CEX.IO Review 2022

CEX.IO info

Coincub Score

Security

As far as we know, CEX.IO has not been hacked (yet). Crypto exchanges are large and tempting targets for enterprising cybercriminals. A multimillion-dollar hack can be carried off with a little luck, a lot of skill, and a misstep on the behalf of the exchange. That’s why it’s always important to see what kind of security protocols a given exchange has in place.

CEX.IO gets points for being relatively transparent about its security measures. It loses more because many of those measures are inadequate compared to industry standards. For the sake of fairness, we’ll start with what CEX.IO does right.  

First up: CEX.IO has comprehensive insurance for some users. All United States residents’ USD funds are covered by FDIC insurance, up to a maximum of $250,000 per person.

Hot wallets hold a small percentage of funds and only hold company funds. Exposure to risk is entirely borne by CEX.IO. 100% of client funds are stored in cold wallets, and client funds are moved to cold wallets daily.

old wallets are protected by multi-signature wallets, which means that transactions require multiple confirmations. There’s also some serious security for those cold wallets, including armed security personnel protecting physical access to Hardware Security Modules. 

Unfortunately, there are no dogs.

Now we get to the not so good aspects of CEX.IO’s security. My major issue is that the security measures they list are either word salad, or the absolute bare minimum polished to a shine and presented as groundbreaking.

One of the big points of contention is CEX.IO’s self-proclaimed use of TLS 1.2 encryption of personal data, which is not the highest level of encryption. TLS 1.3 is currently industry standard. In an industry that lives and dies by encryption, this is a big misstep.

According to them, they “apply the top standard adopted by credit and debit card providers, PCI DSS Level 1, to our hot wallets and regularly audit the compliance elements associated with this process.” While PCI Level 1 is the highest achievable level, it only means that they get a third-party audit every year.

There have also been user complaints about 2FA resets taking over a week to go through.

Opening an Account and Trading

Wondering how to open a CEX.IO account? It’s easy and straightforward. Keep reading for a step-by-step explanation of the onboarding process.

1. Visit the official CEX.IO site at https://cex.io/. Click on the ‘Get Started’ button in the center of the page.

2. Choose whether you want to create an individual account or a business account by clicking one of the respective buttons.

3. Enter your personal details, agree to the Terms of Use, and voila! You’ve made your CEX.IO account.

4. Unfortunately, unless you cough up some documentation your trading limit will be a whopping $0.00. CEX.IO has verification requirements in place for any amount of trading. You can update your verification by choosing a deposit method, or by navigating to the dropdown menu in the upper right hand corner and choosing “Verification.”

Choose “Increase Limit” to navigate to the Identity Verification page

5. Once you’ve entered the required information and provided sufficient documentation, you’ll have to wait for up to 24 hours for your account to be verified. There are up to four verification stages: identity verification, address verification, enhanced verification, and corporate verification, with different limits depending on the amount of information provided.

The most basic verification allows users to deposit up to $3,000.000 USD and withdraw $10,000 USD. The highest level of verification is reserved for corporate accounts, and has no deposit or withdrawal limits.

Supported Currencies

CEX.IO supports four fiat currencies: Euros (EUR), British Pounds (GBP), Russian Rubles (RUB) and US Dollars (USD).