A crypto exchange is a marketplace where you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin, Ether or Dogecoin. Cryptocurrency exchanges work a lot like other trading platforms that you may be familiar with. They provide you with accounts where you can create different order types to buy, sell and speculate in the crypto market.

Some crypto exchanges support advanced trading features like margin accounts and futures trading, although these are less commonly available to U.S.-based users. Others have features like crypto staking or crypto loans that allow you to earn interest on your crypto holdings. The best exchanges offer educational offerings to keep you up to date on all things crypto.

How Do Cryptocurrency Exchanges Work?

Crypto exchanges work a lot like brokerage platforms. Each offers a portal where you can create different order types to buy, sell and speculate on cryptocurrencies with other users.

Different Types of Crypto Exchanges

Broadly speaking, there are two categories of crypto exchanges: centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges. Each category comes with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Centralized Exchanges

Centralized crypto , or CEXs, are managed by one organization. Centralized exchanges make it easy to get started with cryptocurrency trading by allowing users to convert their fiat currency, like dollars, directly into crypto. The vast majority of crypto trading takes place on centralized exchanges.

The major concern with centralized exchanges, however, is hacking. With a CEX, the exchange holds the crypto traded on its platform—at least in the short term, while trades go through—raising the risk of hackers stealing assets.

To address this risk, centralized crypto exchanges have beefed up security over recent years. Among other strategies, they now store most customer assets offline and take out insurance policies to cover crypto losses in the case of hacking.

If you like the convenience of a centralized exchange, you can reduce your risk by transferring crypto to a separate, off-exchange hot or cold wallet.

Decentralized Exchanges

Decentralized crypto exchanges, otherwise known as DEXs, distribute responsibility for facilitating and verifying crypto trades. Anyone willing to join a DEX network can certify transactions, much like the way cryptocurrency blockchains work. This may help increase accountability and transparency as well as ensure an exchange can keep running, regardless of the state of the company that created it.

The trouble is that decentralized exchanges are much less user friendly, not only from an interface standpoint but also in terms of currency conversion. Decentralized exchanges, for instance, don’t always allow users to deposit dollars and exchange them for crypto. This means you either have to already own crypto or use a centralized exchange to get crypto that you then use on a DEX.

Global Crypto Exchanges

There are nearly 600 cryptocurrency exchanges worldwide inviting investors to trade bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets. But costs, quality and safety vary widely.

Crypto Exchange Fees

You pay two types of fees when you buy and sell crypto: trading fees and withdrawal fees.

Trading Fees

Withdrawal Fees

Other Fees

How To Choose a Cryptocurrency Exchange

Beyond fees, when choosing the best crypto exchange for your needs, consider things like:

Security

Trading volumes

Educational resources

If the exchange lists the cryptocurrencies you’re interested in buying

Security

As crypto has grown more popular and valuable, it’s become a big large target for hackers. Leading exchanges like Binance and KuCoin have been hacked, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in losses. While exchanges often reimburse those whose coins are stolen, nobody wants to be in that position in the first place.

You can minimize your risk by spreading your crypto purchases across multiple exchanges. Alternatively, make it a habit to move your crypto holdings out of an exchange’s default wallet to your own secure “cold” wallet. These are storage options that are not connected to the internet, making them nearly impossible to hack—although you’ll need to carefully record your passcode or you could lose access to your crypto forever.

Available Coins

Carefully consider the cryptocurrencies available on a given exchange. You might be perfectly fine using a crypto exchange that only trades a few coins. Conversely, if you’re a crypto fiend, you may want access to all of the more than 600 available on Gate.io.

Trading Volume

The availability of coins alone isn’t sufficient if there are no trades happening. You’ll ideally want to verify that there’s sufficient trading volume in your target coins to ensure liquidity, so you can easily trade your coins and dollars.

Low-volume markets could cost you on sales. If there’s not a lot of volume and you put an order in, that’s called slippage. You could end up buying at a higher price or selling at a lower price than you’d want.

If you’re an advanced crypto trader, you may want to make sure your preferred exchange offers the trading types—like limit orders, which can prevent slippage by setting a hard price—and margin you want. Remember trade types involving the latter are still evolving in the U.S., so different exchanges’ offerings may vary over time.

Educational Resources

If you’re just getting started with cryptocurrency, look for an easy-to-use platform with plenty of educational resources to help you understand this complex, rapidly developing market.

Accessibility

Finally, don’t assume that an exchange is available in your country, or even state, just because you can access its website. Many state and federal governments are still figuring out how exactly they want to treat cryptocurrencies from a legal and tax standpoint.