We regularly get asked how to launch a crypto exchange. I noticed I keep writing the same summary in private messages - so I've put it together here. This is a short overview based on research and real conversations with clients: what budgets you need, what an exchange actually runs on, and which options genuinely work today.

Budget: don't fool yourself

The first thing to understand - you cannot build a CEX on the level of Bybit for $100–150 thousand. That's the budget many newcomers count on, and it's unrealistic for a full centralized exchange with its own liquidity, matching engine, and infrastructure.

A realistic budget for a serious CEX starts at $500 thousand to $1 million. And even for that money you won't get a Bybit - you'll get a working venue that still has to build up liquidity and users.

What you can build for that budget

For $500k–1M, it makes sense today to build not a classic CEX from scratch, but a DEX disguised as a CEX - through the API of a major decentralized exchange.

The largest perpetual DEX of this cycle, Hyperliquid, is already taking volume away from centralized exchanges. The market's reaction is telling: centralized exchanges are rushing to release their own on-chain analogues - for example Aster, tied to the Binance ecosystem. The creators of such platforms openly state the goal of "building an on-chain exchange on the level of a major CEX."

In this model, you have your own frontend and your own domain, while all trade computation and liquidity are shared, coming from the decentralized exchange whose API you connect to. To the end user it looks like a full exchange, but you don't need to build a matching engine from scratch or bootstrap liquidity.

Liquidity is what matters most

The essence of any exchange is liquidity. Without it, trading is impossible: spreads are huge, large orders move the price, users leave.

To reach even basic liquidity for a traded pair, you need to connect liquidity providers. They come in tiers: the more registrations and real users your venue has, the higher the provider tier you can access.

An important point: building your own market maker and liquidity from scratch is unrealistic for a new venue. It requires capital and infrastructure a newcomer doesn't have. So the right path is to use liquidity providers, not to try to replace them yourself.

White-label: the expensive route

Since building everything from scratch is slow and complicated, launching a CEX often relies on white-label solutions - ready-made "boxed" exchanges under your brand. But this is very expensive.

For example, with major providers like ChainUp, buying the backend, frontend, and liquidity runs around $1.2 million one-time, or roughly $200 thousand per month on subscription. This is an option for those who already have serious capital and market understanding - not for starting from zero.

How it's actually done

It's worth understanding that some well-known exchanges on the market don't run on their own infrastructure. A common scheme is using the backend and liquidity of a major centralized exchange through legal structures. In effect, such a venue has its own frontend, while the entire "engine" is rented. It's a workable approach, but it ties you to someone else's infrastructure and its risks.

The optimal option for newcomers

Putting it all together, the most sensible option for those just entering this space is your own frontend plus a decentralized exchange API. This is:

Decentralized exchanges and their APIs have become mature enough in this cycle to build full products on them - and the volume flowing over from CEXs confirms it.

In our practice, we use decentralized exchange APIs not only for trading scenarios. The hedging module in our wallets is built on the perpetual futures of a decentralized exchange: every trade by an exchanger or processor can be automatically accompanied by an offsetting position that removes inventory risk and stabilizes profit. A detailed breakdown of the hedging economics is in a separate article, and how it's built into the platform is on the Peach Enterprise Wallet page.

If you're building an exchange or an exchanger and need the custodial part - deposit acceptance, payouts, storage, and processing across nine blockchains - that's our specialty.