Blockport - A New Exchange Review

Introduction 1
Problem 1
Solution 2
Team 3
Development 4
Roadmap 4
Partners 4
Market 5
Conclusion 6
 
Introduction
Blockport aims to be a hybrid-decentralized exchange, leveraging the best of centralized and decentralized exchanges, with major focus in user adoption through its easy-to-use platform for new and experience traders, yet with a complex feature-packed backend.

Problem
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have been around for over a decade now and although the space has been growing exponentially, it’s still very difficult for beginners and non-savvy tech users to get in or understand cryptocurrencies, let alone start trading.

Blockport has identified current 5 fundamental problems that hinder mainstream adoption.

1. Lack of Liquidity: not enough buy/sell assets on some exchanges
2. Lack of Security: liquid exchanges are centralized thus prone to fraud and hack
3. Lack of Transparency: hidden costs, commissions and fees
4. Lack of Usability: complex UI’s that only suit experienced traders
5. Lack of Education: lack of knowledge sharing for beginner investors

Coinbase is still the only exchange that it can be truly recommended to beginners due to its ease of use but it still suffers from being centralized. Also lacks features for experienced traders, has a small cryptocurrency portfolio and it has very high costs due to its monopoly.

The most known alternatives like Binance, Bittrex, Bitfinex, Kraken, etc. offer more cryptocurrencies and features but are still centralized and do not have a friendly UI.

Less known but decentralized and trustless alternatives like Etherdelta, IDEX, etc. severely lack usability, education and specially liquidity.

People need simpler to use exchanges with educational and social components for beginners and all advanced features for veteran traders. Until then, newcomers are especially likely to be deterred from getting involved in cryptocurrencies.
 
Solution
Blockport is not just another cryptocurrency exchange. Blockport aims to offer an intuitive user-experience, social trading, and a knowledge sharing community as they believe that these factors play a major role in the journey towards mass adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Blockport hybrid approach combines centralized trading with decentralized crypto storing.
This hybrid system will attempt to address the 5 fundamental issues identified.

1. Liquidity
   Blockport combines liquidity aggregated from multiple external public exchanges.
   Also more fiat options will be available, further increasing liquidity.

2. Security
   Secure storage of members’ funds through decentralization in combination with the integration of external centralized public exchanges to provide liquidity when needed.

3. Transparency
   Continuous market prices analysis across all exchanges to provide the best prices.

4. Usability
   Extreme focus on usability and user-friendliness. Members will be able to switch
   between a simple and advanced UI (similar to what Binance does).

5. Education
   Host of a knowledge base and a forum to encourage knowledge sharing.
   Also 24/7 customer support via chat or email.

Another key feature of Blockport, similar to eToro, it’s Social Trading. This allows users to share their crypto portfolios and automatically “copy” trades from experienced traders.

BPT is Blockport’s ERC20 utility token that can exchanged for premium services, discounted trading fees and social trading functionalities.
 
Team
The Blockport team consists of 22 core members from the Netherlands and 6 advisors.

There’s no highlights within the team members, although they extended it from only 9 originally, but the advisory board seems strong in legal and regulation with connections to ARK.io, Deloitte and Osborne Clarke.
 
Development
Roadmap
Blockport is currently on the 1.0 public Beta which offers a mobile and desktop app that can to buy, sell and exchange 5 cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, BCH, XRP and LTC) with Euros.

Bitstamp is Blockport’s first external exchange to provide liquidity. In the upcoming months, the second one added might be Bitfinex, allowing Blockport to offer further 60+ trading pairs.

In 2019 Blockport aims to release the final version of Blockport, the hybrid-decentralized exchange. This means that users’ funds will be stored on-chain in a decentralized way, while trades are being executed in a centralized way for best liquidity.

Partners
Blockport current partners are related with its advisory team connections to ARK.io, Deloitte and Osborne Clarke.

These connections are especially relevant to assist Blockport in its regulatory focus.
 
Market
Blockport ran its token pre-sale and sale in January 2018 where investors paid about $0.27 (33% bonus pre-sale) and $0.35 per token.

BPT is being traded since January 24, currently at around $0.14, with $0.85 ATH.

BPT is currently a very low 504 rank token with a $7.4M market cap. If it reaches a similar competitor like 0x (ZRX) on rank 23 with $604.5M market cap, then 80x gains are possible.

BPT is currently listed only on KuCoin and IDEX.
 
Conclusion
In short, Blockport is aiming to create a unique trading platform that balances the best of centralized and decentralized exchanges with features which will set it apart from other exchanges like user friendliness, social trading, access to external exchanges and fiat pairs.

Blockport envisions to become in the next 2 years a social hybrid-decentralized exchange that combines the proven concepts of eToro + Coinbase + Binance + Blockchain.
eToro for its social trading, Coinbase for its simplicity, Binance for the simple / advanced UI options and Blockchain for security and transparency.

Blockport concept is definitely interesting and important for cryptocurrency adoption, although the exchanges market is quite saturated at the moment.
Still, Blockport has room to grow and it’s an investment with great returns potential, especially if it can be one of the first to be adopted for its needed social trading feature.