There is a huge opportunity for the life of so many to be transformed by the presence of “cryptonomics”. It has brought several options to make money online for the majority of the masses. Another huge advantage it has brought is the ease to raise capital for startups. ICOs, ILOs, IEOs, and all the other “Os” have shown how quick liquidity can be made available for businesses to thrive.
However, the wedge against the acceptance of this awesome economic evolution is so visible. Apart from government policies, people need to understand what crypto is about. They need to have a “soft landing” or intermediate point between crypto and fiat. Fiat has been all that matters. So many digital currencies have come and gone. But crypto is here with blockchain as its foundation. How sure and stable is crypto? How will the migration from fiat to crypto be? These and many more are some of the questions people are asking and on the positive, the Bitlocus project is providing the answers.
What is Bitlocus?
Bitlocus is a centralized CeDeFi exchange. It gives its users access to facilities to carry out fiat-crypto transactions. So there’s an integration of CeFi and DeFi functions. The advantages presented by blockchain technology are brought in to augment the already existing fiat system that is centralized and almost falling apart.
It has its headquarters in Vilnius, Lithuania managed by a team that has garnered more than 10 years of experience in the financial market. In simple words, Bitlocus is creating a bridge between fiat and crypto for everyone.
Team
On the Bitlocus team is Andrius Normantas serving as the CEO. He’s an entrepreneur and a professional crypto trader amongst other things and has more than 14 years of experience in the field of finance. The CTO is Tadas Varanauskas who has been in the blockchain industry for more than 3 years and is interested in tech trends.
Glory Lucas who has so much passion for marketing and business development is the Chief Marketing Officer at Bitlocus, while Arturas Bobinas manages Business Development at Bitlocus. Andrius Kamarauskas and Matas Ramanauskas are Full Stack Developers with Andrius having his edge on back-end developments while Matas is known for advocacy of the benefits of TypeScript, Node.js, and React.
There are also a series of Advisors in the team from Peter Parviz, Founder of Bitnordex CEX to Daniel Mihai, CEO of COINSBY, and Abraham Zaarour, Founder & President of Bobmint.com. Ziad Ferzly of Cedarwood Advisors; Andrius Petkevicius, Co-founder & CEO of Bccs Cluster; Vitalijus Baika, entrepreneur and investor; Misha Barskiy, Head of Sales At S-PRO and Arseniy Burmistrov, CBDO at S-PRO.
CeFi and DeFi
Bitlocus has an infusion of CeFi and DeFi. CeFi is a short form of centralized finance that can be attributed to the system of finance we are used to. Some CeFi features include centralized exchange that is controlled by a known organization, flexibility of fiat conversion so that there’s little to worry about, and cross-chain services that allow trading of cryptos like LTC, XRP, BTC, and other coins released on independent blockchain platforms.
DeFi is the opposite of CeFi which was ushered in by the introduction of blockchain technology. It’s permissionless allowing anyone to be part of the ecosystem without a central governing body, trustless so that users don’t have to know each other to carry out transactions but can trust the system to carry out such activities without failing, and quick Innovation. DeFi is changing the global financial system faster than anything seen before. The entire Bitcoin ecosystem is a perfect example of a DeFi structure.
CeDefi, Terra Blockchain, and the Bitlocus Ecosystem
Bitlocus is built on Terra Blockchain which brings the DeFi advantage into the platform. Terra Blockchain also has a strong touch of CeFi because of the stablecoin, UST, that is intertwined with its ecosystem. With this stablecoin, users can make online payment, lending, borrowing, and stock market trading using. Part of the plans for Bitlocus is to use Terra’s stablecoins UST (USD) and EUT (EUR) as the backbone for creating its CeDeFi platform which is a FIAT to DeFi gateway.
Another advantage Terra blockchain brings is the interoperability between blockchains especially those that are smart contract enabled using UST as the central currency. The ability to fuse DeFi with CeFi is a reflection of the similarity in the vision of Terra blockchain and Bitlocus. This combination will make crypto usage so simple for users crushing the fear of fiat-crypto transactions.
Terra blockchain is amongst the largest smart-contract networks in the world by total value locked (TVL). This has a direct implication on the size of its community expanding the reach of Bitlocus to more users.
How Bitlocus Works
There are so many operations that are carried out in the Bitlocus ecosystem. The two that are basic and define how it works are the verification processes and the trading processes. The former must be done before any operations are carried out while the latter gives users so many options to choose from
For Bitlocus, there are four different levels of verification that control how much you can trade in Euros (remember that there are no crypto trading limits). Tier 1 involves signing up on the platform by filling out basic user details in a form and confirming the email of the user. The limitation here is that the user cannot deposit or trade.
At Tier 2, know-your-customer (KYC) verification starts. Here, the user is given a daily and monthly trading volume limit of EUR 2,000, and EUR 15,000 respectively. Tier 3 requires proof of address and nature of income. For trading, the limit is EUR 10,000 daily and EUR 100,000 monthly. The last tier is the fourth. The user will be asked to submit additional documents as is required by Bitlocus. If completed, the user can immediately have a business account with a custom trading volume reaching EUR 100,000 daily and EUR 1,000,000 monthly.
Two types of orders can be placed through Bitlocus: market orders and limit orders. In marker orders, a trade is set to buy or sell at the current market price. It guarantees full execution but not price as the order is filled at the best price available relative to time.
In a limit order, the user is allowed to specify either the minimum price to sell at or the maximum price to buy at. The price guarantee is assured here but not the execution of a trade. As earlier said, there are other exchanging processes beyond this like lending, staking, and yield farming.
