Topic: Newbies: Don't use centralized exchanges! (Read 1206 times)

We've seen them do their thing against Monero and other privacy coins and, likely, they'd also crack down on these decentralized exchanges.

They don't give a treat on these services and platforms that give more privacy and protection to ourselves but, they see them as a threat.

But as a community, we can do our own thing as well. If they can't patronize these type of exchange that are protecting us, we can.

It is very possible to happen because the biggest risk for governments to attack these decentralized exchanges is their founders, developers are very popular and known publicly.

Governments, if they want to force Decentralized exchanges to change policies on KYC, will have to create pressure on founders of these DEX. If founders don't obey to request from governments, they will be arrested, charged with life sentence and more. Under such terrible pressure, founders will have no better choice rather than to obey the new strict regulation and cooperate with governments.

Why KYC is extremely dangerous – and useless

We can enjoy KYC free on some platforms that will be less popular with time.

What is worrying someday that the regulators and governments will be forcing the people that develops these decentralized exchanges for whichever purpose they are with, data, txids, etc. Yeah, they're decentralized but there's a probable way for the law enforcement to track them and do what just they've been doing to those projects, cryptos that are into privacy.

I am afraid that it is not impossible to happen. But as long as we're able to enjoy these platforms that promotes decentralization, we're good but just to give some thoughts about that day and it will come.

And going on with the centralized exchanges, before, they'd question you and ask more details about you depositing and withdrawing 10-100 Bitcoins. Now, they might even question you more about 0.1 and even lesser while the price of Bitcoin is going up even if you've already passed on their kyc just for that sake.

I knew of trade-in-person method but it is risky. You can use this method because it won't touch your bank account and does not need to use bank transfer, it's good for your privacy without connection to bank but as anything else, it has weaknesses.

One of weaknesses and risk to consider with this method, is your safety physically. When you go to trade in person with your trade partner, be careful with faked cash changed hands and physical attacks too.

Known physical Bitcoin attacks
All known physical attacks on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (2014 - 2022)

I agree that using decentralized methods to sell crypto for fiat is way to go. Meeting up with someone locally or using platform like Bisq provides secure and private way to trade. It is good option that Bisq allows for anonymous transactions without need for KYC reducing risk of funds being frozen.. Additionally avoiding centralized exchanges saves on fees and minimizes risk of technical issues. However it is good to ensure that you are complying with local laws and regulations when engaging in peer to peer crypto transactions.

I agree with you that binance is a good exchange many traders are using to trade their coins, and it's very safe and secure to make their transactions successful at the end. If binance is banned in your country, you can make use of some exchanges app that is very good like binance, but don't save your coins in exchange app because many people have loss their coins on exchange app, because is not good for people to store coins for long years before they can trade to make profits.

I guess Bybit exchange will give you the security binance use to give to their users, because they function the say way in the exchange market like binance but different team, but Bybit exchange is not too popular like binance.

Nigerian transaction added: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/newbies-make-una-no-dey-use-exchanges-wey-be-centralized-5505196

Thank you, Chilwell. 

I didn't say "blocking" is robbery. I just said that they're essentially dictating of where your money is allowed to go, hereby they censor you. And since censorship is an objectively bad habit, especially when self-custody is an option, you should avoid using Binance. You might want to continue buying bitcoin using Binance, for personal reasons, but using it as a wallet is just plain stupid.

Binance exchange blocking some countries of it's platform is not robbery, and this doesn't mean the exchange isn't safe for newbies, Binance will warn you to withdraw you funds before they ban those locations, I like this exchange and I have been a user for the past year's now.. No other exchange is better.

Added German translation: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/anfanger-und-neueinsteiger-vermeidet-die-zentralen-regulierten-borsen-5411848

Yes I'm sure about Poloniex, that use to be one of the best move from a Cex in the recent years, but Poloniex has finally dropped mandatory KYC for registering and using its platform. It happened in late 2019 just before Christmas.
I've never given any KYC to them and I can still freely access my account.
https://medium.com/poloniex/a-new-account-tier-is-here-bebb4a8919e0
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2019/12/23/poloniex-drops-kyc-for-withdrawals-below-10000-following-us-exit/

Few restrictions remain, but they are very light for the average Joe.
https://support.poloniex.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041078913-Level-1-Account-Features

• Poloniex: Are you sure about them? I did not use Poloniex since late of 2017 or early of 2018. Around that period, they required KYC. I submitted my document and successfully verified my account. I did not use it long enough but did they actually lift KYC requirement in latest years?
• Yobit: that exchange is shady, not like a scam because shady # scam. Even they don't require KYC, I don't use them
• Hotbit, Bitfinex: No KYC (you are right)

