Bitcoiners can now swap BTC for Monero‘s (XMR) privacy coins without the need for a trusted intermediary, thanks to atomic swaps developed by an Australian team.

The tools developed by CoBloX, a five-member blockchain research team based in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, allow strangers who don’t trust each other to safely swap their Monero tokens for Bitcoin and vice versa.

In simple terms, the funds are locked away cryptographically and if both parties don’t complete the transaction by a deadline, the coins return to their original holders.

The Monero community raised 2727 XMR ($982,000) to fund the project.

Monero, the No. 27 crypto, is the most popular “privacy coin,” offering transactions thought to be untraceable.

With Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies, transactions between addresses are recorded on a public ledger, and analysis can sometimes link people to addresses.

While there’s many reasons why someone might want to safeguard their privacy, privacy coins hold obvious appeal for those involved in illegal transactions.

Monero and several other privacy coins rose over the weekend, a spike that one outlet linked to the Australian Tax Office’s statement cautioning crypto traders against tax evasion.

The tool’s announcement also included instructions on how to use it with Tor, a web browser that conceals users from surveillance.

Haveno, a decentralised exchange Monero exchange currently in testing, is implementing the atomic swaps for its XMR/BTC trading pair.

Bitcoin wallet Samourai Wallet and Monero wallet Monerujo performed a test swap earlier this month, and Cake Wallet has expressed interest, according to Monero Space, a Monero workgroup.

“The decentralized Monero exchange technology is here, so now it’s a race for wallets to provide the best user experience,” said Monero Space organiser Justin Ehrenhofer. “With such high user demand for easy and private peer-to-peer exchanges, it’s only a matter of time before wallets widely implement them.”

 

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