PlusExchanges

Inspiration

Buying and investing in crypto is hard in the modern age, As a low income student myself, I was able to have cashapp or apple pay accounts under 18, and then a lightbulb struck me, what if students like me, could exchange their fiat for crypto and learn how to invest, as well as empower users with financial tools and opportunities. The idea was to bridge the gap between traditional financial systems and the growing world of cryptocurrencies, making these financial services more accessible and inclusive especially to a younger audience.

What it does

PlusExchanges is a user-friendly website that facilitates easy fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat exchanges using methods like CashApp, PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, and Apple Pay. It simplifies cryptocurrency transactions, reducing the restrictions found on platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood.

How we built it

React-javascript framework, frontend Node- javascript based server-side scripts, backend mysql-relational database management system , database clerk-authentication provider, user management bootstrap-css framework vscode-primary IDE github-verison control bluehost-deployment mailgun- simple email service for notifying exchanges. pm2 service - realtime server logging/management.

Challenges we ran into

-storing user data - no event/hook when user sign up as the first time -learning new hosting server in bluehost vps -integrating automatic CI/CD pipeline with github actions

Accomplishments that we're proud of

-Easy to use for end users -Secure authentication -Well structured

Every time a user creates an exchange I receive an email, so I can attend to it as fast as possible. ## What we learned -Using clerk provider for user authentication and management -Creating APIs using React/Node -Various hosting server deployment -CI/CD pipeline to the vps using ssh/ftp access ## What's next for PlusExchanges I'd like to add a stocks option as well, which would require some api's from webull and it would definitely be a challlenge. More advertisements across platforms like Instagram Integrate more platforms like Paypal, Zelle, Venmo, Currently only have Cashapp, Apple Cash and major cryptocurrencies. Continue improving on the UX Right Now, Exchanges are manually automated, we'd like to hire people to automate them or integrate api's within each platform, but obviously given the week time to work on this, that was not possible. I would love to add more information to the website , as well as display Exchange rates and even a discord server and a bot to help expand this onto the popular platform, where there are many servers in need of an exchange channel for currencies. Include real time price of crypto's on the exchange tab to reflect UI##