Hello professor @yousafharoonkhan, I am @ononiwujoel one of your students in the crypto academy and this is my submission post for your homework on centralized/decentralized exchanges, best crypto exchanges and how to use Uniswap.

Decentralized and Centralized Exchanges

First of all I'll explain what an Exchange is in this context to make to work more understandable.

• Crypto Exchange: A crypto exchange is a platform in which traders and investors can swap or exchange cryptocurrencies between themselves and also exchange cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies as well.

• Decentralized Exchange: Decentralized exchange is a type of crypto exchange where every trader has full control of his coins and can independently trade, liquidate and make decisions for his account and trade pattern. There is no middleman in this exchange so traders exchange coins directly without having to obey any rules and regulations from any head as there is none. This exchange basically creates a platform to connect traders, investors and customers.
  Examples of decentralized exchanges (DEX) includes; Uniswap, IDEX, Bitsquare, Mdex and Justwap

• Centralized Exchange:
  Centralized exchange (CEX) on the other hand is a direct opposite of DEX.
  In this exchange the authority of traders is limited by the platform which serves as a middleman between traders. The traders must follow rules and regulations set up by the platform so there is no freedom to trade independently.
  Examples of good Centralized Exchanges include; binance, huobi, coinbase, OKEx and Bittrex.

Differences between Decentralized Exchanges(DEX) and Centralized Exchanges(CEX)

Decentralized Exchanges	Centralized Exchanges
In decentralized exchange traders have full control of their accounts and make decisions independently	In centralized exchange trader's control of their accounts and decision making is limited by the exchange
Traders can trade round the clock without any form of personal verification or KYC(Know Your Customers)	KYC is needed in centralized exchange and there is also verification during trade and withdrawal
There is no trading fees or commission fees in this exchange	There are commission fees which are high most times
Centralized exchange is quite easy to operate especially for newbies in cryptocurrency	Decentralized exchange can be very difficult to understand and trade with, especially for newbies in cryptocurrency
Trading volume is much lower and it is more difficult to liquidate funds	Trading volume is high and it's easier to convert asset to fiat currencies
Decentralized exchange operates on blockchain with many severs, making it impossible to get hacked. So your capital is safe	CEX operates with one main sever making it possible to be hacked and manipulated so the safety is not guaranteed
DEX operates everyday without restrictions because it is blockchain-oriented	CEX do maintenance work at times thereby restricting traders from trading until its done
DEX is still new and many traders don't understand it yet, so there are very limited cryptocurrencies	CEX is very popular among traders and well understood so there are diverse cryptocurrencies in the system

Best Cryptocurrency exchanges of 2021

1. Binance:
   This exchange have proven to be the best and most popular in the cryptocurrency market worldwide.
   Binance is available in almost every corner of the world today and has an exchange score of 9.9, over 34 thousand visits weekly and supports all popular cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies as well.
   It's liquidity is also very high
   Binance has steem listed among its coins and as a newbie in crypto market the main coin I'm interested in is steem so this a big deal for me.
   Binance is very recommendable for traders interested in P2P market especially newbies like me in the cryptocurrency market and it's customer friendly and commission fee is also very low

My binance account

1. Huobi Global:
   In my opinion huobi exchange votes second among cryptocurrency market.
   It is actually the first exchange I used before binance and it's pretty good in many ways.
   Huobi has good popularity although not like binance, but it is also available in many countries.
   It has an exchange score of 8.5, over one thousand visits weekly and supports all popular coins in the crypto market as well as popular fiat currencies.
   It's liquidity is very high, almost same as binance.
   Huobi has a user-friendly interface and it's very understandable
   Trade and transactions in huobi are fast and customer service is very active.
   Huobi also has steem listed among its coins and this is one of the things I consider before using any exchange.

How to use Uniswap exchange and swap/buy or swap/sell any coin

We will start by installing metamask

• search for metamask on chrome with metamask.io/index.html and click on download button

• You have three options, download to chrome, ios or android. Now I choose install for android

• Redirected to Google play where I then install to my android

• Now open the metamask app and click on Get started button

• I don't have a wallet before now so I'll click on create new wallet.
  I can't take a screenshot because the app refuses it for security reasons, so I'll be taking the pictures with another phone

• Now enter your new password, confirm password and click on the checkbox then create password

• click start

• click start

• click view to see your seed phrase and click continue after saving your seed phrase.
  Your seedphrase here operates just like the one in Steemit registration, if lost you can't recover it so it's best to save it as both softcopy and hardcopy

Complete the affirmation process and click complete backup

• Click agree

Now the metamask account is completely set

We can now go for Uniswap. Visit Uniswap site on https://uniswap.exchange

• Click on connect wallet and choose metamask and you're good to go

Conclusion

This lecture fully explained the how exchanges operate, both the CEX and DEX showing us their strengths and weaknesses.
Most importantly, it shows us how to use a Decentralized exchange (Uniswap) which is not very popular because most traders are only exposed to Centralized exchange due to its popularity in the crypto market.

Thanks for reading Professor @yousafharoonkhan and I hope I was able to meet your expectations.

Cc: @yousafharoonkhan