CEX and DEX, the Big Difference ⚔️

Stay in the know 🎯

• 2022 Wrap Up

• CEX ⚔️ DEX

• Latest Crypto Stories

Enjoy our final newsletter of 2022, packed with enough insights to keep you going until the new year.

It's a wrap fam 💜

From the Flooz Team and Community, we wish everyone a lovely Xmas, make sure to spend this time with family and friends 🫂

2022 brought us plenty of new adventures, challenges and BIG milestones. Here's a quick reminder of what we've achieved together.

In celebration of a great year, we're hosting an awesome NFT Xmas Giveaway. 

Our community team will be raffling away 5 Gen–F NFTs valued at 0.09 ETH ≈ $107 USD each. Hit the link below and follow the simple steps to enter 🍀

Golden tip, by owning a Gen–F NFT inside the Flooz Wallet, you unlock God Mode, a permanent trait that grants Zero Trading Fees on Flooz.Trade and unlimited referral payouts on your Trade Link.

CEX or DEX, what's the Big Difference ⚔️

Over at Flooz, we handle things a bit De-Fi-erently...

It's about time we provide you guys with a quick guide to getting into crypto, without risking your funds with centralised exchanges. Let's get into it 🧵

A centralised crypto exchange, or CEX, custodies your money. If a CEX abuses this custodial relationship, like FTX, you can lose all of your funds. But did you know there are places for topping up your wallet and getting right into non-custodial DeFi without ever having to store funds on a CEX? Follow along 👇

Why does it matter? Central exchanges are popular because these companies provide easy venues for fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-crypto trading. Such ease comes at the cost of a custodial relationship, though, where the exchange is ultimately the controller of any funds you store there. Of course, a CEX should always maintain customer holdings on a 1:1 basis. The nightmare scenario, though, is a situation like the FTX debacle where the CEX’s leadership got wiped out trading with customer funds 🫠

For many of us in crypto, DeFi is the promised land. Decentralised Finance provides the infrastructure to decentralised exchanges (DEX's), which are transparent and non-custodial, like ourselves. With these new venues, you can see and control for yourself what happens with your money. Back in the days, DeFi people have traditionally bought crypto on a CEX and then sent the ensuing funds over to a self-custody wallet they control. Yet this process entails temporarily storing funds on a CEX, like before and after making trades.

Indeed, it’s safe to assume many FTX users who used the CEX as a quick pass-through gateway for crypto got caught up in the exchange’s collapse. When things turned ugly, that gateway went from being relatively quick to permanently closed...

We hate to say it, but we saw it coming. This is the primary reason Flooz decided to build a non-custodial wallet as extension to our already popular decentralised trading platform. It provides a needed service and doesn't involve any middle men, meaning we don’t custody your funds at any point. You can use Flooz to quickly go from cash to crypto, right from your personal wallet, and all without having to give up control of your funds along the way. That sounds very 2023.

Time to get started 🔥

That's exactly why Flooz exists and has been favorited by many industry players. We provide a decentralised trading platform, with the same level of experience you'd expect from any centralised exchange; comfortable interface and smooth transactions.

It's really that easy to buy crypto without a CEX. Using Flooz, you can easily top up your crypto wallet in a few taps, head over to Flooz Trade and let us know about your experience. 

It gets better, unlike centralised exchanges, those often limited to only trading between their listed tokens, you can soon buy ANY crypto on Flooz! In less than a few weeks time you'll be able to directly buy any token on the BSC, Ethereum and Polygon ⛓ thanks to the power of decentralised finance.

Last week, our CEO Lamine Cheloufi spoke about the future of self custody, the importance of good data to investor decisions, and what we're doing to make crypto a safer space for everyone. Check out the interview 👇

Latest Crypto Stories 😋

This past week, Binance found itself in the spotlight, as many crypto traders fear the massive centralised exchange is following in FTX’s insolvent footsteps. Where is the concern stemming from? Is FTX 2.0 incoming? Should we be worried?

If Binance was nearing the end, it would show on its ETH and stable coin asset outflows depleting to near-zero, as was the case with FTX. While sizeable outflows are occurring as users look to avoid any chances of an FTX 2.0, on-chain data is telling a different story. Binance’s stable coin and ETH reserves are still sitting at ~22B $ and ~5M $ respectively.

A significant contributor to FTX’s troubles was also in the use of its own FTT token for collateralising loans. FTX was an exchange that functioned as a bank: it traded customer’s deposits when it wasn’t supposed to. It was a house of cards built on trust and reliance in itself, rather than other more financially robust collateral like U.S. Treasuries, BTC or ETH.

In the case that Binance’s business was similarly built on its own BNB token, we may have more cause for concern. Thankfully, only ~10% of Binance’s reserves are made up of BNB, which is about the same as most other centralised crypto exchanges.

Speaking of the devil 👇

Sam Bankman-Fried is headed to his parents’ home in California (US) after being released on $250 million bail yesterday. The former FTX CEO will be under house arrest while he awaits trial for fraud—including allegations that he moved customer funds from the crypto exchange into his other company, a crypto hedge fund called Alameda Research.

But he wasn’t alone. Caroline Ellison, the 28-year-old former CEO of Alameda, pleaded guilty for her role in the massive grift this week, attempting to minimise her punishment in exchange for her full cooperation with SBF’s prosecutors. She admitted she knew customer funds from FTX were being invested into Alameda to prop up its books. And the estimated amount is egregious: FTX owes creditors $8 billion and has lent as much as $10 billion to Alameda, per the NY Times.

We know this is a heated topic amongst us, that's why we've selected the best in-depth article for you, check it out here 🤓 published via The Verge.

Action Steps 🦾

• Equip yourself with a self-custody wallet 

• Make sure to join our Xmas Giveaway

More news in 2023 ✨

Thank you for reading All Things Flooz. Your newsletter to get smarter about crypto in just 3 minutes, dispatched twice a week.

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Stay sharp 🧐

Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. As always, NFA and DYOR.