Centralized Exchange
A company that runs a trading venue where customers deposit funds, and the company holds those funds and matches their orders.
A centralized exchange operates a private matching engine and an internal ledger. When a customer deposits, the assets move to addresses the exchange controls and the customer receives a balance entry; trades between customers are then bookkeeping updates rather than blockchain transactions. The exchange typically performs several jobs that are legally separated in most regulated equity markets: it is venue, broker, custodian, and clearing house at once. Readers meet the term in volume rankings, listing announcements, and fee schedules that distinguish maker and taker orders.
In practice
When a centralized exchange fails, customer balances are unsecured claims on the company rather than assets the customer controls, a distinction made concrete for users by the 2022 collapse of FTX.
The common misunderstanding
A balance shown in an exchange account is a database entry representing a claim on the company, not coins the customer controls on a blockchain.
The figure this maps to
Total dollar value of trades in the asset across covered venues during the last 24 hours.
Limits: Exchange-reported volume has a long documented history of inflation through wash trading and zero-fee or rebate-funded incentive programs, and providers apply their own opaque filters to decide which venues to trust. Coverage differs fundamentally between sources: some include perpetual futures and…