Bitsquare, a peer-to-peer digital currency exchange that uses the TOR network to anonymize transactions, announced today it will be rebranding due to legal complications related to the name itself. Mihail Mihalov, communications manager at Bitsquare, said the difficulties arose when the Bitsquare development team attempted to legally establish the Bitsquare name, but learned that someone else had already registered a similar brand:
“The team recently initiated brand registration, but as it often happens, the name was opposed. It turns out, though to no one’s surprise, our project is not the first one to come up with the term “square” in its name.”“To avoid a lengthy and expensive legal process, we will have to find another name,” writes Mihalov.
Lead developer and founder of the Bitsquare project, Manfred Karrer, has turned to the Bitsquare community for help in finding a suitable alternative. Karrer has offered a 0.5 bitcoin ($400 at current exchange rates) reward to the party responsible for composing the best name.
The contest will run through February 20, 2016, and the winner will be selected by the Bitsquare team. So far, more than 30 unique entries have been submitted on the official contest forum thread.
While the Bitsquare platform is one of the few bitcoin trading venues where participants are not required to undergo any KYC/AML checks to freely engage in any type of fiat-to-bitcoin transaction, trading activity on Bitsquare has been subdued for most of 2016.
However, turnover picked up in the first week of 2017 in Europe, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, according to data on Coin.dance.
