Top Cryptocurrency Exchanges List

Binance takes its name from the words Binary Finance, representing the emerging digital financial system. Originally founded in China, Binance has moved its servers and headquarters several times to avoid falling foul of fast-changing local regulations. In September 2017, it relocated to Japan but soon removed its staff due to the legal complications of setting up an office there.

By March 2018, Binance had established itself in Taiwan, announced the opening of offices in Jersey, and moved its headquarters in Malta to increase its European influence. Having achieved an exchange license, it aims to expand on its fiat pairs, including the Euro and the British Pound. The exchange supports the most popular crypto coins and its own native BNB tokens.

Binance claims high standards of safety and security, with multi-tier and multi-clustered architecture delivering high processing throughput. At one point, the exchange had the capacity to process over 1.4 million orders per second, making it one of the fastest exchanges on the market.

The company was created under the tutelage of Changpeng 'CZ' Zhao and his co-founder Yi He. A well-known figure on the crypto scene, CZ emigrated from China to Canada with his family in the 1980s. After earning a major in computer science from McGill University in Montreal, CZ developed trading software for organizations including the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Bloomberg Tradebook.

He then moved into the cryptocurrency space to work on projects like Blockchain.info and OKCoin. In 2017, Zhao left his position as CTO at OKCoin to start Binance. Within a year, Forbes Magazine placed him third on their list of 'The Richest People In Cryptocurrency' estimating that he had amassed a wealth of over $2 billion.

Co-founder Yi He is one of the most notable female entrepreneurs in the blockchain industry. At the end of 2015, Yi joined Yixia Technology, which develops and operates a mobile video application, allowing users to create and share short videos. In 2016, she went on to launch Yi Zhi Bo, one of the country's biggest live broadcasting startups. She also previously worked at OKCoin as head of brand and marketing.

Less than eight months after its inception, Binance raised $15 million in funding through an Initial Coin Offering. By January 2018, it was the world's largest crypto exchange with a BNB market capitalization of $1.3 billion. It attracted further investment from companies such as Sequoia Capital, Vertex Ventures, Limitless Crypto Investments, Blackhole Capital, and Funcity Capital.

Binance expanded its operations to include a number of key initiatives. The Blockchain Charity Foundation (BCF), for example, was created to bring transparency to charitable donations and ensure they reach the end beneficiaries with all costs covered by Binance.

In 2018, it launched Binance Research, a cryptoanalysis division; Binance Academy, a new open access learning hub; Binance Chain, a decentralized exchange (DEX) with the Binance token as its native token; Binance Labs, a social impact fund initiative aiming to support early-stage blockchain and digital currency projects; and a Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) which stores ten percent of all trading fees to cover losses in extreme situations.

As part of its growth strategy in 2018, it acquired Trust Wallet - a popular mobile crypto wallet allowing users to make instant trades on a DEX.

Bithumb is a cryptocurrency exchange started in Seoul, South Korea, a country inhabited by some of the most active cryptocurrency traders in the world. The exchange enables traders to exchange Korean Won (KRW) for most popular cryptocurrencies.

The exchange was founded by Daesik Kim, who had previously worked in the gaming industry as a developer. In March 2018, Daesik left Bithumb to join Bezant, a blockchain-based payment protocol and application firm.

Bithumb has claimed its foremost management ideology is the protection of customer assets. Its operator BTC Korea previously announced its intent to fully comply with future regulations from the South Korean government and to adequately capitalize itself to protect its clients. The exchange stated that it was open to steps such as the identification of its clients by their real names.

The company released its first audit report outlining Bithumb's financial performance in April 2018. At the time the exchange had 220 employees and 15 shareholders. It generated ₩333.42 billion ($312 million) in operating revenue in 2017, a significant increase compared to the previous year of ₩4.32 billion ($4.1 million). Its net profit was ₩534.90 billion ($501 million) in 2017, up sharply from ₩2.51 billion ($2.4 million) in the previous year.

In October of 2018, plastic surgeon and start-up investor Dr. Kim Byung Gun, bought a $352 million stake in Bithumb. He closed a deal through his BK Global Consortium to acquire 50% plus one share of BTC Holding Co.

Since its inception, the exchange has suffered several security breaches. In June 2018, around 35 billion Korean Won (around $31 million) was stolen from the exchange by hackers. Bithumb promptly offered to refund all affected users from its own reserves.

A year earlier, in 2017, a Bithumb employee's home PC was compromised giving hackers access to the personal information of 31,800 Bithumb users. The hack affected approximately 3% of all Bithumb customers as their usernames, their real names, mobile phone numbers, email addresses, and funds were exposed. A number of accounts were drained of their funds and it was estimated that around a billion Won was lost as a result. Again, Bithumb offered to pay damages.

From Sept to Dec 2018, the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Korea Internet & Security Agency, and the Ministry of Economy and Finance inspected 21 crypto exchanges across a range of 85 different aspects such as administrative, network, system and operational security, and database backup and wallet management. Bithumb was one of only seven exchanges that passed the inspection.

