Post
Topic
Board Press
Re: [2019-01-15] Breaking: Cryptopia hacked!
by
squatter
on 16/01/2019, 18:11:55 UTC
$1 million in daily volume gives you some idea -- it wasn't the biggest exchange.

With the altcoin market being so dead, I haven't touched tiny exchanges like that in over a year. I do have an account there and if this were 2017, I might have been affected.

Yet another example why you shouldn't store funds on exchanges. Just deposit, trade, and immediately withdraw.

I have my doubts about decentralized exchanges because of them being so tied to centralized payment systems when it comes to fiat, but when it comes to cryptocurrencies, decentralized exchanges seem to be the future. So, services like Cryptopia will eventually become obsolete, because their main feature is listing of wide variety of altcoins.

I think decentralized exchanges will eventually make small, illiquid altcoin markets like Cryptopia completely obsolete. Binance is incredibly profitable, but they obviously see the writing on the wall considering they are building a DEX.

However, I wonder about the limitations of decentralized order execution -- especially regarding network latency and unreliable orderbooks. It could take many years before DEX technologies can even remotely compete with centralized exchanges, which matters because real-time execution and order book depth are really important considerations for traders. All the current DEX exchanges are also built on centralized server and domain infrastructure, so they can be targeted by governments. Who knows when we'll see a DEX built on a decentralized DNS and mesh networking?

Not to mention, atomic swap capabilities are not built into most altcoins at this stage. It might be many years before we see a DEX emerge than can compete with centralized exchanges -- even altcoin-only exchanges.