Almost 90% of all coins that are present on the market can be bought only on a decentralized exchange, as this does not require the financial costs associated with listing on CEX. Accordingly, by the time of TGE, each team is listing its coin on DEX. Such an example is the Robby coin, which is traded only on Uniswap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/robby/markets/

Oh, that's how it's decentralized, that's neat! Yup, sounds good to me. Too bad Ethereum has so many flaws, but I like the idea of using a smart contract; that doesn't require to spin up a whole new network like in Bisq.
There's one issue with smart contracts which is that the immutability of the blockchain doesn't easily allow you to update them to fix a bug. You could code an update mechanism into it, but then it's hard to trust the immutability and you have to hope that devs won't change the contract in a 'bad way', making it less decentralized again. But I digress!

Cool cool. I mean if you're already in the Ethereum ecosystem, might as well use smart contracts. I just wouldn't build a Bitcoin on-/off-ramp as an ETH SC.

Etherdelta was probably one of the first exchanges I used. It's basically a smart contract, hence the decentralization aspect.
The website is just a way to interact with the smart contract. Even if the website is down or completely cease to exist it would still be possible to interact with the smart contract via other tools such as etherscan or mew.

Back then, it was possible to trade any token (erc20) just by importing its smart contract address.
Forkdelta as the name suggests is a fork of etherdelta.

If you want to sell crypto for fiat, I'd always recommend going decentralized.
You can either find someone directly who wants to get some Bitcoin locally and meet up; or you can use a truly decentralized exchange like Bisq. It's basically just a way to securely find and trade with an unknown person directly. I'm sure that this is legal wherever you are located; that's usually a trade of goods. Like, the same way you can sell a bike on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace; you can sell Bitcoins. Just not through Craigslist or FB Marketplace, but through https://bisq.network/.

It's much better than using a centralized exchange, since as I wrote above, it's cheaper, anonymous, you don't need to do KYC and you're not at risk of getting funds frozen, confiscated or the exchange having technical downtimes.

Actually this is what I want to do. But the fact that I need to cash out crypto to money should be done by the CEX in my country that is regulated under the government institution. That is CEX. all my local exchange is regulated and they ask our KYC. May be if this is for cashing out, no choice beside doing it on CEX. Although there are P2P, but is it really secured?
However, if this is about exchanges that are for trading, it may not only be CEX, but DEX is also suitable for me. But so far, I use mostly Binance.

Yes, correct; that's how Bisq works. I was wondering whether the platforms you've used in the past also worked like this or how they were technologically decentralized.

The 'social decentralization' is a good point. I guess here Bisq tends more towards Bitcoin; as its founders or lead developers don't appear publicly as 'prominently' as Buterin does, and last I checked they do have a lot of community contributions. In theory, it's easy to fork Bisq (e.g. reverting to an older version) and continue using that version, in case they 'mess up' and move into a direction that the community doesn't like. Same as Bitcoin really; even easier since there's no blockchain split and whatnot.

I did get it directly from their payout address..

It's even more extreme if you work out the 'percentage above market' like in my $100 example. It means even if you take a very expensive offer on Bisq for 5% 'above market', you'll still be saving money.

Ohhh, connecting a wallet doesn't sound too good. At least create one just for the decentralized exchange, maybe. That's kind of what Bisq does; it has an integrated (local, non-custodial) wallet, that stores its private keys on the PC it's running on. You can use external wallet, too, though. In any way, the keys don't leave your device.
I still don't understand how the 'ETH DEX' platforms you guys are talking about were decentralized, if there was no client software like Bisq running on the users' personal computers.

Yeah, that's right. You were one of the winners who got some money from Sportsbet. If you were to deposit those in Gemini or Binance.US (probably Coinbase as well), they would surely have some questions for you. Especially if you got those coins directly from an address associated with Sportsbet. I see no reason why Sportsbet would make any roundabouts and hide the origin of the Bitcoin.   

Seems that way, yes. So that's around $11 at current rates. But there are also reports like this one where the screenshot shows they are asking for 0.03 ETH for Ethereum withdrawals. Even after this recent drop in value, that's still $35.   

Yeah, 0.0007 BTC seems to be correct according to https://withdrawalfees.com/exchanges/hitbtc as well.

You connect your own ETH wallet to the exchange. The exchange doesn't provide you with a deposit address. The danger is that one of the ways to do that is to import your private keys! That of course shouldn't be done. A different way is connecting with a Ledger hardware wallet. With the Nano, you don't import any private keys of course. I remember reading about a DNS hack a few years ago where everyone who used the fake site at the time had their wallets emptied, but Ledger users remained protected because of their connections through hardware wallets.