Founded in June 2012, Coinbase is a San Francisco-based company offering several trading platforms designed to help institutions and consumers transact with digital currencies. Coinbase came to prominence after developing one of the first well-designed Bitcoin wallets to enter the crypto scene. During the height of the 2017 crypto mania, it was said to be signing up more than 50,000 new customers a day. Coinbase was the first US cryptocurrency startup to earn a $1 billion 'unicorn' valuation from investors, and the first to bring in $1 billion in annual revenue.

In 2017/2018, Coinbase expanded its core products and offerings. The range of products includes Coinbase, a place to buy, sell, and manage cryptocurrency portfolios for consumers; Coinbase Pro, a trading platform for advanced traders; Prime, a professional trading platform for institutional clients; Coinbase Custody, asset custody specifically for institutions; Coinbase commerce, allowing for digital payment in retail; and an API for developers and merchants to build applications and accept payments in both digital currencies.

The exchange received approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services to form a qualified custodial firm for cryptocurrencies in late October 2018. In November of the same year, it opened an over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk for its Coinbase Prime customers, i.e. financial institutions looking to trade with business funds.

Coinbase also expanded its operations through a number of acquisitions. In April 2018, it acquired Earn.com, a service allowing customers to contact highly targeted individuals or audiences in exchange for payment, or to earn money by allowing people to contact them. One month later it acquired Paradex, a platform for trading tokens directly from crypto wallets without fees. Other companies that joined the Coinbase fold that year include Keystone Capital Corp, Digital Wealth, Venovate, and Distributed Systems.

The company was founded by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Brian was formerly a software engineer at Airbnb and spent eight years creating universitytutor.com, a platform connecting people with local and online tutors. He also briefly worked in positions at Deloitte and Touche and IBM. Fred graduated with distinction from Duke University, earning a B.S. in computer science with a minor in economics. After graduating he worked at Goldman Sachs on the foreign exchange trading desk and then at BlackRock as a portfolio analyst. He has now transitioned away from day-to-day operations at Coinbase to focus on building blockchain-based apps but remains an active member of the company's board of directors.

Coinbase has raised over $217 million from some of the world's best-known investors including Andreessen Horowitz, USV, DFJ Growth, IC, MUFG, BBVA, and many more.

In October 2018, it announced an additional $300 million of investment at a valuation of over $8 billion to accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. The Series E equity round was led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from Y Combinator Continuity, Wellington Management, Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain, and others.

Founded in 2011, San Francisco-based Kraken is one of the oldest crypto exchanges, with a wide selection of digital assets and national currencies. It was the first Bitcoin exchange to have a trading price and volume displayed on the Bloomberg Terminal, the first to pass a cryptographically verifiable proof-of-reserves audit, the first exchange to switch to the ISO 4217 standard currency code for Bitcoin, and created the first cryptocurrency bank in partnership with German online bank Fidor.

The company was founded by Jesse Powell, a virtual currency, online international payments and fraud expert with over 15 years of experience. Kraken launched in September 2013, with live trading after two years of development and beta testing. Initially, the exchange offered trades between Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Euro. Additional currencies and margin trading were eventually added. To begin with, it mainly operated in Canada, the US, and the EU.

Kraken positions itself as the best Bitcoin exchange for serious and professional Bitcoin traders. Top of its agenda is impeccable security, reliable banking relationships, a fast trading engine, and advanced order types.

In an interview with Hackernoon, Jesse cites 2015 as the year Kraken first became profitable. Kraken was able to expand quickly in the years that followed by acquiring several other Bitcoin businesses. These included Coinsetter, Cavirtex, CleverCoin, Glidera, and CryptoWatch.

In March 2014, Kraken raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Belgium-based Hummingbird Ventures. In 2016, in a Series B round, it received investment from Money Partners Group, one of Japan's leading foreign exchange brokerages, for an undisclosed amount. It also entered into what was described as a 'multi-million dollar agreement' with SBI Investment, one of Japan's leading and most respected venture capital firms. Further terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In May 2018, Kraken made a $1 million donation to the nonprofit Coin Center and pledged to match any donation up to the value of $1 million for the following month. Coin Center is a leading crypto advocate, educating policymakers and the media, while pressing for solutions that keep cryptocurrency networks open, decentralized, and permissionless.

Gate.io is a crypto exchange founded in the fall of 2017. The platform is operated by Gate Technology Incorporated, headquartered in Seoul, Korea, with a registered address in Virginia, USA.

It gained popularity in the Chinese crypto community for its robust security system, user-friendly mobile apps, and smooth interface. Gate.io differs from many exchanges because it offers hassle-free access to a number of hard-to-find coins and up-and-coming projects. The site was designed to help investors easily find information related to their preferred coins and overall market trends.

Gate.io's web-based trading platform operates on par with most cryptocurrency exchanges. At launch, it included a detailed order book, trading history, and solid charting for those requiring technical analysis. The exchange has been described as responsive and functional and uses a combination of hot and cold wallets to keep assets secure.

