"Building a centralized crypto exchange from scratch? Bold move! That's like deciding to construct a casino in Vegas—except the house rules change daily, and your 'customers' are all armchair economists who think they know better than your dev team.

The Cold Hard Truth:

1. Tech Stack Nightmares: You'll need matching engines (think Nasdaq, but for memecoins), wallet systems that don't leak like a sieve, and KYC tools that won’t get you sued. Oh, and pray your cloud provider doesn’t sneeze during peak trading.

2. Regulatory Quicksand: One day you’re compliant; the next, a country you’ve never heard of bans your IP range. Have fun hiring lawyers who speak 'legalese' and 'crypto-bro' fluently.

3. Liquidity = Oxygen: No one trades on a ghost town. You’ll either bribe market makers (expensive) or fake volume (risky). Choose your poison.

Timeframe?

• Optimist: "6 months to MVP!"

• Realist: 2+ years before you’re not embarrassed to share your LinkedIn.

Pitfalls? Where to start…**

• Security: If your "hot wallet" gets drained Week 1, your exchange becomes a cautionary tweet.

• Customer Support: Prepare for 10,000 "WHY WITHDRAW PENDING?!" tickets daily.

• Competition: Binance clones are a dime a dozen. Your USP better be actually unique.

Pro Tip: Before coding a single line, lurk on crypto dev forums (yes, even casino ones—same shady patterns). Learn from others’ $10M mistakes.

P.S. If you pull this off, name a token after me. If you fail… well, there’s always DeFi. 🚀🔥