Honestly, I have little knowledge about how the Bisq network works, but as far as I'm concerned, there is no central server that makes Bisq exchange operate. In fact, in order to access trading offers, users first need to install a Bisq node, which will communicate with other nodes in a peer-to-peer network. In a peer-to-peer network, each node is both a server and a client, each node keeps all necessary information and hands over it to peers it has a connection with. Bisq is decentralized for two reasons: it has no central point of failure, and it is built on top of another decentralized network, namely the bitcoin network. It is a perfect example of decentralization on a technical level. Is it also decentralized on a social level? I don't know. It is open-source software to which everyone can contribute, but still, it has founders and lead developers. Will the project continue to exist in its current form should all these people suddenly disappear? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how much influence all these people have: if the level of influence is such that it allows them to make (useful) changes to the protocol, then this network is not that decentralized on a social level. Bitcoin wasn't decentralized on a social level in its early days because Satoshi had too much decision-making power. But take Ethereum, for example, it uses proof-of-work, peer-to-peer topology, and "immutable" smart contracts - the signs of technical decentralization - but it still has a founder who is able to make arbitrary changes to improve his "decentralized" blockchain. Another example of weak social decentralization is premine, which allows founders to control networks even more.

Even if you do legit business with a gambling platform that doesn't involve gambling, your coins can be dirty money in the eyes of centralized exchanges. Maybe you are a translator, content creator, developer, maybe you designed some artwork, a logo, found a bug in their systems... and you got compensated and rewarded for your work. Deposit those coins to a centralized exchange and you might be in for a nasty surprise.

HitBTC and Yobit are scam exchanges. Just check out what kind of threads you will come across when you search for "site:bitcointalk.org Yobit" or "site:bitcointalk.org HitBTC". HitBTC makes it easy to deposit, almost impossible to withdraw. I remember they used to have the biggest withdrawal fees on the market.   

witcher_sense mentioned EtherDelta, but I think that one is dead already. ForkDelta was often mentioned as its successor. But I can't help you regarding the token names. It is true that you could trade tokens on those platforms even before they got listed anywhere else. 

Back in the day, there was a decentralized trading platform called Etherdelta where you could find many ERC20 tokens not listed on any centralized exchange. Anyone could come to Etherdelta, add their own token, and even create a kind of market with unique buyers and sellers. You didn't need to ask for permission to start trading there, you could frictionlessly import self-created or someone else's token. No wonder this place was full of scams, malicious copies, impersonators, and useless shitcoins of zero value, but at least no one could steal users' data or private keys because of the decentralized structure of the said platform. However, the chief problem of decentralized platforms like Etherdelta is that they are (or may be) decentralized only on a technical level but not on a social one. Etherdelta had a founder, a single point of failure, who was charged by the SEC with running an unregistered "decentralized" platform.

Do you have an example of such a decentralized exchange where these coins are sold?
And an example of such a coin?

Like: 'There is the coin X that I could only buy on exchange Y'. Simple..

Yes, exactly: if you need all your fancy tools to draw lines and hope for profits, go for those centralized platforms. You're probably also a stock trader anyway and the stock trading site you're already using may even sell cryptocurrencies. So just stick to that as you've given them your KYC information and everything.

But for holding your coins and using them (as they're meant to); steer far away from them. No matter how flashy and nicely they design their landing sites and how much they try to target newbies. These aren't Bitcoin on-ramps and shouldn't be used as such.

For them the main aim is profitable trades and they have to trade cryptos so these exchanges are suitable for them but those who wants to hold their coins safely then avoiding these CEX is the best alternative to them as they have your keys and can freeze your transactions anytime so what safety do you expect from these platforms.

We are users and holders not any competitor of these CEX who wants to establish their business by defaming them as the problems are real faced by many and just want to guide them to don't cater these exchanges.When you are storing decentralised cryptos like bitcoin on these centralised platforms then you deplete the base aim of using these coins and don't expect privacy and safety from them at all.

Those who are into trading also needs to have some P2P or decentralised exchange because there are lot of risk with these CEX and it's not hatred for them but only our precautionary measures to keep our funds safe form them and don't know how your KYC documents are being used by them are keep track of you with imposed restriction.

Several people talked about this website above but I still don't understand why it mentions Kucoin and not other big CEXs without KYC. CMIIW but Hitbtc, Bitfinex, Poloniex, Yobit, Hotbit,... still not require any KYC to open an account and trade on them.  

