Decentralized currencies but centralized trading, that's the reality.
And a study that shows that once again, according to
this report, 4 exchange platforms share 90% of the Bitcoin's trading volume (Coinbase, Bitstamp, Bitfinex et Kraken). (It also reminded me of an old article showing that 2/3 of the transactions were related only to trading activities by the way.)
What's the point of using a decentralized currency if next to it people use a centralized platform for trading? Oh I know, follow the money...
This shows that people are not really interested in decentralization and that the P2P trade/trading/payment methods cannot develop properly. If there is no demand there will be no supply and the ecosystem cannot evolve correctly.
(I'm not even talking about the fact that the majority is only interested to speculate)
The question also arises as to the future of these platforms which are acquiring more and more influence over the years, such as Binance or Coinbase for example, which are buying up companies or introducing much broader products than a simple trading platform.
Doesn't that remind you GAFA? (to compare)
We are no longer in 2013 where users had little choice. We have everything we need, more or less, to do without them.
Keep using centralized exchanges and complete the KYC, in less than 10 years they all will be hated.
The issue that I have with decentralized exchanges is that they’re not really user-friendly. Despite that it removes such things like KYC, the trading costs are high and transactions are kinda slow due to order books that are under off-chain/on-chain. Cancellation of orders are expensive, trade failure situations and limitations of order types like more complex orders that cannot be created anymore which relies on third party assistance such as stop-loss or so.
Even though it has some advantages like security, custody, listing diversification, etc., I would rather go for CEXs for trading purposes. Despite that we don’t have the custody of the coins and tokens we have or KYC requirement in the CEXs, the trading fee is cheap and transactions are fast. They’re just vulnerable to hacks though, so it’s up to them to implement out-of-the-box security features that would make the hackers or intruders having hard time to breach the platform.