Gate Technology also operates Wallet.io., a platform for managing and storing digital currency portfolios. It was launched as an advanced on-chain wallet, negating the need to save mnemonic phrases or private keys, and allowing assets to be viewed and tracked at any time on the blockchain.

There is little information available on the company or team behind the exchange. However, it grew steadily in its first year and accounted for a significant portion of daily cryptocurrency trading in China and beyond.

Ethfinex is the home of digital tokens trading & discussion. It is a community hub for developers, enthusiasts and traders to share, discuss and crowdsource information from across the decentralised ecosystem. Ethfinex offers a new community and information hub for ERC20 tokens and Ethereum-based projects. It will facilitate learning, discussion, and analysis whilst simultaneously offering access to the most highly liquid and advanced trading platform for ERC20 tokens and crowdsales. Ethfinex is a spinoff of Bitfinex - it will capitalise on Bitfinex's trading engine and customer experience expertise; Ethfinex will, however, act as an entirely novel, independent entity, built for the Ethereum community.

Popular exchange bitFlyer was the first Bitcoin exchange to be regulated in Japan, the US, and Europe. It was founded in Tokyo in 2014, with a US subsidiary opening in Silicon Valley San Francisco in 2016.

Built by Wall Street veterans, bitFlyer's Lighting Exchange is designed for professional traders and includes all the features and power you would expect from one of the world's most significant exchanges. The company aims to become a leading virtual currency exchange and blockchain developer in the US, leveraging technology, insights, and security practices from its parent company.

Founder Takafumi Komiyama was previously employed by Sony before joining Goldman Sachs, where he worked on the development of settlement systems. Co-founder Yuzo Kano is a former trader and also has experience at Goldman Sachs. Yuzo is known for creating the Japan Blockchain Association and lobbying various Japanese institutions, including the government, in an effort to convince them that digital currencies are not a scam.

In 2017, bitFlyer announced that it became the fourth digital currency exchange to receive a 'BitLicense' to operate in New York. The company has also previously been granted proper licensing from Japan's Financial Services Agency, the European Union, and a majority of states in America.

The exchange was one of the first members of The Virtual Commodity Association (VCA), a group founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of Gemini. Other members include Bittrex and Bitstamp. The VCA is one of the industry's first self-regulatory organizations and hopes to take steps toward transparency in the notoriously opaque and volatile cryptocurrency market.

By 2018, bitFlyer had raised about $36 million in funding from a mix of Japanese and American investors including Digital Currency Groups, Mizuho, Dai-ichi Life Group, Venture Labo, SBI Investment, GMO Venture Partners, East Ventures, Quick, GMO, B Dash Ventures, Dentsu, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.

Gemini was launched as a licensed digital asset exchange and custodian, allowing customers to buy, sell, and store digital assets in a regulated, secure, and compliant manner. It was founded in 2014, by identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and is based in New York.

Cameron and Tyler's careers have followed the same trajectory. They both competed in the men's pair rowing event at the 2008 Summer Olympics and co-founded HarvardConnection (later renamed ConnectU), an early version of Facebook, for connecting students. In 2012, they founded Winklevoss Capital Management. The family firm invests across multiple asset classes, with an emphasis on providing seed funding and infrastructure to early-stage startups and is a primary investor in Gemini.

From the outset, Gemini was intended to be a next-generation exchange, fully regulated, fully compliant, and accessible to individuals and institutions. The company went live on October 25, 2015, and began expanding the financial services it offered soon after, some of which include Financial Information Exchange (FIX) and Application Program Interface (API) support.

Gemini was one of the first exchanges to regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS). In 2016, the company said it would allow users to withdraw Ethereum Classic (ETC) from the exchange, following a hard fork in Ethereum's code. In April 2018, Reuters reported that Gemini would utilize NASDAQ's SMARTS technology to monitor trades, combatting potential fraudulent activity and price manipulation on its exchange.

Poloniex was founded in January 2014 to provide a secure trading environment, advanced charts, and data analysis tools to investors. It is based in Somerville, Massachusetts, USA and claims to be one of the world's most active crypto exchanges. To protect users money, the exchange keeps most deposits in air-gapped cold storage. Online, it only keeps what's needed for active trading.

The exchange was founded by Tristan D'Agosta who previously established Polonius Sheet Music, a company that publishes classical sheet music. His background also includes periods as a freelance composer and writer.

Poloniex was acquired by the Irish payment service provider Circle in February 2018, for a reported $400 million. Circle is known for several products, including Circle Pay for fiat transfers; Circle Trade, an OTC desk and liquidity provider of cryptocurrencies; and Circle Invest, an app that allows retail customers to invest in crypto markets. The Dublin based company is backed by $140 Million in venture capital from large institutional investors including Goldman Sachs, Baidu, and China International Capital Corp.

