Cryptocurrency exchange

A crypto exchange is where people buy, sell, and trade digital assets. Two fundamentally different architectures live under the same name. Centralised (CEX) — Binance, Coinbase, Kraken — runs a traditional order book with market makers and custodies your coins, exactly like a stock exchange. Decentralised (DEX) — Uniswap, dYdX, PancakeSwap — is a smart contract where liquidity providers pool assets and an algorithm (usually an AMM) prices swaps; you keep your own keys and the "order book" doesn't exist in the classical sense. CEXes dominate volume and UX but carry counterparty risk (see FTX); DEXes are trustless but slower, more expensive per trade, and their liquidity depends on incentives. Most pro trading still happens on CEXes.