What example do you want to hear, because I am writing about new coins that have not yet been listed on centralized exchanges.  Accordingly, such coins do not have liquidity on CEX, since they are not traded there and can only be bought on decentralized exchanges at the pre-sale stage of a public or closed round.

That's a good point; but I don't really believe you need privacy, untraceability or even self-custody if you see cryptocurrencies as just a means of speculation / trading. Because then you're just buying coins to sell them higher later. Traders don't aim to use the coins as anonymous, P2P cash anyway. They only want to maximize fiat holdings and never intend to actually use the currency. So therefore they couldn't care less about anonymity and privacy, right. That's a whole different use case.

Centralized, KYC exchanges might be a legit option for serious traders. However newbies should probably not trade in the first place.
What Can Happen If You Want to Trade Cryptocurrencies, but You Don’t Know How?

Maybe we should establish a distinction between:
(centralized) KYC exchange = best compared to stock exchange; for traders, looking to maximize fiat profits and
(decentralized) no-KYC Bitcoin on-ramp = novel concept, captures the spirit of Bitcoin (P2P), gets people Bitcoin without ties to identities and allows them to spend it anywhere and everywhere.

That's interesting! Do you have an example? I was under the impression that it's easier to find liquidity of altcoins on centralized exchanges rather than decentralized exchanges (just due to the fact that they have less liquidity in general).

I see in this thread only opponents of centralized exchanges, but in fact most traders use CEX because of the greater functionality for trading. I myself very often use various decentralized exchanges to buy new coins that are not yet available on centralized exchanges.

People that wants privacy are just few from other people that do not even know what privacy is as fiat system has totally deceived them. If you ask some people that do not mind of having privacy why privacy is not needed, they will say when they are not thief or aiming to be involved in any online criminal activities, that privacy is not what it is necessary for them. They do not know the negative aspect of not being private online, like in data leak and also in possible way they can be traced to their home or real identity if their data leaked to online criminals. So, even the privacy people are most likely not using the exchanges as KYC policies had become very strict in South Korea since last year after their government has made it mandatory the exchanges to follow certain KYC laws that their customers should abide to before making use of any South Korea exchange.

I know, shameless plug; but I believe this fits the topic and will be very useful to newbies, too.

[Blacklist] of unreliable, 'taint proclaiming' Bitcoin services / exchanges

The (of course centralized) exchanges listed in this topic are especially untrustworthy by being proven to confiscate your coins if they believe you got it from gambling or other activites they don't like (directly or indirectly). Keep in mind that you can receive 'tainted funds' by someone you do legit business with, and you can be a totally legal person and still get your coins confiscated.
I can't imagine how it must feel to deposit a large sum of money that you got by selling goods legally, on an exchange, just to find out they confiscated it because some of the people you did business with, might have got their coins through supposedly 'illicit activities'.

I understand your wish and I fully support the opinion that it is not necessary to use centralized exchanges. Now there are many alternatives for buying / selling crypto and it is easy to do this without using centralized exchanges with their extremely unprofitable and inflated prices for withdrawing funds and KYC. I assume that centralized exchanges will still attract beginners and traders despite all the shortcomings. Firstly, because beginners don't know alternative methods / platforms, and secondly, because where else can traders to trade shitcoins. The influx of beginners and traders will never stop, therefore, even if all users heed your call and delisting exchanges, then all the same, centralized exchanges there will be an impressive user base.

With education. Sure, if a person doesn't care of having every right that's written in the first page infringed, wants to trade shitcoins, upload his documents, play with a x10 margin call, leave all of his coins to the exchange and so on, it's impossible to convince him do otherwise.

But, if he's interested into actually using bitcoin because of the fundamentals, he ought to opt himself out of this opaque, weak and corrupted exchanging system. Even if he's already left footprints. Better late than never.

I know this is cliche, but how are we going to achieve this when exchanges are hanging paltry sums of $5, $10 over users' heads for "learning crypto", "verifying your account" and so on? You won't believe how many people would run after that tiny sum.

Bump.

South Korean exchanges delist Litecoin, because consensus was found to implement the MimbleWimble upgrade. They're removing it, because they don't want your privacy, it can't become more clear than that. Same has happened with Monero. As it's already proved again, fungibility ≠ privacy.

It's time for the users to start delisting the exchanges.

Thank you senior mate o_e_l_e_o for this;
People are very much lazy and afraid to handle their wealth themselves. We exchange our privacy and security for a little bit of convenience. Though, what you see as little convenience might mean much to them. The inability to man up to to our personal task is the reason we have bank accounts, then have bank managers, then financial advisors, relationship managers, investment advisors and to every aspect. Many do not want to take responsibilities and that  is why bitcoin appears to be so much technical to them.