In March 2018, Poloniex announced plans to expand into Asia and to add fiat currencies to what was (at launch) a purely crypto platform. It stated that it would cooperate with local regulatory authorities as the company expands globally. In September of the same year, Poloniex introduced the USD Coin, (USDC) a fully collateralized US Dollar stablecoin, serving as the bridge between Dollars in a bank account and trading on crypto asset exchanges. The underlying technology behind the USDC (the CENTRE protocol) was developed collaboratively between Coinbase and Circle.

IDEX was the first Ethereum-based decentralized smart contract exchange to support real-time trading. It is operated by Aurora, which was founded and registered in the Republic of Panama in 2016 by a group of cryptocurrency enthusiasts who aspired to support the cryptocurrency movement.

Founder Alex Wearn is experienced in the design and delivery of software products having managed a wide range of operations for Amazon, Adobe, and IBM. He once led a product management team in re-platforming their application to operate on a private Ethereum blockchain.

Alex's brother and co-founder, Phil Wearn, has a background in aerospace engineering. Prior to IDEX, he founded EtherEx, where he identified the pressing need for a high-performance decentralized exchange protocol, an insight which served as the basis for the IDEX exchange.

At inception, the primary components of Aurora included a cryptocurrency bank (Decentralized Capital) and a financial asset exchange (IDEX) which worked together to offer modern financial services.

Unlike most other decentralized exchanges, IDEX began by building a smart contract that only allowed the exchange to submit signed trades to Ethereum. This enabled the exchange to control the order in which transactions were processed, separating the act of trading from the final settlement. In December 2017, Aurora launched its own stable coin, the Boreal, to recreate and improve upon the existing financial ecosystem in a decentralized fashion.

IDEX was the first crypto exchange to deeply integrate its data with Nomics in 2018, and is an A+ Verified Exchange. This verification means that Nomics has vetted IDEX's trade history and confirms that exchange data meets the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and consistency.

Binance Jersey is the first fiat-to-cryptocurrency exchange to operate in Jersey under the auspices of the Jersey Financial Services Commission. Jersey is already a leading jurisdiction for asset management and other sectors of Financial Services, and has also been a leader in ICOs and crypto. Binance looks forward to expanding its business into a jurisdiction that already has highly-trained and experienced financial services professionals.

Binance Jersey offers a stable and safe fiat-to-cryptocurrency trading platform built on the same technology developed by Binance. The Jersey exchange currently provides secure and reliable trading of Pounds Sterling (GBP) and Euros (EUR) with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), in addition to asset management services to users.

Binance Jersey aims to build a secure, transparent and open blockchain community for users around the world. The Company will put its community interests first, sustain a 1,400,000 orders-per-second matching engine, provide 24/7 customer service, and count on strong technical support from the Binance global team. Binance Jersey is building together, with its users, a world-class blockchain community.

At New Capital, our mission is to promote, fund and manage transformative projects that further the use of digital assets, generally employing blockchain as an essential component. We believe that true community involvement is critical for our projects to have the best chance of success, and we enjoy and encourage the contributions, input and support of the global community. The New Capital Community Exchange allows the safe, secure and efficient exchange of value between the cryptocurrencies that are intrinsic to the various projects within the New Capital ecosystem, and a selected basket of prevalent digital assets. This platform has no fees, and is supported by the community itself. In addition, the simple and no-cost transactions between New Capital-supported cryptocurrencies allows community members and other participants to easily support and partake in multiple projects. The cryptocurrencies within the New Capital ecosystem that are currently listed on the Community Exchange are TWINS and FIX coins.

WCX is a crypto trading platform founded in 2017 by ex-Apple engineers. The platform has experienced record growth since it started, attracting traders from 190 countries with its speed, ease of use, and security.

WCX is unique in the trading world as it allows users to trade financial markets using just bitcoin (BTC). It combines the speed and trading experience of a cryptocurrency exchange with the broad range of markets typically offered by traditional brokers.

Because it's powered entirely by bitcoin and doesn't rely on banks, WCX can trim the costs incurred by other platforms and pass on the savings to users in the form of 0 fees, high liquidity, and the lowest spreads in the industry.

HitBTC claims to be the world's most advanced cryptocurrency exchange providing markets for a large number of cryptocurrencies. Exchange development started in 2013, as a collaboration between software developers, finance professionals, and traders. The platform was built to replicate the features of world-renowned exchanges, such as NYSE, NASDAQ, and LSE.

HitBTC was officially launched in February 2014, after receiving $3 million of funding from Israeli investors. It promised to be vigilant about suspicious user behavior and fully compliant with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) guidelines.

There is no information about the founders in the public domain. HitBTC's leaders addressed their anonymity in a statement on its forum:

"Our headquarters is located in Hong Kong, China. We are certain that revealing the confidential information has nothing to do with the exchange reliability. Due to the fact that we are totally responsible for our user's funds only we can protect them - that is why some information about our exchange is confidential (etc. full address). CEO publicity can not guarantee the funds safety from the hack attack, but the security measures, which we are applying on HitBTC, can." [sic]

HitBTC says its main focus is on implementing cutting-edge technologies to cryptocurrency trading. It has stated that its core matching engine is the most advanced technological product in its class.

