Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S1W2 – Reviewing Centralized Exchanges by @temitopef

Hello Steemians. I am very happy to be participating in the second week of the Steemit challenge in the crypto academy. I entered all the contests last week and I am prepared to write more this week. The academy has brought a very good topic today about "Reviewing Centralized Exchanges" and I will be talking about exchanges in my post and reviewing my favorite exchange. Thank you as you follow me on this contest post today.

Centralized exchanges in the crypto space is referred to as centralized cryptocurrency exchanges that are used for the trading of cryptocurrencies. There a lot of centralized exchanges where users can buy, sell, trade or swap or exchange cryptocurrencies and use some other products of the exchange for profitability. The cryptocurrencies of a user can be traded for other ones on the centralized exchanges very easily using different types of trading methods that is available on the exchange one is using.

Centralized exchanges is also the type of cryptocurrency exchanges that are controlled by a central authority and that is where it has gotten its name centralized from. The trading transactions on the centralized exchanges and use of other products of a centralized exchange pass through the central authority. The central authority is the intermediary between all the transactions of users made on the exchange and they grant permission for the transactions and this means if the central authority does not grant permission for transactions on the centralized exchange, the transaction cannot be successful.

Furthermore, investors can exchange their cryptocurrencies for other ones by using pairs to exchange cryptocurrencies that they love to exchange to either buy new one or to get their money for use on another products of the exchange or to have their money withdraw for other use that goes beyond the centralized exchange. Centralized exchanges have a lot of pairs.

The picture I uploaded above is a screenshot from Coinmarketcap that shows some of the top centralized exchanges, their authenticity score, trading volume in 24hours, liquidity and many others. I can easily choose a credible project using this method.

From my image example uploaded above, I checked the market of TRX on Coinmarketcap, if it's my most traded asset and I can see exchanges that supports it and see the volume of TRX that is traded on the different exchanges in 24hours and I can easily choose one of the centralized exchanges for my trading.

I understand there are many other things to look out for when choosing a centralized exchanges in the crypto space but the ones I listed above are very basic and important ones an investor should ensure they weigh very well before settling for an exchange.

How happy I am that I will have the chance to review my favorite centralized exchange and talk about some of its unique features. My favourite centralized exchange is Binance, it is my most used centralized exchange that I have been using for more than a year now. Follow me closely as I tell you about my favorite centralized exchange.

Binance is a centralized exchange that was created in the year 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, the company has its headquarters originally in China before it was moved from there due to cryptocurrency regulations imposed by the government of the country, the headquarters of Binance is now in Seychelles. Binance is a centralized exchange that is used for trading cryptocurrencies through different methods like Spot, Margin, Perpetual trading, this exchange is one of the top best centralized exchanges of all time with many supported cryptocurrencies and high liquidity that makes it easy for investors to easily exchange their cryptocurrency assets.

Binance is a highly reputable centralized cryptocurrency exchange that operates almost globally, it's available for use in many countries of the world in the crypto space, only a little places have restricted the operation of the Binance exchange. The exchange has maintained being one of the best centralized exchange of all time and I have checked the top spot trading platforms on Coinmarketcap and it is on number one with an exchange score of 9.9 and for it to be on the top in that category, it's definitely most used centralized exchange and I have confident in it.

Furthermore, I looked for exchange ranking on Coinmarketcap and Binance is the number 1 on the list with high score and this assure me that the exchange is trustworthy and used by many people. I will upload the image of the exchange ranking on Coinmarketcap.

Binance centralized exchange have been used to trade a large sum of $15,142,337,095.74, 390,478 BTC in 24hours. The social media accounts of Binance are active. Binance trading fee is low, it's just 0.1% and 25% off trading fee on spot trading if the trader have BNB (Binance Coin) which is used for discount fee on the exchange.

Binance also have blockchain network of its own that is known as Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain that run in parallel to each other, if one is down the other one takes charge and smart chain allows anyone to create new project tokens on the chain without much technical knowledge. The chain is known to be very scalable and it takes less than 1 minutes to transfer cryptocurrencies on the network, I have tried it practically using my Binance account to send coin to Trust wallet on the smart chain network.

Furthermore, BNB (Binance Coin) is the native cryptocurrency of the Binance chain which is actively traded on Binance and used for utility purpose on the exchange, and other projects in the crypto space. Binance coin is trading at the price of $388.31 at the time of writing this post and it is the number 4 biggest cryptocurrency amongst other cryptocurrencies in the space with $63,401,694,299.58 market capitalization. BNB is available for trading on many cryptocurrency exchanges in the crypto space.

