![Без названия.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWoEzaKwqUAA5E6rpeNDRScfV3Y4xk9kJuVL65BozUhqK/%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%B7%20%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F.jpg)
Bloomberg observers Benjamin Robertson, Matthew Leising and Andrea Tan talked with experts from decentralized exchange projects, research companies and crypto-exchange exchanges on the importance of decentralization for block-projects related to the exchange of crypto-currencies.
The need for a decentralized exchange
Any online platform or application is at risk of hacking, especially if they have insufficient security measures in place. Even the largest crypto-currency exchanges in the world market, such as Bithumb and Bitfinex, have faced large-scale hacker attacks, and large banks regularly fall prey to "breakthroughs" of their security systems.
In December 2017, the South Korean platform Bithumb, the world's second-largest currency exchange, and the only publicly available platform for crypto currency trading, at that time had more than $ 6 billion. Since then, the crypto-currency market declined by about 50%, and Bithumb on the current day is estimated at about $ 3 billion.
In the cold wallets of Xapo's customers from Switzerland, a bitlock-purse supplier and crypto-currency assets storage services, today there are more than $ 10 billion - more than the funds stored in 3,000 banks located in the US.
Most crypto-exchange exchanges, such as Binance and storage facilities, such as Xapo, store most of the user's funds in "cold" purses or purses with digital currency that are not connected to the Internet. But it is impossible to keep all the funds in cold purses, since it takes more than 24 hours to process withdrawals from "cold" purses.
Efficiency or security?
Henri Arslanian, head of financial and regulatory technology at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), recently invested in the VeChain project from China, said that many traders do not keep their funds in crypto-currencies in "cold" purses, but prefer to keep them on stock exchanges to more profitable and quicker to trade with them.
Centralized crypto-exchange exchanges are not safe for large-scale traders and investors, since secret keys of user purses are stored in centralized exchange servers. After the hacker attack, which used the security flaws of the once largest Japanese crypt exchange Coincheck, users risked losing their funds with their secret keys.
Given these threats, projects such as Kyber Network, 0x, AirSwap and Bancor began to develop decentralized trading platforms that would allow users to make crypto trading transactions while retaining full control over their funds.
Investors' skepticism
While some developers and analysts, such as Sam Tabar in AirSwap, expect that users will eventually move to decentralized exchanges in the long term (with scalability issues), most investors remain skeptical of decentralized exchanges.
Sam Tabar, AirSwap strategist, predicts that traders migrating to the new model will be the main trend in the cryptographic world this year. But others, such as the president of the Singapore-based Fintech Association Chia Hock Lai, say that new types of exchanges have their own specific problems, such as low level of customer service and lower level of technical support that can deter this migration .
Already, some centralized exchanges of crypto currency, including the world's largest trading platform for Binance digital assets, are developing their own decentralized exchange to facilitate the demand for a safer and more efficient trading platform.