It's not bitcoin that is failing here. Bitcoin is, and always has been, decentralized. It is very straightforward to buy, sell, trade, use, spend, hold, and anything else you want to do with bitcoin without ever touching a centralized exchange or other financial institution. You can buy peer to peer with other users, you can hold your own keys in your own wallet, run your own node to verify transactions and blocks yourself, spend directly with merchants in exchange for goods and services, and so on. You never need to give up your security and your privacy as demanded by centralized exchanges to use bitcoin.

The problem here isn't bitcoin, but rather people being all too willing to give up everything that bitcoin stands for - sovereignty over your money, censorship resistance, no third parties, decentralization - in exchange for a little bit of convenience.

Wow, this is a real eye opener, I've always thought in this line before but I wasn't clear on it. For some reasons I felt decentralised exchange would be better for cryptocurrency, but then I looked at the advantage some of these centralised exchange (like binance and kucoin) have in the area of P2P transaction, there's great security and the transaction is very much under control.

But looking at the matter wholistically, decentralised exchange truly would be the best. I once thought of this that when the major aim of cryptocurrency is to eliminate the intermediary (centralization) factor, why should there still be Centralised exchange? It appears to me like Cryptocurrency is not serving it's ordained purpose (to be a decentralise currency).

It kind of counteracts the whole concept of cryptography... if they are asking you for verification to unfreeze your coins then it loses it's all meaning of being uncentralized

That is well noted information been share, as you stated it early, the restriction of crypto trading and investment has been a major concern in many country in the name of Known Your Customer (KYC), in centralized exchanges, which government against on. Never the less blockchain technology is transparent, which they are many decentralized exchanges where you can buy and trading including the once already mention as the case may be.

Nice graph that reflects the truth that newbies are mostly always positive when they participate in a new area. Unfortunately, in early days, they usually receive good results and temporary profit that mislead their thinking that they are actually genius. Then, they 'bet' (I use the bet term because it exactly reflects what newbies think of themselves and what the truth is) and go all in.

Consequently, because of lack of knowledge, experience and peak of mount stupid, they will be punish painfully by the market. From the hell after being killed by the market, they will have to go through a very long period of pain and regret, some of people who can survive through that challenging period will see harvesting time later. Just part of survivors will harvest sweet results later because most of them will repeat their mistakes later.

In any market, it's around 20% winners and 80% are losers. Pareto principle

You bring up some very good points. I noticed that the less confident people are about their understanding of finance / economics and technology, the more they trust me and are open to learning, also by researching and reading themselves. On the other hand, people who already dabbled with stocks or who have an education in the field of economics do show these 'hustler-wannabe' traits and clearly find themselves on the spike of the Dunning-Kruger curve. It's much harder getting them to learn, because for that you first have to convince them of the harsh truth that they don't know everything..

---

Yes, it's possible that a trade pair for your national currency doesn't yet exist on Bisq. Peer-to-peer trading can happen outside of it too, though of course more risky. There are / were even escrow services for this right on this forum, I believe. Where a trusted member of the community escrows the transaction so both sides are secure. Maybe this could be a solution for you. Also feel free to open a thread on https://bisq.community/ with new trade pair suggestions and encourage people in your local community to make use of it once it's added.

It is true that keeping money traded on centralized exchanges is risky at times and can be controlled at times which can lead to inconvenience at times.  But I have seen that in many countries decentralized exchanges do not have the convenience to take their own money or currency due to which people are bound to trade in centralized exchanges and exchange it in their own currency through P2P.

The understanding of it requires a decent level of maturity and discipline, though. Sure, I can share it with my friend who wants to make a quick cheese with Dogecoin, by the assumption that they'll read it, but I have my doubts they'll soon enough understand why Bitcoin.

Most don't care. I don't know if you had relatives or closed friends who were experimenting with trading, but me who's surrounded by economist and banker graduates, half of which are hustler-wannabes, I can easily say they're not sensitized by these issues at all.

This is why I’ll never ever going to use CEXs as my storage for the crypto assets that I have. Although that it can save us trading fees and with faster experience, it’s biggest downside was the security. Coz’ no matter how they are enforcing these measures, the hackers are just one step ahead in doing whatever it takes to find a backdoor that would bypass restrictions just like the recent Axie Infinity hack on the Ronin Dex.

That's a very good point, indeed.

