You define centralized exchanges as banks (as they are usually). A decentralized exchange has a different model. There is no credit and IOU conversion but a d

You define centralized exchanges as banks (as they are usually). A decentralized exchange has a different model. There is no credit and IOU conversion but a direct exchange of BTC to Fiat (or other altcoin). For escrowing the trade amount we use Bitcoins Multi-signature feature so the blockchain is the escrow. Here is a basic overview about the process: https://bisq.io/overview.png https://bisq.io/overview.png