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Services and the Benefits Offered by Bitlocus
The vision of making Bitlocus one of the greatest crypto exchanges for fiat-crypto activities has driven the team to provide awesome services that are similar to other platforms and also unique to Bitlocus as a unique combination. Here are some of them:
For example, a Bitlocus user, Amy, will receive a 20% commission of the trading fees paid by Kim, a new user that signed up using Amy’s referral link. And the number of persons Amys and Kims can refer for a sign-up is limitless. Most 21st century businesses use this model to increase their customer base.
One major challenge most people experience with the adoption of crypto is receiving and making payments with crypto and fiat interchangeably. The Bitlocus ecosystem has a crypto payment gateway that makes it possible for individuals as well as businesses to accept payments in BTC, ETH, and other accepted cryptos and it automatically reflects in fiat currency. That’s not all: this is completely free of charge and it’s automatic.
Bitlocus has a fair enough trading fee where the maker charges for the public markets is 0.1%, while it’s 0.2% for the private sale markets. Then 0.2% and 0.4% are the taker fee for public markets and private sale markets respectively. The fees differ depending on if you’re a taker (trader that fills orders made by makers) or maker (trader that creates orders and waits for them to be filled by takers).
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Deposit And Withdrawal Fees
What users pay as deposit and withdrawal fees is dependent on the type of currency and platform used. For example, when a user deposits EUR using SEPA bank transfer, the deposit fee is zero with a minimum amount of 100 EUR. For cryptocurrencies: the minimum deposit for BTC is 0.00001 BTC while ETH is zero. And both have no deposit fees. The withdrawal fee varies for all currencies. You can check the website for more.
There are so many options of assets to purchase using the Bitlocus platform with about 16 cryptos available to exchange for EUR. On that list, you’ll see BTC, ETH, Selfkey (KEY), PAX Gold (PAXG), and USD Coin (USDC). This advantage means that traders can follow the market trends of these assets, trade them and make good money on the Bitlocus platform. Thanks to DeFi.
No one wants to lose any more assets due to security bridges. On Bitlocus, security is of high priority and that’s why users must perform security checks and authentication using Google Authenticator. This is done after signing up with your name and unique password. For each major activity to be carried out, a user must be verified for authenticity.
Although the headquarters is in Lithuania, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the major regulator in the UK that regulates the activities carried out in the platform. FCA is globally recognized and that’s a good step towards providing trust between the company and users.
Any platform that does not consider processing speed will lose out of the market quickly. Customers are looking for speed and trust. Bitlocus has made it possible for accounts of new users to be ready in 15 mins. Deposits can pull through within 24hrs as withdrawals can be made immediately. Steps are being taken to make this ever faster for users.
Bitlocus also offers lending, staking, and yield farming options that are native to DeFi networks. Other new projects can also make use of the launchpad of Bitlocus to raise funds. Bitlocus offers ICO and IEO services as well. This was launched last year. NFTs will be a future development in 2022.
The Challenges
Bitlocus has a lot of advantages but these challenges bring a drawback.
There is no mobile app that can be used to access the services of Bitlocus. Mobile is termed the future of most tech operations and if crypto is part of that sector, then the presence of a mobile app will drive adoption and ease of use.
The website version of the exchange is still not as comprehensive as it should be although the interface is simple to understand. Another consideration will be the competition in the market. Binance, Huobi, and other platforms provide a more robust service than Bitlocus with P2P which is so significant, especially in regions where crypto is almost banned or not accepted. It also means that the pegging to EUR for cross trading will limit the entry for users in developing countries where the standard of living is still low.
Tokenomics
BTL is the native token of Bitlocus and it is backed by the CW20 smart contract on Terra blockchain. There are provisions for bridged tokens that allow the connection of blockchains for the transfer of assets in this case tokens so that users can enjoy the CeDeFi structure. Some of the chains that have access to these options include but are not limited to Terra, Binance Smart Chain, and Ethereum.
The private and public sales were at 1 BTL to $0.018 and 1 BTL to $0.02 respectively. As of 24 February 2022, the price is $0.03041 with a market cap of $1,927,310.16, ATH of $0.179 and ATL of $0.0298. The total and circulating supply of BTL are 500,000,000 and 63,375,000 respectively. The private sale took 30%, public sales 3%, marketing 15%, liquidity 30%, team 10%, advisors 3%, development 3%, initial reserve, and legal 3%. For the proceeds, business development will utilize 40%, marketing 20%, software development 5%, risk fund 10%, and liquidity 25%.
The two greatest benefits of holding a BTL token is access to the CeDeFi gateway that allows fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-crypto transactions including trading. And then rewards for providing liquidity for the continuous flow of the network. Without holders of tokens, blockchain networks will not truly thrive. The tokens serve as part of the driving engine for the sustenance of the ecosystem.
Roadmap
Bitlocus was founded in 2018 and it’s fully registered in the UK. One year after its launch, Bitlocus CEX was released with a crypto/fiat, crypto/crypto trading capacity. In 2020, early 2021, and Q4 of 2021,
Bitlocus B2B services, IEO platform, and DeFi operations were launched respectively. In Q1 of 2022, more investment packages came up alongside staking options. Q2 of 2022 will see the release of DeFi lending, DeFi farming, and Crypto Debit Card. NFT transactions will begin by Q3 of 2022 alongside copy-trading, multi-language customer support, and an academy for trading towards Q4 of 2022.
In conclusion, with locations in Australia, Thailand, Canada, United States, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, UK (where it’s fully regulated), and other nations, Bitlocus is cashing in on a mass adoption strategy of crypto. Fear is still an issue in the market and the academy with other utilities in the system shows there is a good plan to help users all over the world get into the crypto market in less risky ways. For partnership and investors, they have huge names behind the brand including BlockInfinity, iDenfy, DAO Maker, Gate.io, Adamano, Ginger Fund, and other crypto servicing companies. Always remember to do your research before investing.
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