I have another addition when it comes to the argument that newbies want to trade alts.. Anyone thinking this is good or normal should have a read of this topic: What Can Happen If You Want to Trade Cryptocurrencies, but You Don’t Know How?.
If you have friends or family who want to 'get into crypto' and 'need to trade alts', so they 'need to use a centralized exchange' - tell them they're doing it wrong. They should read that post by Pmalek as well and learn the fundamentals of Bitcoin. Then they can buy Bitcoin.
If they're hellbent on trading, make them read some books on trading and 'paper trade' for a few years before playing with real money.

In general, I believe if only people who know what they are doing, were trading altcoins, their trading volume would be much lower and the amount lost due to ignorance in the field of trading would be much lower as well. I'm convinced that newbies should not use centralized exchanges, since newbies shouldn't be trading altcoins.

How did I forget. There's another reason why traders, specifically, shouldn't use centralized exchanges.

Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, KuCoin, Cash App, FTX followed by an endless list of other less popular exchanges, have millions of users which means they have every detail, from who bought and how much to where are the most buy/sell orders, at what rate etc. Everything needed to bring disruption to the market at any time.

When you use a centralized exchange you support a less fair economy that can be manipulated more easily.

I think this is just your own thought or assumption, this is an experience you can get from either CEX or DEx and what determines it result is the level of your research


here you can make use of no KYC p2p exchanges, but even with that, we have some businesses that are accepting direct payment in bitcoin, we the example of a coffee shop that accept bitcoin for payment, gifts and donations in crypto in Ukraine and citizens school in Dubai also implemented that just to mention few.

It depends on the decentralized exchanges, this thread is not focusing on any other decentralized exchanges than decentralized exchanges that you can convert bitcoin to fiat like Bisq, Localcryptos and Hodlhodl. Unlike altcoin decentralized exchanges that you can not exchange to fiat and full of scam tokens.

Agreed there are a lot of scam tokens on a decentralized exchange and this is where you need to learn in order to identify them. Use the search bar and you will find multiple topics discussing the same.


The best option is to trade on a DEX and use a P2P service to convert your crypto assets to fiat. That will save you from a lot of fees.


Agreed you can spend directly Bitcoin and other selected cryptocurrencies at the store but it also depends on the country that you are living in. You do can spend it online but that is also saturated.

The existence of scam tokens is not an argument against decentralized exchanges. Plenty of centralized exchanges peddle all the same scams. Newbies should be sticking to bitcoin anyway.

By any method you choose with the person you are trading with. Bank transfer, cash deposits, Western Union, Zelle, Advanced Cash, MoneyGram, cash in person, PayPal, TransferWise, Venmo, Cash App, the list is endless.

Not at all. You can spend bitcoin directly with a wide variety of merchants and retailers.

There are some drawbacks to both types of exchange. You have already mentioned what they are for centralized exchange, but what about decentralized ones? A decentralized exchange is full of scam tokens, which are a hard task for a newbie in crypto to identify. Also, how are you going to move your money to your bank account without a centralized exchange? You have to convert it to fiat to spend it right?

Some people are not traders, they are just bitcoin holders and users in a way they prefer not to provide KYC, once KYC is required, they avoid, they also prefer not to go for centralized services as they want full control of their coins.

For scalping, day trading, derivatives and other margin trading, traders do not have much option than to go for centralized exchange. But some centralized exchanges do not require KYC up to certain withdrawal limited, like Kucoin and OKX exchanges which can be the option some traders can first go for but they are still centralized exchanges. The fact still always remain, that centralized exchanges do not give you full control, the exchange have the full control, your coin can be seized, your account can be freezed and many other inconvenience can come up while still also the exchange can be hacked.

Good point but what about trading? This is one of the reasons why centralised exchanges make a lotta sense, I can't do trading on pancakswap or uni swap for example, imagine cex disappearing from crypto space right now what do you think will happen?.. CEX have a major role to play and they will always exists.

Having your email address leaked by a centralized exchange, although extremely common, should be the least of your worries. Most big exchanges, from Coinbase to Binance, have either sold or been hacked for far more personal information than that, including full KYC data, selfies, passports, driver's licenses, and so on. When your identity ends up on the dark net and then used to commit financial fraud, having your email address leaked will be irrelevant.

Except when they don't, which is often. If they decide your activity is suspicious, or they don't like where your deposit came from, or they don't like where your withdrawals are going, or you triggered one of their arbitrary secret algorithms, or 100 other reasons, your account will be frozen and your coins confiscated unless you bow to their ridiculous privacy invasion. And even if you do, there is still no guarantee you'll actually get your coins back.

You have listed logical reasons why a person is moving away from centralized platforms, but your definition of decentralized platforms is not accurate, or you did not define them directly.

