Philosophies of the CEX.IO Ecosystem

CEX.IO turns eight in November. With such a long tenure in the market, we inevitably think about who we are becoming as a company and what matters to us. 

2020 and 2021 have transformed CEX.IO. From a cryptocurrency exchange, we’ve expanded into a range of products and services. Staking, Savings, Loans, Prime Liquidity, and more in the pipeline – all augmented the offerings we bring to the market. 

We are no longer just a cryptocurrency exchange, we are an entire ecosystem. In this ecosystem, retail customers, institutions, and everyone in between can find products that will connect them to the opportunities in the cryptocurrency economy.

We sat down with CEX.IO CEO and founder, Oleksandr Lutskevych (Alex) to chat about the company philosophy and values. What’s in the CEX.IO focus? What principles guide the company’s evolution? What commitment does CEX.IO make to its customers? 

Below are six philosophical principles that Alex highlighted.

Simplicity

In the time when the world becomes more and more complex, we strive to provide simple solutions for every level of crypto sophistication. 

From early days, the idea of simplicity has been central in everything we do. 

CEX.IO was the first company to make it possible to buy Bitcoin with a credit card. And, if you can enter the crypto market with ease, the same should be true for the opposite direction. So we also made it possible to sell crypto with immediate withdrawal of fiat proceeds to a card. 

In staking, we perform all the technical steps for you, and all you need to receive your staking rewards is hold coins on your account. Simple. 

The examples can go on.

Simplicity does not mean we stay on a basic, beginner, level. Just the opposite! We go deep. 

Simplicity for us is in the ability to take things, however advanced, and package them into elegant solutions where everything fits exactly where it needs to. Simplicity means removing the unnecessary, elimination of noise, decluttering. This applies to both retail and institutional solutions we offer.  

Adventure over Status Quo

We operate on the frontier of financial innovation. Over the 8 years we’ve been in the business, we not only observed the changes in the financial industry, we facilitated them. With instruments used in everyday personal finance – credit and debit cards – we’ve opened a crypto adventure to millions of people. 

In our evolution as a company, we will always choose adventure over status quo. This means creating more ways to access opportunities in decentralized finance is at the heart of our work. 

It’s important that adventure is not recklessness. To ascend Mount Kilimanjaro is an adventure, but to do it without preparations and research is recklessness. 

Similarly, our adventure is in the everyday research and discovery of how we can bridge traditional finance and cryptocurrency industry in ways that advance all participants. We believe that we do not need to break the systems – we can build on top of them.

Always Learn

To deliver the quality experience with dynamic cryptocurrency markets, we have to put continuous learning at the top of our priorities. 

We learn from the industry, from our customers, from traditional finance, from our competitors, from each other. 

The “always learn” philosophy is what we cultivate within our team. If you think you know everything, you’ll be quickly returned back to earth. 

Continuous learning is also something we want to offer to our customers as an organic process. CEX.IO Ecosystem is designed to have you progress through our products and services while deepening your understanding of crypto markets. 

From buying your first digital asset with a payment card to trading algorithmically via the API, no matter how much knowledge you already have, we can advance you further.

Add to that the educational content we create and everyday conversations with our users on social media, delivering knowledge and learning is what we are focused on. 

Deliver No Matter What

We live in the time when a single tweet can move the entire market. Not surprising that it became popular in the crypto industry to announce new products way before bringing them to the production. Often, the delivery of these products never comes to fruition. 

In the fast-paced industry, like ours, larger than life announcements without a commitment to deliver, can be a way to attract attention. This, however, is not our philosophy.   

At CEX.IO, we not only talk the talk, we walk the walk. We deliver. That’s why we are careful about our promises. Once we commit to something, we’ll make it happen, no matter what.  

Delivery, and not just a fact of it, but the quality delivery is what matters to us. We can improve here by a lot, and we continue strengthening our team with new talents. 

Delivery is about the final result just as it is about expectations management and staying transparent along the way. That means you, our customer, are not only the consumer of our products and services, but also a participant of the process where both you and the company grow together. 

Dig Deeper

Depth is what we grew to appreciate at CEX.IO. For people in our company, depth comes from intellectual curiosity and attention to detail. For our products and services, depth is the amount of thought that goes into the structures under the hood. 

Here’s what it means. There are tons of beautifully designed products in the cryptocurrency marketplace. Yet, it is what’s often hidden below the surface that determines the quality of your experience. 

For example, we often hear “Oh, but the exchange X has greater volume than CEX.IO”. And it takes digging deeper to understand the difference between the inflated volumes exchanges show for higher rankings and real volumes that take place. It takes digging deeper to appreciate the quality of the liquidity an exchange offers. 

At CEX.IO, we will always double-down on what makes the real difference in your experience: liquidity, safety, reliability. Those who stick around with CEX.IO appreciate it. Needless to say, they are those who dig deeper. 

Loyalty 

At CEX.IO, we stay loyal to our philosophies, to our customers, and to each other. Whenever in doubt, we answer to ourselves:

• Are we making it simple for our customers or more complex?
• Are we going for an adventure or defaulting to the status quo?
• What can we learn and help customers learn from the situation? 
• Do we stand by our own words and deliver on our promises?
• Are we looking at an issue deep enough?

Loyalty gives the vector to our evolution. Loyalty helps us make business decisions with integrity. And integrity is what allows us to be proud of our work and go to bed everyday thinking that, at CEX.IO, we are making a positive difference.