Seablue Journal: Buying XYO tokens on DDEX

For a long time, I've been following an ICO for the XYO token. The ICO was restricted for residents of the U.S., which I thought was an unfortunate situation. The use case is very interesting and the company seems well positioned to become a leader in the field.

I happened to look up XYO on coinmarketcap.com and discovered that it was listed on a few decentralized exchanges. Most of the volume is being traded on IDEX. I went to that exchange but I didn't like the fee structure and minimum on the trades. I then tried DDEX and was able to use the MetaMask chrome extension to trade directly from an Ethereum address.

As you can see above, the volume is not exactly huge on these exchanges. It was necessary for me to take the best asking prices if I wanted to buy without waiting. The spread wasn't too bad, and the price seems very affordable.

So why XYO? Well, rather than me laying out the case for XYO, I'll direct you to a few links that would serve that purpose better.

XYO have their own website of course at www.xyo.network.

While googling for some resources I noticed there was even a Steemit article that came up written by @gbenga four months ago, which is a pretty comprehensive article and worth taking a look at.

Here is a Medium account where some articles have been written by people involved in the project. In this account, they give themselves the by-line of "The world’s first location-based, trustless, decentralized oracle".

This the YouTube interview with Dallas Rushing where it initially came to my attention.

The company has been around since 2012, I believe and have already established a business selling location devices. So they already have a proven track record of running a business and the manufacture and distribution of devices. This is a big plus in my books.

Probably my biggest issue is they have chosen to run it on the Ethereum network, but I did watch an interview between Charlie Shrem and Scott Scheper in which Scot stated that there was nothing holding them back from using other blockchain platforms specifically mentioning EOS as an example. This would have been well before EOS has started its mainnet and I'll be watching closely to see if something happens in that direction, as I think EOS would be a much better solution for this type of application.

I've been looking around for something that might be my 'next big thing'. There is so much opportunity in the crypto space it is overwhelming. This is one that I'm glad I can get into while the token price is less than a penny. A small investment in which I don't need to risk a lot of capital that could bring big rewards.

The journey of buying XYO using the DDEX exchange was interesting in itself. I've started to master the use of MetaMask. The more I use the Ethereum network, the more I like it. The fees though are still a big problem. Just buying the Ethereum on an exchange and sending it to a wallet cost me $2.50 USD.

One little trick I discovered was rather than using MetaMask to send funds between two Ethereum accounts, I could use MetaMask to access the ETH address through MEW (MyEthereumWallet) and cut the fee drastically. MetaMask was going to charge $4.90 USD. Using MetaMask and MEW it cost me $0.46 cents instead. That is a little trick that can save me a lot of money.

The other part of the journey that interests me is the development of decentralized exchanges, commonly abbreviated is a DEX. I'm becoming increasingly reticent to trade through centralized exchanges. There are risks of losing money to hacks. There are risks that funds can be frozen or become inaccessible. All the information about my trades is being collected and could be given to people who I don't want to know what I'm doing.

The only way for decentralized exchanges to prosper is for more people to use them. I don't know whether you like XYO, but I would definitely recommend playing with some small amounts of money and learning the ropes with a DEX. It is probably only for the adventurous. It wasn't all smooth sailing. I feel empowered though! I was finally able to get those XYO tokens! Even though U.S. regulators had placed barriers in my way. That's freedom folks! Let's not take it for granted.