90% of decentralized exchanges claim that they are decentralized, but they are centralized in one point or another, for example:

 - No KYC: KYC is not the problem, but rather who manages the money. Can you manage it away from the platform or do you need the platform?
 - No hack: This may be true, but the decentralized platforms are software and there may be some bugs that may ends you lose your money^[1].
 - Privacy: Privacy is a valuable thing, so even decentralized platforms do not give you 100% privacy.

In short, do not look at things from a black and white perspective.

[1] Hacker Exploits Flaw in Decentralized Bitcoin Exchange Bisq

Dude how about if we wanted to trade altcoins with good volume? By any means the thread is good as it advise to avoid centralized exchange, compared to stock which is centralized, Im sure a lot of people doing the same thing when using a stock brokerage platform.

I myself concern with the privacy or data breached. But Ive been into trading, and I like to play with altcoins, especially on Binance. Yes Im aware of the risk. But cant settled for that of bisq which offer a direct, bitcoin and usd trading. Plus the use of p2p system on Binance is pretty useful for convenience. Im not disagreeing with the thought but its rather a security aspect. But Im sure you could consider also those newbies wanted to be involve in trading and not bitcoin alone. Which lacks the perfect trading set up for bisq alone.

It's not as if they will ban and sit on the assets of the people from various countries they don't want to support anymore, binance isn't like that, they will give you time to move out your assets and they will notify all account owners too.

Exchanges like ChangeNow and Changelley are instant exchanges, even you can make use of their service on noncustododial wallets like Coinomi and Atomic wallet (not recommendimg this wallets as they are close source, not also recommendimg instant exchanges), people are only fooled, thinking they exchange from one coin to another in a way no KYC needed for it. But it happen like this:

The instant exchange will provide you an address that belong to the instant exchange (some people can think it belongs to another person that want to exchange coin too, but not).

You will send the coin you want to exchange to the instant exchange address with the amount you want to exchange. (Take note of this)

The instant exchange will send your the coin you exchange for to another address on your wallet.

You should take note that you send coin to the instant exchange address first before you were sent the coin you exchange to, they have the private key to the address, ones you send your coin to the instant exchange address, the instant exchange can decide to force someone to provide his/her KYC or thy will not send any coin you wanted to exchange to while your coin is already with the instant exchange.

Instant exchanges are centralized, but still better than KYC exchanges that users will have to provide KYC even before making use of the exchange service, which can lead to data breach. But to have privacy, all centralized exchanges be it instant exchange or not are not all recommendable.



Some people can think they are using noncustododial wallet, not knowing that Tether Limited can freeze USDT on noncustododial wallet. Using USDT means someone is not having full privacy because Tether Limited can decide to freeze the coin of any users even on noncustododial wallet.

o_e_l_e_o raise similar concerns in this thread some couple of weeks ago, still on centralized exchanges and the enormous possibility of loss of funds when you leave your coins in centralized exchanges, and also the mammoth possibility of your data being exposed in the black market when a hack happens, and with the amount of hacks that has happened on centralized exchanges you always have that feeling there is another one waiting in the wings.

I actually do hope people heed to all of this warning as it indeed cannot be overemphasized, one must not have to wait till they are a victim before they understand that their security should always come first, even if it (their security) is not so convenient for them to set up and maintain (they must do it by all means possible).

• Why KYC is extremely dangerous – and useless
• PSA: Most Stablecoins Can Be Frozen, Even in Your Own Wallets
• USDT banned addresses
• KYCnot.me is a website on which you can find non-KYC exchanges. Make sure you check their trading volume and take it into consideration whether you will use it or not

What a perfect time!  Centralized exchanges are thieves, you will think they are cool until you get caught by their nonsense policy.
I woke up this morning with a notification about a trending post on Bitcoin subreddit^[1] on How Changelly exchange has refused to release a bitcoin onto user balance, they asked him to undergo a KYC before the bitcoin will be released but after doing the verification, they still never released the bitcoin and I was just asking my self why would the user use such an exchange? I Learned that he was misled by this Twitter Bio.



https://mobile.twitter.com/changelly_team

The user was misled by the headline, convinced and registered an account and has deposited a bitcoin all because he saw non-custodial and by that, I think he wasn't knowledgeable enough to know that he should have access to private keys or seed phrase and nothing like KYC will be required by such exchange.

Changelly is not a Non-custodial exchange, You can see from the Image that bitcoin is not his because he cannot spend it or authorised a transaction as he didn't hold the private key to the exchange. He didn't lose just his bitcoin, he lost documents about his information and money to them. They can do anything with those documents without his knowledge.
This is one way of losing your documents and bitcoin that are meant to be private to a group of people that run centralized exchanges, stay away from them.