Bitfinex is a full-featured spot-trading platform for major digital assets & cryptocurrencies. It offers leveraged secure margin trading through a peer-to-peer funding market and is owned and operated by iFinex Inc., which is headquartered in Hong Kong and registered in the British Virgin Islands.

The company was founded in December 2012, as a Bitcoin exchange, offering digital asset trading services to users around the world, later adding support for more cryptocurrencies. It was one of the first professional platforms built to accommodate the booming interest in cryptocurrency trading.

The platform was the brainchild of Raphael Nicolle, an IT technician from Paris. After three years as a system administrator at Gutenberg Networks, he became involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem and built Bitfinex.com from the ashes of a previous project called Bitcoinica. He continued to work as a developer for the platform until the beginning of 2017.

Co-founder Giancarlo Devasini originally began his career as a physician but later moved into the booming computer hardware business. In 1997, he founded Solo SpA, a pioneer in the dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) market. He became a partner in Bitfinex in 2012 and was instrumental in establishing banking relationships, attracting key personnel, and re-domiciling the exchange.

In 2015, Bitfinex introduced fiat operations, acting as a global point-of-access to traders wishing to enter the digital asset space.

Founded in 2014, by three cybersecurity engineers, Bittrex is a US-based blockchain trading platform boasting lightning-fast trade executions, dependable digital wallets, and industry-leading security practices. Its mission is to help advance the blockchain industry by fostering innovation, incubating new and emerging technology, and driving transformative change.

Set-up in Seattle, Washington, it is renowned for its vast number of listed cryptocurrencies and for employing the most reliable, effective security technologies available. It was co-founded by Bill Shihara, Richie Lai, and Rami Kawach who all have extensive backgrounds in security with leading global tech companies.

Bill was previously a Security Engineering Manager at Amazon, a Manager of Security Threat Analysis and Security Engineering at BlackBerry, and also spent 11 years at Microsoft working on the Windows Operating System and with the Trustworthy Security team. Richie previously served as a leader in the Amazon Information Security Team and spent 12 years at Microsoft building up their security engineering and internet crimes division. Rami was Principal Security Engineer at Amazon, Director of Engineering at Qualys, where he built a next-generation vulnerability management solution and malware detection system. He also spent 10 years at Microsoft where he led multiple projects.

In 2018 Bittrex established Bittrex International Inc., an affiliate company, to operate its blockchain technology-focused businesses outside of the United States. Its advanced digital asset trading platform was developed specifically for international customers and built on Bittrex's existing cutting-edge technology. The trading platform provides innovative tokens which claim a more streamlined approach for being listed.

At around the same time, the company established Bittrex Malta Ltd. The location means the European platform will be able to list coins more quickly while operating within the regulatory framework established by the European Union and the Maltese government.

OKEx is a digital asset futures trading exchange aimed specifically at institutional traders. Launched in 2017 by Chinese Bitcoin giant OKCoin.com, it was designed to take over from OK Coin, which ceased futures trading in 2017 but remains operational for fiat trading with major digital assets. OKEx also offers customer-to-customer (C2C) trading, spot margin trading, and an index tracker.

Headquartered in Hong Kong, in 2018 it expanded operations to Malta to take advantage of the country’s crypto-friendly regulations, and shortly afterward partnered with the Malta Stock Exchange (MSE). The joint venture aimed to create an ‘institutional grade security-tokens trading platform’ called OKMSX which was scheduled to launch early in 2019.

It is one of the few exchanges to offer a stand-alone desktop platform rather than running through a browser. It purports to provide a safe, reliable, and stable environment for digital asset trading, having adopted GSLB, distributed server clusters, and other advanced technologies. Additional features include low fees, multiple cycles for easy hedging and arbitraging, and margin trading that allows users to maximize profit with 10x or 20x leverage. Traders can choose between several different tiers of account depending on the trading volume and their overall activities.

At the beginning of 2019, OKEx offered hundreds of token and futures trading pairs, serving millions of users in over 100 countries. During the same period, its BTC futures trading had a daily volume of nearly $1.5B.

The platform claims to have implemented state-of-the-art security; for example, only a limited amount of Bitcoin is stored in cold wallet addresses that all have embedded encryption protocols. Despite this, in 2017 users of the platform were subject to an apparent hack. OKEx expressed full confidence in its own security system, stating that it had thwarted all withdrawal operations by attackers, and advised its users to improve their personal security settings.

Mingxing Xu, also known as Star Xu, is the founder of OKCoin.com and OKEx. He previously worked as a development engineer at Yahoo, then as Chief Technical Officer at Docin. In January 2019, he became the largest individual shareholder of a public company listed in Hong Kong via the $60 million acquisition of LEAP Holdings Group, the construction engineering firm.

It was widely rumored at the time that the purchase would bring the exchange a step closer to a possible back-door listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX). Crypto exchanges increasingly opt for reverse-mergers to become publicly listed companies, rather than through a conventional Initial Public Offering (IPO), which is a lengthy and complex process.

