You can buy and sell cryptocurrencies in mainly two kinds of places: Decentralised Exchanges (DEXs) and Centralised Exchanges.
Decentralised Exchanges are essentially market makers which match the price and quantity of assets that people want to sell or buy. The exchange itself is not under any company’s control, which means that the market dynamics are much fairer to the public. However, DEXs have been historically difficult to deal with, and require users to have a working knowledge of how to safely store and secure their digital assets.
Stake DAO offers easy on-boarding for all it’s users using a method called an on-ramp. This means that one can use their normal, fiat money to buy cryptocurrencies and load them onto the platform, while being in total control of details like their private keys.
Centralised Exchanges or CEXs offer a central place to deal with all of one’s crypto-assets, and come with typical account features such as recovery of lost passwords. The fundamental drawback of a CEX, however, is that the user is not in control of their private keys, i.e. the string of letters and numbers that can be used to access their personal funds on the blockchain.
It is important that users understand their own financial needs well, and make an appropriate tradeoff between various exchanges in terms of credibility, ease of use, speed and security.