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[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/u04zex/changelly_kyc_scam_they_are_holding_my_19800_btc/

Exactly there are so many reasons to avoid these centralised exchange as your funds are not at all safe over these exchanges due to the reasons you have mentioned.Like recently we have seen coinbase imposing restrictions to it's customer that will have to complete the KYC and even provide the full details of the recipient of money that also above $1000 CAD only and ends to privacy of the users.So.stop using these exchanges as there is no security at all of your funds.

The thing about these exchanges is first of all they are in possession of your keys so you at the first end have the full probability of losing the funds and talking about safety is another aspect in our mind.At this time Major exchange are having huge volumes but there are many chances of scams,hacks and they own becoming scam at one point.

At this time also they implement partial KYC like you don't need to undergo any KYC for withdrawal but if they suspect something suspicious they may force it on you so you don't know when they will be under radar.They are obligated by the government agencies to provide full disclosure whenever they require so they will implement on the customer.

The other problem is they are using third party software services to store the data who then can be hacked and the full maillist of users is compromised who gets scam mail from exchanges.In recent times we have seen lot of such cases that are subject to such hacks and the users looses funds in the end.The best way is to store them offline with proper backup of your seeds and funds will be safe.

I changed the link to a list of P2P/no-KYC exchanges.

Bisq is the most decentralized exchange that is yet existing, other reputed ones like Hodlhodl and Localcryptos are also far better than using a centralized exchange. Localcryptos is recently having high trading volume among P2P exchanges.

According to the link you pasted above, https://kycnot.me/, there are centralized exchanges among, example is Kucoin, Kucoin do not require for KYC, but can force any of their customers to provide KYC at any time or they will freeze the customer's account. Some others that are listed like ChangeNow are instant exchange that can sometimes also force someone that is making use of their service to provide KYC once the person has already sent bitcoin or altcoin to an address provided by the instant exchange, they will not exchange the coin for him unless he do KYC as instructed by them.

It's indeed a good reminder to newbies.

This was the same scenario in a short documentary film on Netflix that was newly released, titled "Trust no One" and here's someone making a thread (a mysterious exit scam of a centralized exchange).  It reminds us that centralized exchange is not good to entrust our funds or let the third party hold our crypto asset, we don't know when they have a plan to exit and run away together with our money, they can also make a plan not suspecting by the public that they steal money from their users and it could be an inside job acting like they are a victim of a scam.

Don't use a centralized exchange or store your crypto in the long term.  It's a great thread to motivate others not to use CEXs.

Whether you're here to learn more about Bitcoin, or just to trade and make a few bucks, please read the text below.

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Besides an innovative payment system which works without borders, more efficiently and practically, Bitcoin is here to make you sound. It's giving you what corrupted governments try constantly to take away from you: Financial sovereignty and self-control.

But, do not expect it to make you gain these alone. Bitcoin is just a currency, which means it's apolitical. All these ideals come from the fact that you've taken the time to understand the drawbacks of the traditional banking system and how disastrous a central point of failure can be.

Don't use a centralized exchange, for a number of reasons.

• You're about to be dictated of where your money is allowed to go. [1][2]
• You're about to be charged unbearably high fees. [3]
• You're about to be "blackmailed" to deliver private information to have your coins unfreezed. [4]
• You're about to be censored. [5]
• You have no privacy. [6]
• The exchange can go bankrupt and you lose everything. [7]
• You're making the Bitcoin economy susceptible to manipulation. [8]

[1] Coinbase says it’s blocking 25,000 Russia-linked crypto addresses
[2] Binance To Ban Singapore Users From Crypto Trading And Buying On Its Global Platform
[3] Binance Earns More Than $20,000 per Day Overcharging on Transaction Fees
[4] popular exchange extortion and blackmail
[5] Re: Centralised Exchanges are the Biggest Enemies of Bitcoin
[6] Goodbye, privacy, goodbye, it was nice while it lasted.
[7] When Crypto-Exchanges Go Broke, You’ll Lose It All
[8] Re: Newbies: Don't use centralized exchanges!

Instead, exchange decentrally.

We encourage the use of decentralized exchanges such as Bisq (or others) that operate transparently. There's no KYC, no danger from centralized exchanges' hacks, no oppression by a third party; it's as private, secure and censorship-resistant as it could be. Escape the arbitrary ruling enforcement of the corrupted Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin etc., today!

You defend your rights the moment you start using it. Educate yourself: Why Bisq exists.