0 sats \ 9 replies \ @okpj 7 Jan \ parent \ on: Are Atomic Swaps Still Experimental? tech
Monero has atomic swaps with Bitcoin, but only in the BTC->XMR direction.
I’m not sure what you mean that they only work in one direction. If Alice has some Monero, Bob has some Bitcoin, and they do an atomic swap, wouldn’t Alice have some Bitcoin and Bob have some Monero after that? So, whenever there is a swap, it’s in one direction for one participant, and the other direction for the other?
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I made an error in my initial breakdown so deleted.
Basically, in its current state, you can’t “buy” bitcoin with XMR. You must “sell” XMR for bitcoin, and the actual on-chain swap has to be initiated by the Bitcoin/buy side. The difference may seem trivial (Bob and Alice each exchange their funds in the end) but it’s an important distinction.
exactly. if it's only in one direction at the end user level... whose monero are they getting? Is it a nominal atomic swap that actually uses a centralized wallet?
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I made an error in my initial attempt to break it down, so deleted.
The goal is definitely to have it work both ways (at least it was in 2021, tbh I don’t follow Monero development closely) but it will take a hard fork of Monero for it to work.
Here is a link to a post by Comit breaking it down, but basically in its current form you cannot “buy” Bitcoin with XMR. You must “offer” then “sell” your XMR for Bitcoin. The actual on-chain swap must be initiated by the Bitcoin/buy side.