longer have the team listed on the website.

We’re not an ICO any more, we’re a cryptocurrency exchange - and within a few weeks we’ll be facilitating the exchange of large sums of other people’s money. The team of experts ensuring this happens is growing all the time, and you can view and connect with many of them on our company LinkedIn page - and please do follow the page, to make sure you keep up to date with all our business news, and you’re welcome to share the information we post there with your networks to help spread the word.

But there are some of our colleagues whose names you won’t find listed on LinkedIn, because of the nature of their work. The experts we’re hiring to ensure the safe escrow of your funds, to make certain that robust and effective security protocols are embedded throughout the operation - we don’t identify those people directly.

They are an integral part of our most trusted team, but their expertise and activities make them a target for bad actors in the space, as well as directly hindering some of their penetration testing and other essential activities. So whilst we’re happy to confirm that our development team is now X strong, you won’t find all of those numbers adding up on the LinkedIn page - just trust us that we’re putting together the right team to protect the custody of all our cryptoassets, when we’re trading live on the platform in a few week’s time.

Some changes are going to be a LOT more visible:

Very soon - maybe by the time you are reading this - the new branding will be rolled out across the site, in preparation for the exchange launch.

The rebranding has been an intensive professional exercise in exploring the values and signals we want LocalCoinSwap to be broadcasting to the world, as we make the final shift in our journey - from idea to startup to ICO, to fully-functional and professional peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange serving a global community.

Translating the positioning into a strong visual identity which will work across multiple formats has been a complex piece of work, going on in parallel alongside all the stuff people will never see directly - the programming and development taking place under the surface. The final stage will be to connect them together on the main website and exchange platform, and then you’ll know we’re ready to open for business.

Exciting times! Thank you for being part of the LocalCoinSwap journey, as it enters this important new phase.