The exchange is well capitalized and has attracted over $10 million from investors like Tim Draper, Ceyuan, and Mandra Capital.

Bit-Z is a global cryptocurrency trading exchange, providing professional digital asset trading and OTC (Over The Counter) services. Founded in 2016 in Hong Kong, its website indicates that it employs top-level talent from the international digital currency industry and from other fields including finance, social networking, games, and electronic commerce.

Although several publications note that Bit-Z is transparent in its exchange operations and terms and conditions, there are no details about the platform’s founders in any public-facing documents.

In 2018 Bit-Z launched DKKT, a security token pegged 1:1 with the Danish Krona, which is only available in a select number of markets and has a total available supply of 15 Million. In the same year, it also launched BZ, and ecological token based on the Ethereum ERC20 agreement. BZ has a circulating supply of 180 Million coins and a max supply of 1.2 Billion coins and the token aims to benefit Bit-Z by maintaining the ecological development of the group’s blockchain.

By 2019 Bit-Z had exceeded over 10 million international registered traders with online traders exceeding 250,000. Claiming to offer maximum security, Bit-Z states that it employs bank-level SSL technology, over 300 security measures and GSLB with distributed servers to ensure the stability of the platform.

The Bit-Z Group, previously announced the establishment of a BZ Fund focused on early-stage startups. The BZ Fund will share the Group's $10 million industrial fund. The group outlined future plans to focus on the development of blockchain technology, and multi-dimensional investment fields such as digital payment, digital copyright, financial services, and media platforms.

ZB.com is an unregulated Chinese cryptocurrency exchange. It launched shortly after the Chinese government’s ICO ban in 2017, relocating to Hong Kong to avoid strict regulations. It is registered in the island state of Samoa making it possible for the exchange to conduct business internationally.

Although it mainly caters to Asian investors and traders, its services are available worldwide with the platform available in both Mandarin and English. It also offers two levels of service, one for experienced professional traders, and a simplified version for beginners.

ZB.com’s main offering is crypto-to-crypto spot trading, but it also provides limited crypto to fiat trading options. It supports 3x leverage trading and high-performance match trading.

Following its launch, ZB.com partnered with BW.com (one of the world's largest cryptocurrency mining platforms) and QUOINE (a leading fintech company providing financial services through blockchain technology). The partnership was created to facilitate liquidity across isolated cryptocurrency & fiat markets.

In 2018 ZB.com began over-the-counter (OTC) trading and introduced margin trading for major cryptocurrency pairs. It also launched its European operations ZBX, a Malta-based crypto exchange which aims to be one of the first fully regulated Maltese exchanges, and has applied for a license to list Security Token Offerings (STOs). According to ZBX executives, the platform will be one of the most liquid exchanges on the planet with liquidity shared among the ZB exchange family (ZB, ZBX, and ZBG).

The platform was co-founded by Jimmy Zhao, a former systems manager at Ericsson, who went on to found several start-ups including Lunchback, a mobile platform connecting professionals with mentors, ChainEx, event planning and marketing for ICO’s, and Zillion Bits AG, which provided the technology and support to build ZB.com.

Kevin Zgang, who also worked at Ericcson as head of global operations, shares the title of co-founder at both Zillion Bits AG and ZBX.

In an October 2018 monthly report by analysts CryptoCompare, it was noted that ZB.com’s web traffic was suspiciously low compared with the average daily trading volumes and that its depth down volume was significantly lower than its average daily pair volume. Researchers at Crypto Exchange Ranks also claim to have found patterns of unnatural and artificial trade volume performance. This has led to certain factions accusing the exchange of volume manipulation.

Huobi is a Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange originally founded in China. Its name means ‘hot currency’ in Chinese. Following a 2017 government ban on Bitcoin exchanges, it moved its exchange headquarters to Singapore but continues to operate as a blockchain consulting and research platform on the Chinese market.

In 2018 Huboi became publicly listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange and now has offices in Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Russia, and the United States. Its US operations, located in San Francisco, are run by HBUS Holdco, Inc., a US company and strategic partner of Huobi Global.

Huobi Global claims to be one of the largest digital asset trading service providers in the world and aims to forge strategic partnerships in each country it moves into; it is said to be eyeing expansion into the Middle East, Brazil, Vietnam, and the UK and European markets.

Between September 15 and November 1, 2017, the Chinese government’s rule changes decimated Huobi’s trading volume by 95%. While trading gradually recovered, the leadership team decided to launch a proprietary cryptocurrency, the Huobi Token (HT), to boost customer engagement, especially with their premium product offerings.

The HT is an exchange coin, tradeable with any cryptocurrency on the Huobi exchange. It was launched in January 2018, with 300,000,000 of the total HT being distributed on a first come, first serve basis to Huobi VIP subscribers. The HT ecosystem has five different membership tiers providing discounts of between 10-50% on transaction fees depending on the tier.

Another significant benefit of HT ownership is the provision of voting rights on exchange decisions, including which new assets will be listed on the exchange. HT will also be periodically bought back by Huobi and burned.