For this section of the contest, I will be talking about some of the features of the Binance centralized exchange. The features I will use will be the ones I mostly use, before that, I will show my verified account on Binance as I have achieved advanced verification on the exchange.

Binance centralized exchange has different trading platforms like spot trading, futures trading and many others. The spot trading on Binance allow traders to make quick exchange of cryptocurrencies using the trading pairs one desire to use. The trade carried out using this method will be processed immediately when the buying or selling price equals the trading price of the cryptocurrency in the market, pairs are used for trading this type. I use this feature a lot and an example of the trading interface, and my trade history will be uploaded below.

Perpetual Futures trading is another one that I use on Binance exchange to enter buy or sell trades in any phase of the market, this enables me to access more capital by choosing a leverage to magnify my position and earn my profits that my little capital cannot afford.

Wallet is another feature of Binance exchange where our cryptocurrencies are stored on Binance. Before one can trade on any of the trading platforms, the cryptocurrencies must have been stored in the wallets. Investors can store the assets for the purpose of trading or storing for long term, the wallets have addresses that can be used to deposit into it. Also, the type can be spot wallet, future wallet, funding wallet and others, cryptocurrencies can easily be transferred from one wallet to the other on Binance or transferred to another wallet outside Binance. I will upload the pictures of the overview of my wallet and spot wallet.

Savings is a feature that allow investors to earn on their crytocurrencies even without trading. All what a user need to do is to save their assets for some time without withdrawing it. Savings is found under earn category on Binance and the types of savings are Flexible and locked savings. Flexible savings allow investors to save her cryptocurrencies for a period and earn certain percentages on it in annual percentage yield or annual percentage rate in token of the contract, and the savings can be removed anytime and use the cryptocurrency for other things.

Locked savings is the type of savings on Binance that remained locked for over the period of the subscription and that means the cryptocurrency can't be withdrawn from the savings until the end of the subscription. In the same way, the investor will be receiving accrued interests in tokens on her locked cryptocurrency over time. I will upload the pictures of savings and my earnings on Binance.

P2P marketplace is another feature of Binance exchange that help investors to trade cryptocurrencies for fiat currency on the platform. In my country, restriction has been placed on cryptocurrency and we cannot buy or sell cryptocurrencies using our bank accounts or cards, we have been using this salient feature of Binance to sell to other traders and also to buy from them. For my region Nigeria, USDT, BTC, BUSD, BNB, ETH, NGN and DAI are the cryptocurrencies supported on the Binance P2P marketplace.

I use this feature to sell my coins for Naira as the buyer sends the money into my bank account before I release it, and also I use it to buy by paying Naira into the sellers bank account. Transactions on the Binance P2P marketplace is safe as the process is monitored by escrow service. Before you buy or sell to a merchant on the platform, make sure that they have high throughput transaction rate in percentage before clicking on their buy or sell ads. I will also upload the pictures of the P2P platform on Binance and my trade history.

The only change I will like from my favorite centralized exchange is making their presence official in most countries thereby paying tax to the government of the country. I believe this would make the exchange acceptable in most parts of the world.

Nigeria demands the official presence of Twitter in the country sometimes ago with the aim to take share of the revenue from Twitter since many Nigerians are using it. If Binance approach the government of Nigeria with a good offer and sensitization, we might just have cryptocurrency and Binance legalized in Nigeria.

Furthermore, if Binance do the same for other countries, the government may accept and this will enable customers in the country to have freedom to operate on Binance without the fear of the government.

The main shortcomings of centralized exchange is centralization as our transactions have to pass through the central authority, users don't have full control on their cryptocurrecies as we don't have access to our wallets private keys. My Favorite exchange already made provision for that by developing Binance DEX which is a decentralized exchange that offer users the right to wallet's private keys but liquidity of DEX cannot be compared to CEX for trading.

Furthermore, our centralized exchange account can be easily be hacked if we don't stay away from phishing links or expose our password to others, 2FA is the answer to securing our accounts on centralized exchanges. 2FA is also called Two-Factor authentication to provide two steps-verification before transaction is processed on centralized exchange. It is advised to enable this so that one can verify a transaction in more than one way.

If one's password is compromised, the 2FA will be there to save one from unfortunate loss of cryptocurrencies. The user will download the 2FA App and every time a transaction takes place, a code will be sent to the authenticator to ensure extra security.

I am very happy to complete this contest about reviewing centralized exchanges as I finally have the opportunity to review Binance, my favourite exchange that I have been using for a long time ago. I was able to talk about the unique features of the platform sharing my experience with their uses. I thank the crypto academy for this wonderful contest. I will like to invite @captain36, @jueco, @chiabertrand, @benjamin09 and @badmus-official to this contest. Thank you.