Throughout the past few months, we saw the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange among other crypto platforms. FTX was a centralized cryptocurrency exchange (CEX), which means that it had control over the private keys of users’ cryptocurrency wallets, and it was a business that a centralized group of people ran.
Instead of the community having a say in how the platform would evolve, select, hired people would do so, and their errors would lead to its collapse.
However, how did this impact the broader crypto space, and what does this mean for the future of crypto payments? Let’s find out.
Key Points:
- Centralized Exchanges (CEXs) took a big hit when it came to user trust.
- Many of them began issuing Proof-of-Reserves (PoR) as a means of getting the trust of the users back.
- Some exchanges blew up in terms of popularity as a result of the hole left by the collapse of FTX.
- NOWPayments is a non-custodial cryptocurrency payment gateway where the funds aren’t stored on the platform but go directly to user wallets.
What happened with centralized crypto platforms in 2022?
One of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, known as FTX, collapsed throughout 2022 and, with it, made waves across the broader crypto space.
FTX has allegedly mishandled user funds, and the collapse of its self-issued cryptocurrency, the FTX Token (FTT), resulted in the company filing for bankruptcy. A lot of users of the platform lost a lot of cryptocurrency and money, and this ultimately led to people not trusting centralized exchanges (CEXs) as a result.
However, it is important to note that a centralized exchange allows a person to interact with cryptocurrencies. However, it is owned and operated by a private company, which means that users need to sign up for an account in order to participate. The exchange is responsible for facilitating transactions of cryptocurrencies between buyers and sellers.
How this affects the crypto payment industry
Users of these centralized platforms began to understand how they work. The cryptocurrency exchange, because it is centralized, began issuing hot cryptocurrency wallets, or in other words, wallets that are hosted on the exchange and ones to which the exchange has private keys.
Furthermore, due to the fact that all of the funds are stored on the exchange, if it crashes, or collapses, so would the funds with it.
As such, many users began switching to non-custodial wallets, ones in which they have full ownership over the cryptocurrencies and the private keys.
Ultimately, the collapse of these CEXs, and centralized platforms as a whole, will pave the way toward a decentralized future, which was the initial mission of blockchain technology.
Why your funds are always safe with NOWPayments
The main way in which NOWPayments stands out when compared to other solutions is due to the fact that it offers a non-custodial crypto payment gateway.
What this essentially means is that all of the cryptocurrencies go directly to the wallets of the users.
Additionally, the integration of our crypto payment processing solution is also fully free, and the implemented fee-charging system is absolutely transparent. This means that companies or users can access a payment solution and accept crypto payments in over 150 different assets without CEX, or their users are at risk of a centralized exchange collapsing and them losing all of their cryptocurrencies.
If anyone is looking for a solution that is far less centralized, then NOWPayments might be a solid option for them. Crypto payment provider companies have come a long way, and no longer need to be as centralized as before.
How to accept crypto payments with NOWPayments
If users have gone over and understand all of the risks involved with centralized platforms, then the non-custodial functionality of NOWPayments might have become a huge point of appeal for them.
Here, we will be going over everything you need to know to set up NOWPayments cryptocurrency payment provider with ease, step-by-step.
- First, navigate to the NOWPayments crypto payment gateway website, where you can begin the account creation procedure.
- You will now need to make the decision about which cryptocurrency wallet address you will be using. Any payments made will get sent to this address, so make sure that you pick the right wallet. Of course, once you finished the registration process, you will be able to add as many wallets as you wish.
- Create your own API Key by generating it from the settings tab on the web application.
It is here where you need to set up what kind of payments you want to send or receive.
- Now that you’ve gone over all of the aforementioned steps, it is time to essentially pick a way through which you can integrate the solution into your existing website. Make sure to check out all of the available options here. You can access plugins for WooCommerce, Magento 2, Zencart, OpenCart, and WHMCS, among other platforms. Additionally, you can integrate the API directly.
- Begin accepting cryptocurrency payments through a non-custodial wallet structure and with a high level of security from any cryptocurrency user located anywhere on a global scale.
Conclusion
We have gone over everything users need to know surrounding the collapse of centralized platforms, from what initiated this movement to what the consequences of this movement ultimately ended up being.
By leveraging non-custodial solutions such as NOWPayments as a payment gateway for cryptocurrency, both business owners, as well as users, can enjoy a much higher level of peace of mind when making cryptocurrency transactions online anywhere.
The next time users set up cryptocurrency payments, or use cryptocurrencies to exchange value from one another or to buy a specific product, or service, can do so through a non-custodial solution, and rely less on centralized solutions.