We sat with Grapefruit Trading to talk about their experience on AirSwap Spaces as an OTC liquidity provider in a variety of crypto assets. To learn more about OTC on AirSwap Spaces, read on and email us at [email protected].

In October 2018, AirSwap launched Spaces, a product designed for over-the-counter (OTC) trades. AirSwap Spaces allows individual traders, as well as professional OTC desks, to indicate their intent to trade, discover peers, and buy and sell tokens peer-to-peer with end-to-end encrypted messaging.

AirSwap Spaces for OTC

With the Swap Protocol, AirSwap’s Ethereum-based “atomic swap” smart contract allows traders to settle ERC-20 and ETH transactions without the need of a trusted third party or escrow. This streamlines and optimizes the transaction process, which traditionally requires an extensive amount of documentation and verifications to ensure both parties are confident with the delivery of their assets.

Following the recent onboarding of QCP Capital, Grapefruit Trading has become the second professional OTC desk to create a Space. Some of you may recall the $364,000 ETH / DAI transaction reported on @AirSwapBot on Twitter, an OTC transaction completed on Spaces.

Grapefruit Trading on AirSwap

In light of these recent trades, we took the time to chat with the team about their experiences on the platform.

AirSwap: Let’s kick off with an introduction.

Grapefruit: Grapefruit Trading is a proprietary cryptocurrency trading firm based in Miami with offices in Chicago and Hong Kong.

AirSwap: U.S. and Hong Kong, just like us. Who’s on the team?

Grapefruit: Although we have only been operating since March 2018, Grapefruit has a team with a wealth of knowledge in cryptocurrencies. Our head Mike Komaransky has been a leader in the industry since 2014.

AirSwap: What services do you provide?

Grapefruit: We provide liquidity services such as over-the-counter trading and market making for exchanges as well as individual cryptocurrencies. Our most popular markets are Bitcoin and Ethereum, but we also provide markets for most of the tokens in the top fifty and many outside the top fifty. Whether you’re an investor looking to change a position, an ICO looking to trade crypto for fiat, or seek a high touch experience, Grapefruit can help you.

AirSwap: What benefits have you found to trading on AirSwap Spaces versus other methods?

Grapefruit: We like being able to post our intentions to a marketplace and being able to negotiate markets with the in-app direct messaging. As well, having an escrow system in the messaging channel helps our counterparties feel safer. Our policy is to send second if the funds aren’t being escrowed.

AirSwap: What are your thoughts on the trading experience?

Grapefruit: The UI is very intuitive and easy to use. We can quickly see all of our contacts, intents, and wallet balances in one window, which makes managing our Space simple. Our most popular market is DAI/ETH, and AirSwap makes this simple by having wrapping and unwrapping available in the balances bar.

AirSwap: Have you used many decentralized trading systems in the past?

Grapefruit: Grapefruit is based within the United States and thus is required to follow FinCEN and other branches of the United States government that regulate the finances. Unfortunately, this limits our participation in decentralized markets. Similar to Coinbase and other exchanges, we onboard and KYC all of our users.

AirSwap: What improvements would you like to see happening on AirSwap in the near future?

Grapefruit: We would really like to see a MakerDAO CDP market. We believe there is a lack of Dai demand on exchanges because there is a limited amount of purposes for Dai. As well, we believe a portion of CDP holders are not in a position to buy back their debt even at a discount. Creating a place for CDP holders to get their ETH out of their CDP would create more demand for Dai. What better place than AirSwap Spaces where users can already direct message each other in a safe trading environment.