The exchange platform, which is said to mimic Binance, was founded by Jun Du, who previously held positions as operations director at Comsenz and Tencent, and Leon Li, who was previously an engineer at Oracle.

In 2014 Huobi Group raised $1 million in Series A funding through ZhenFund and Sequoia Capital, raising a further million via an ICO in 2017. In 2018, its accumulative turnover had exceeded 1.2 trillion USD and it held the title of the world's largest digital asset exchange with a global share of 50%, providing services to users in over 130 countries.

Advisors to the company have included Randi Zuckerberg, the elder sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; Bitcoin evangelist and investor Jeffrey Wernick; and Don Tapscott, an early proponent of cryptocurrency who is known for his book Blockchain Revolution and his TEDGlobal conference.

Upbit is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea. It offers the trading of South Korean Won (KRW) with a wide selection of cryptocurrencies and a large number of Bitcoin pairs. Upbit launched on October 24, 2017, with the help of its American partner, the cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex. Within three months Upbit became the country’s largest crypto exchange in terms of daily transactions.

Upbit is operated by Dunamu Inc. the developer of the stock trading platform Stockplus. It is also affiliated with Korean internet giant Kakao Corp. which runs South Korea’s most popular mobile chat app, Kakaotalk. A unique feature of Upbit is the ability to trade currencies via the Kakao Stock platform, which is built on Kakaotalk messenger. This means Korean cryptocurrency users are able to trade cryptocurrencies as easily as they use the messaging app. This is highly significant due to the popularity of crypto trading in South Korea.

The founder of Upbit is listed in Forbes as Song Chi-Hyung, whose net worth was said to be between $350 million - $500 million in 2018. A graduate of Seoul National University, he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in computer science and economics. He founded Dunamu in 2012 which started as a news aggregator but moved into fintech. In 2017 Song left his position as Dunamu CEO to focus on Upbit’s global expansion.

In 2018 the exchange was accused by the Korean Financial Services Commission of manipulating data processing systems to rake in more than ₩120 billion ($106.8 million), and falsifying ₩254 trillion worth of fake orders to inflate the exchange's trade volume. Two top-level officers and one employee of Upbit, including Dunamu's chairman of the board, were indicted without detention. Upbit strongly denied the allegations.

Yoojin, one of South Korea's largest accounting firms, was hired to evaluate Upbit's accounts and found it to have the required funds, and not to have committed any fraud, but questions remained over the legitimacy of the findings as the Korean government did not release a statement or additional information on the case.

As part of its expansion plans, in 2018 Upbit launched exchanges in Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia, and hosted a local language website for each exchange. In the same year, Upbit’s operator Dunamu announced plans to invest ₩100 billion ($92.5 million) toward blockchain technologies over the subsequent three years.

CoinEx is a Hong Kong-based global digital coin exchange service provider. Founded in December 2017, the platform offers low fees, over-the-counter transactions, high security, and advanced trading charts. The exchange is owned and operated by Coinex Technology Limited, a U.K incorporated company and was built for both beginners and advanced users, however, as of early 2019, it did not support leverage or margin trading.

The CoinEx native token (CET) is issued on the Ethereum ERC 20 protocol and acts as a value-added service and privilege scheme. The total supply is fixed at 10 billion with CoinEx promising to buy back and burn CET using 50% of its quarterly transaction fee profit at the end of each quarter. There was no ICO or private funding leveraged in the creation of the token.

CET provides holders with discounted trading fees on the exchange, special rights during promotional campaigns, voting rights, and can potentially be used as ‘gas’ on a future planned decentralized exchange. All transaction fees on the platform are calculated and converted to CET tokens. The CET tokens are then distributed back to traders depending on the transaction volumes.

Although CoinEx does not list its founders on its site, Haipo Yang, founder of the fiat based currency exchange ViaBTC (of which CoinEx is a subsidiary), is widely reported as its founder. Yang is known as one of the earliest adopters and investors of Bitcoin and once led the research and development team at ZeusMiner, the former TOP3 Scrypt miner in the world.

In December 2018 it was rumored that Yang had been arrested and detained by the Chinese authorities after he disappeared from public view. Reports claim that he was detained for two and a half months. Additional information on the reason for his arrest, detention, and release remain undisclosed.

CoinEx guarantees client funds 100% and claims to keep client and operational funds segregated. This means client funds are always fully available for withdrawal, and they cannot be used for any other purpose, such as funding company operations. The platform implements advanced SSL protocols, cold multisig wallets, and enables two-factor authentication.

COBINHOOD is a zero fee cryptocurrency exchange launched on December 28, 2017. Registered in the Cayman Islands, it has offices in several major markets to facilitate compliance and is headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. More than 13,000 users signed up for the exchange on its first trading day.

The company generates revenue via a two-pronged business model. It attaches an interest rate to the loans it provides for margin trading of up to 10x leverage. It also offers an initial coin offering (ICO) underwriting service which its founders compare to Goldman Sachs’ initial public offering (IPO) underwriting business, except with a focus on tokens.

