What is the CEX?
CEXs are platforms that act as an intermediary to facilitate the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies (and other assets). They are also custodians of your funds and wallets.
The term centralized refers to the fact that there’s an entity controlling these exchanges and, by trading there, you are placing a lot of trust in that entity, including trusting it with your money.
In crypto, we also have decentralized exchanges (DEXs) that use peer-to-peer systems to facilitate exchanges without the user ceding a lot of control to the entity.
A list of CEXs can be found here: https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/, with Binance being currently at the top. There’s also a list of DEXs, though we won’t use them for trading just yet: https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/dex/.
As you can see in the first list, Binance is at the top, so I’m going to use screenshots from this exchange in this section of the book. Here’...
