The excitement of being able to trade any number of coins on several exchanges can overcome some of the downsides of cryptocurrency markets in general, especially from the perspective of developers themselves.
Vitalik Buterin recently brought attention to an issue concerning the “listing fees” that token and cryptocurrency developers are required to pay to be listed in some of the largest exchanges.
His statement came during a discussion in a panel in which he spoke about decentralized exchanges.
“I definitely personally hope centralized exchanges burn in hell as much as possible. In practice, first of all, on the fiat-to-crypto side I think it’s very difficult to decentralize, because you’re ultimately interfacing with the fiat world, and the fiat world is basically the only one that has centralized gateways,” he said.
During the interview, Buterin also noted that he is excited about the developments behind some decentralized crypto-to-crypto exchanges, pointing out that some of them don’t even require account registration and simply act as vehicles for converting coins and then transferring the result to its destination wallet.
As atomic swaps and decentralized exchanges start gaining more traction in discussions among cryptocurrency developers, large traditional platforms like Binance are taking the opportunity to adapt and announce plans for their own decentralized initiatives.
Buterin’s lack of love for centralized exchanges comes from what he perceives as a “kingmaking” system in which the top players get to determine the fate of a token by charging large fees to be listed on their platforms.
“Ultimately, I guess, even if centralized exchanges end up having a lot of volume, the better decentralized exchanges are as a baseline, the happier I am. That way, we can take away this stupid ‘kingmaking’ power that these centralized exchanges have where they have this ability to decide which tokens become big by deciding to list them and charging these crazy $10-15 million listing fees,” he added.
On the other hand, having a barrage of options thrown in one’s direction could lead to choice fatigue. In the end, market-driven listings on decentralized exchanges could be a solution to the gatekeeper ecosystem that is created by their centralized counterparts, but they will have to decide how they deal with the very real problem of simplifying their platforms in such a way that newer traders wouldn’t feel intimidated by the overwhelming number of choices they have.
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