Red Flags vs. User Loyalty: The Baffling Rise of Crypto Exchanges in Forbes’ Tru

[Akinwale Akinkunmi]

For months now, there have been news stories on X (formerly Twitter) and across various media outlets about governments sanctioning or investigating major cryptocurrency exchanges. The most recent example involved Binance, which faced scrutiny over allegations of fraud and regulatory non-compliance, alongside other platforms like OKX, Bybit, and several others.

Despite these ongoing issues, users continue to trust these exchanges, depositing and trading thousands of dollars without hesitation. This paradox became even more striking with the release of Forbes' 2025 World’s Most Trustworthy Crypto Exchanges & Marketplaces ranking. Surprisingly, many of the heavily criticized platforms dominated the list: Coinbase secured 2nd place, Binance claimed 4th, Bitget surprised me landed at 8th, OKX took 17th position and Bybit took 16th.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierpaz/2025/01/28/the-worlds-most-trustworthy-crypto-exchanges/
Do you agree with these rankings? What criteria do you think Forbes used to evaluate "trustworthiness" here?

[TomPluz]

There can be many reasons why many people continually trust centralized exchanges even if decentralized exchanges are also making some good share of the market. One big reason is convenience and this is based on my own experience...the biggest downside is that we need to do some KYC and our privacy is somehow compromised. Seems people want to deal with something that they know there are really people behind that they can go to in case of a problem. Now, am not saying that decentralized exchanges are not good enough because they also got many advantages but this is just a matter of preference. Therefore, we can say that CEX is here to stay for many more years before DEX fully take over the market (if this is possible).

[electronicash]

the criteria they use is already there such as regulation, holdings, transparency, audit and cost. but i think the y are no considering who these people and the kind of people who are using and are trusting these exchanges.

CME group? its forbes though, my guess is that they are only surveying Us citizens. if you are a person who doesn't trust the forbes listing which of these exchanges should be the first that people truly trusted?

[Akinwale Akinkunmi]

the criteria they use is already there such as regulation, holdings, transparency, audit and cost. but i think the y are no considering who these people and the kind of people who are using and are trusting these exchanges.

CME group? its forbes though, my guess is that they are only surveying Us citizens. if you are a person who doesn't trust the forbes listing which of these exchanges should be the first that people truly trusted?

Somehow  I get where you are coming from, but to me Forbes had their criteria of picking the best exchanges and they are also one real company in the space that when they actually pick a particular exchange ahead of one other big or popular exchange, they have their own reason and also they have done their investigations.