✨INTRODUCTION

The whole crypto revolution started with desire for decentralization, however more than 99% of all cryptocurrency transactions still happen on centralized exchanges.

Current capitalization of the cryptocurrency market is around $1.35 trillion(May 16, 2022) and down from its peak of more than $3 trillion in November 2021. Wall Street analysts and market leaders are predicting steady growth of this market with some figures reaching up to 10 trillion in the next few years.

Islamic finance sector was $2.88 trillion in 2020(Global Economic Report) and is expected to increase to $3.69 trillion by 2024.

Centralized crypto-to-crypto exchange model is inefficient and open to market manipulation. A report by Blockchain Transparency indicates that 88% of the top 25 crypto exchanges are manipulating their trading volume by using a technique called wash trading in order to boost their rankings in CoinMarketCap.

The present model of cryptocurrency exchanges is also prone to hacks as this industry is rampant with scams and fraud. Some of the largest exchanges have a history of security breaches and lost funds. Inadequate security or infrastructure was the main reason for those hacks. As an example, the hacks of Coincheck and Coinrail, which happened in 2018 and cost users hundreds of millions of dollars, happened because of weak security practices where they kept a large amount of cryptocurrency in their hot wallet rather than offline. On top of that they did not have expertise to properly secure their exchange.

Hackers use various techniques from social engineering to more complex trojan deployments, using tools like AZORult and Pony Formgrabber. According to researchers, the cryptocurrency exchanges are such an easy target because of their disregard for information security and underestimating the capabilities of hackers. The main reason is failure to use two-factor-authentication as well as failure to use complex and unique passwords. Researcher had found that one in five users have a password that is shorter than 8 characters – a very weak security practice considering that a brute force attack can easily crack those passwords.

Another example of centralized exchange inefficiency is the disaster that happened with Canadian exchange Qaudriga. All of the funds, including the private keys of the wallets where the cryptocurrency was stored was controlled by Gerald Cotton, the founder of the exchange, and after he mysteriously died, all that crypto was gone with him. According to Ontario Securities Commission, the collapse of Quadriga had cost at least $169 million Canadian to 76,000 investors. With Biokript, that could never happen since you are holding your own private keys and have full control of your funds.

On April 21, 2021, Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex abruptly halted trading and withdrawals, leaving 400,000 traders without access to their crypto. In the end, its CEO, Faruk Fatih Ozer fled Turkey and scammed his customer for $2 billion.

We had also witnessed the disaster that happened with Luna and UST. As Luna and UST kept crashing, investors tried to get their crypto in order to sell it, but they were prevented by the centralized platforms who held it. Those investors never truly had the control of their funds and they nearly lost everything. With Biokript, you control your own private keys and you are always in full control of your crypto. If you are not holding your keys, you are not holding your crypto.

Another problem with today’s cryptocurrency exchanges is poor customer support. There are problems with unanswered support tickets, login issues, long withdrawal times, and deposits not credited. There are many stories with funds locked for months while there is no one to help.

Because of the regulatory uncertainty, majority of the exchanges are not regulated by any government, and because of that many people are reluctant to interact with cryptocurrency exchanges.

Very few exchanges offer more than one Fiat currency. Because of that, users are not able to use one exchange for all their needs and they would need to use other exchanges to fulfill their needs.

Nearly half of the investors are reluctant to invest in crypto because of lack of educational resources. Provoke Insights, an independent market research firm found that education is the key obstacle to investors from buying cryptocurrencies. There is a vast amount of information, from scammers to respectable professionals, and sifting through all that could be a challenge.

Cryptocurrency investing is a complex field and a learning curve could be very steep. It is constantly changing and keeping up with those changes is a challenge for even seasoned crypto investors.

And lastly, the risk associated with crypto market is well known and it is one of the main reasons why many people stay away from it.

Decentralized exchanges or DEXs have their own set of problems. They don’t have a specific KYC or AML policy set up so these deficiencies create opportunities for bad actors to scam innocent investors. DEXs are well known for scam projects since anyone can deploy a malicious smart contract which could be a rug pull, honey pot, or a straight up scam. And since there is no central authority behind DEXs, scammed investors don’t have any recourse. Moreover, with new crypto regulations coming up in Europe and US, it will be very hard to operate a DEX.