COBINHOOD claims to pick and choose its ICO’s carefully, only underwriting those from reputable, billion-dollar companies. Its service provides marketing resources, liquidity, legal compliance review, smart contract advisory, as well as the reputational bonus of an association with COBINHOOD.

The exchange has a utility ERC20 token, called COB, which aims to maximize traders' profits with benefits tied to the platform. Benefits include 50% off margin trading loan interest and the ability to get future ICO tokens at significantly lower rates.

COBINHOOD’s ICO was officially launched on September 13, 2017, and ended on October 22, 2017, having raised a total of 45,254.9 ETH (equivalent to $13,216,883 at the time). A reported 244,773,856 COB tokens were distributed to 17,433 participants out of the 500 million available. A total of 1 billion COB tokens will be issued.

The platform was co-founded by Popo Chen, a serial entrepreneur who created the successful Asian 17 Live Streaming service, and Wei-Ning Huang, a former Google employee and an active open source contributor. The exchange boasts a seasoned management team and has worked closely with technology veteran and advisor Tony Scott, a former Microsoft executive who served in the Barack Obama administration.

Popo Chen is also the founder of DEXON, a blockchain platform for developing and deploying DApps. DEXON is built on a new kind of ‘blocklattice’ architecture in which every node proposes blocks in parallel, promising infinite scalability.

The decision to create a zero-fee trading platform came from Chen’s personal experience trading cryptocurrencies. He has previously stated that he felt like he was being robbed when he discovered the cut that the exchanges were taking.

COBINHOOD is built on the Google Cloud Platform and is programmed with Golang for high concurrency. The platform is said to be highly secure with most funds stored in a cold vault in which 98% of all assets are kept within security modules. The security modules are multi-signature, meaning each module is locked into different banks’ safe.

P2PB2B is a cryptocurrency exchange that is mainly focused on the needs and interests of businesses. From the B2B point of view, the exchange has several benefits. Open API allows any API apps like exchangers, financial services, startups to get a free listing. Therefore new projects can attract the audience while established businesses give their users more opportunities. The exchange also promises that the listing process of new coins will take only 5 minutes. The primary listing form contains just 4 questions and further communication is made by mail.

LakeBTC is a Shanghai-based exchange that accepts most fiat currencies in exchange for Bitcoin and Ether. LakeBTC project was started in early 2013 as a virtual bitcoin exchange initially for traders and other financial professionals interested in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Later that year, the exchange was incorporated and operated under the current domain name. LakeBTC also provides bitcoin wallet service to all accounts. Users may choose to withdraw bitcoins to their own wallets or simply leave them in LakeBTC. To protect your fund, we implemented a number of rigorous mechanisms including SSL encryption, cold storage, 2-step verification, SMS withdrawal confirmation, and trade notifications.

YunEX.io is a blockchain company established in the British Virgin Islands (B.V.I). We are dedicated to providing digital assets exchange services for blockchain projects. YunEx has established its first overseas operations center in Hong Kong. Our team members are the technical product backbones of several exchanges overseas, with leading Internet product design strength, blockchain technology accumulation and successful digital asset exchange operation experience. YunEx was officially launched on June 6th, 2018.

CREX24 is a new cryptocurrency exchange. The official CREX24 website was launched in 2017. In the wake of the growing popularity of digital currencies, we have been developing a convenient and functional trading platform. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile – their value often changes. There is no centralized governamental cryptocurrency regulation, so their value largely depends on the demand and supply on the market. This makes cryptocurrencies an attractive asset for trading on the exchange market. Due to its popularity, the demand for cryptocurrency is increasing and it is growing in value. As such it is becoming a profitable long-term investment. New ways of spending digital currency are emerging, such as the purchase of goods and services. Thanks to fast payments, low fees and extra security, cryptocurrency represents a convenient way to make payments.

NovaDAX is a global leading crypto trading exchange, providing various crypto trading services to global advanced traders. As an international exchange with world-class team members around the world, NovaDAX raised $20M in a Series A funding from a global leading technology company -Abakus Group. Brazil is the first market that NovaDAX arrived which serves as the headquarter of NovaDAX Latin America. NovaDAX Brazil provides a wide range and various crypto trading products to meet your different needs, including basic fiat-crypto trading, crypto-crypto experienced trading, crypto-crypto pro, crypto leverage trading etc. No matter you are a professional trader or a crypto trading new comer, you will find your suitable trading products in NovaDAX.

Vinex Network Pte Ltd was established after Midas Protocol ICO completion, with the same board of directors and board of management. The base token of Vinex Network exchange is $MAS which is also utility token of Midas wallet. Hence, all transaction fees on the exchange is chargeable in $MAS.

Together with Midas Protocol, Vinex Network has supported the crypto movement in ASEAN by working with various stakeholders. Being a member of the Singapore Fintech Association, Digital Exchanges Association of Singapore, Vinex Network has also participated actively in many dialogues with the government of Vietnam.