# In true Cryptopia fashion, big changes are afoot and its users are the last to know.

https://youtu.be/Il5IprquSfk

Open communications and transparency have never been Cryptopia’s strong suit but this time its users are really going to bear the brunt of it. Cryptopia is one of those centralized exchanges that never seemed to get it quite right. I’d say its biggest draws was the fact that it offered a crap ton of different alt coins to trade with, and perhaps that’s why a lot of people chose to use it to trade and store their novelty, small cap coins. 

[Most recently,](https://bitcoinist.com/cryptopia-exchange-hacked/) back in January Cryptopia was hacked and suffered losses in the $2.5 million range. The direct loss resulting from the hack matched with the losses seen due to the negative press that inevitable followed was enough to force the exchange to [pursue liquidation.](https://www.coindesk.com/hacked-cryptocurrency-exchange-cryptopia-goes-into-liquidation)
 
Unfortunately for those users of the exchange who chose to stick through the tough times, they won’t be as handsomely rewarded as they probably had hoped. No, instead, the individuals who’s funds were not affected by the hack have been locked up in the exchange for months. And now they hear the news that Cryptopia is choosing liquidation. 


## For those of you who are unfortunately negatively affected by this news, I hope that your monetary losses are not great. *But even more so, I hope that the lesson learned here is not lost on you.*

# Pursue decentralized exchanges and avoid third party custodianship as best and as often as you can. 
If you’re interested in a cain but the only option you have for storage is to keep it on a centralized exchange (like Cryptopia…) perhaps reconsider the real value of that coin. But I digress.. 
My point here and now and always will be this, pursue the DEX. There are plenty of Decentralized exchanges that allow for the trading of thousands of small cap, novelty cryptocurrencies. Go ahead and check out: [Blocknet](https://blocknet.co/) [CryptoBridge](https://crypto-bridge.org/), and [IDEX](https://idex.market) for starters.


In other hacked, centralized exchange news:
[Binance exchange](https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-exchange-binance-restarting-services-after-post-hack-upgrade) is back up and running. After experiencing a hack that cost them over 7000 BTC. 
Trades, deposits and withdrawals are all now available. 
# Sounds like we’ve got a crop of users that haven’t mastered how to learn from others mistakes…