Steemit Crypto Academy Contest Season 1 Week 2 - Reviewing Centralized Exchanges

Discuss briefly Centralized exchanges and its Benefits to crypto users.

CENTRALIZED EXCHANGE

First of all let's understand what is centralised exchange is. Well there are two types of exchange that are centralized & decentralised. These are differnet from each other. Let's first have a look at what a decentralised exchange is, a decentralised exchange is an exchange where there is no 3rd party in between the transactions. The user has the complete access of the account. The user holds the private keys that is the whole access is in the hands pf the user whereas a centralized exchange is totally opposite of the decentralised exchange. In centralised exchange there is a 3rd party involved in the transactions. The 3rd party is the exchange itself. The user does not have the access to his private keys. The private keys are held by the exchange & they use the private keys on your behalf whenever you perform a transaction on the centralised exchange the system automatically enters your private key on your behalf. There are merits & demerits of the centralized exchanges

• The few benifits are reversiblity of the transactions as no user has private keys in cause of a fraud the fraudulent can be punished by the exchange admin. While incase of the decentralised exchange anyone with the key can claim ownership & if funds are lost they are lost forever & nothing can be done.

• The one benifit is that incase you face a bug or something wrong happens you can contact the administration. They are of great help when it comes to funds or mistakes related to funds. I personally faced a problem with my funds on binance & the support helped me to cope up with the problem.

• The another benifit of using centralised exchange is recover ability. Even if one looses his password he/she can still recover his/her assets by talking to the tech support & proving them its his/her account..

• In most cases the centralised exchange is user friendly that is it is good for newbies & beginners. The centralised exchange is made keeping newbies & beginners in kind unlike decentralised that are made keeping professionals & trained users in mind.

---

What do you look out for when choosing an exchange to trade your crypto asset?

THINGS TO LOOKOUT

Where there are a lot of things that one needs to keep in kind while choosing an exchange few of them being

• Lookout for a secure exchange, as the crypto marketplace is emerging more & more exchanges are appearing. Few are good most of them are trash. A good security layer is very important for an exchange. The exchange should provide a defence layer capable enough to withstand hacking/cracking attack

• Lookout for the beginner friendly interface. There are many exchanges available that are too hard to be used on daily basis. No I am not saying they are not good,but all I am saying is they are not beginner friendly they are hard to use.

• Lookout for a good customer support. Customer is the only entity that keeps a business running. The exchange should have a good customer support. Incase of mishaps they should assure you. Incase you want to know how to use a feature they should guide you.

• Lookout for a wallet integrated exchange. Some of the exchanges are there that only have exchange with no wallet integrated. That is a security feature but having a wallet within an exchange is very convenient as it reduces the time of transactions.

• Lookout for the transaction fees. There are many exchanges that charge a whooping amount of money on each transction. One should use the exchanges where there is a decent transaction fees.

---

Review your favorite centralized exchange and explain its unique features

REVIEWING BINANCE

Binance is my favorite exchange because of various reasons that I will mention further in the post. Binance is user friendly as they are 2 seprate interfaces for beginners & pros. Its easy to use. It has a great customer support team. It has most of coins/tokens listed. The transaction fees is less as compared to other exchanges. It also has an integrated wallet. Well it not only is my favourite, it is loved by people all over the globe & that makes it the #1 exchange allover the globe. Lets have a look at the unique features of binance. Startinthe most important feature that is BINANCE LITE & BINANCE LITE.

• This is a section of Binance named MARKET. In this section there are all the trading pairs available. One can easily find a coin & its corresponding trading pairs in this section. It covers the trading pairs of the exchange.

• Now comes the market section,in this section you can buy/sell an asset & also you can setup stop loss & take profit. You can also set an buying/selling order.

• Now is the time to discuss binance futures. Its a place where you take leverage & trade the coins at a leveraged price. Its a risky thing so you often get a prompt saying you to solve a quiz to make sure you know everything that you need to know. In this section you can also see USD-M, COIN-M,options & battle. That are also different types of future trades.

• Last but not the least feature is wallet. Binnace comes with a good secured wallet section. Its used to store your assets. You can store amy coin/token that binance allows to trade. You can also store as much as you want to.

---

Is there anything about your favorite exchange you will like to be changed? Discuss.

PROBLEMS ABOUT BINANCE

Well binance a no brainer for me when it comes to trading assets in spot or futures. I have uninstalled all the other after I started using BINANCE because it offers every retire that i might need. Each and everything is good but there I a slight problem well we cant say that's a problem on their end but a problem is there. Whenever you perform a P2P transaction the waiting time is decided by the person selling the assets. In some cases I had to wait for 4 hours to receive my payment or sometimes I sell them crypto & I don't receive the payment for few hours. That's a thing that they should change about. They should make a fixed timing for P2P tramsctions because sometimes it also leads to financial loss as the prices are constantly changing.

---

What shortcomings do you see on centralized exchanges and how do you think user funds can be protected since we don’t have access to our wallet private keys?

SHORTCOMINGS

Well talking about shortcomings I don't think there is much to discuss. There are few things that include hacking of the exchange which can cause a financial loss. Well that happens very rarely. Otherwise if it is a reputed exchange like binance, houbi global. I don't think there are some shortcomings to these exchanges.its a personal opinion & it can vary from person to person.

PROTECTING YOUR WALLET

As we know in centralized exchange we don't have a private key so technically we are not the owner its the exchange that holds the coins/tokens on our behalf. ButBut an exchange have provided a layer of security to make sure no tom dick harry messes around with your coins. 2FA that stands for two factor authentication can be used that is you need to enter a code that changes every 30 seconds. You can also set a screen password to to lock your exchange.