MARKETS DAILY: Bullish Bitcoin Dreams and a 2019 to Remember

Adam B. Levine: It's December 19, 2019, and you're listening to Markets Daily, I'm Adam B. Levine, editor of Podcasts here At Coindesk, along with our senior markets reporter, Brad Keoun, to give you a concise daily briefing on crypto markets and some of the most important news developments in the sector over the past 24 hours.

Internet startup Blockchain of Things Inc. agreed to pay $250,000 to settle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for launching an initial coin offering without registering the token as a security with the regulator.

Spagni says he's making the change now to QUOTE better streamline developments and collaborations END QUOTE.Adam: For today's featured story, we're joined again by CoinDesk's Markets Reporter Sebestian Sinclair for a look into Centralized, and Decentralized exchange.

Mistrust in middlemen, ie banks, brokers and centralized exchanges, is essentially what led to the success of blockchain tech in the first place.

Decentralized exchanges can circumvent the issues of custody by building its infrastructure on the blockchain with the use of smart contracts to coordinate trades from a users' own wallet.

These smart contracts must be implemented correctly with appropriate withdrawal controls, but ultimately a decentralized exchange should never require a user to give up control of their assets.

Adam: Decentralized exchanges must have a downside?

Sebastian: Of course, decentralized exchanges face their own inherent problems.

What's more, decentralized exchanges generally result in unfriendly user interfaces that are based around block explorers such as etherscan making it difficult for new users in the space to pick up and understand right away.

Sebastian: Well, Binance for example, opened its decentralized exchange to the public back in April this year while OKEx, another major exchange, announced plans way back in March, but still has plans in the works.