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P2P vs. DEX: How should you swap your crypto?

The OKX Wallet offers two powerful ways to swap assets: DEX and P2P. While both are easy and secure, they each come with different benefits. Let's dive into which one might be best for you.

What's a Decentralized Exchange (DEX) swap?

A decentralized exchange, or DEX as we call it, is the swap experience most familiar to OKX Wallet users. On a DEX, you can swap and bridge your favorite digital assets without wasting your time shopping protocols or exchanges. Instead, our powerful X Routing technology looks for the best prices and protocols for you, which helps a lot if you want to optimize your price execution.

In addition, you can use our DEX for placing limit orders and bridging tokens across your favorite blockchains. This powerful stack is available to users at no cost; we charge no platform fees for users to use the OKX Wallet DEX. Customers will only be charged gas fees and bridge fees when imposed by the protocols through which the swap was made.

What's a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) swap?

Peer-to-Peer, or P2P for short, is another way for OKX users to swap crypto. P2P allows you to swap assets with another party directly, rather than through an exchange. This is useful in cases where two parties have agreed to swap one asset for another asset at a set price for example.

With the OKX Wallet, P2P transactions are only crypto-to-crypto, but this functionality offers users the ability to buy or sell the digital assets of their choice against another one. They can also post their bids or asks on OKX's public marketplace, a simple browser for finding orders being offered up by other OKX users. There are no fees associated with P2P swaps on OKX.

Should I use P2P or DEX for crypto swaps?

DEX and P2P are two ways that users can limit their reliance on centralized exchanges. However, which one is best for you will depend on many factors.

DEX is generally best for...

  • Trading on order books or automated market makers (AMM)

  • Making frequent and expedient swaps between assets

  • Bridging assets across chains

  • Having orders fulfilled fast and with low fees

P2P is generally best for...

  • People who prefer over the counter (OTC) style trading

  • Users who want to trade or send crypto directly between each other

  • Users who want to swap between assets at a specific price

  • People who value minimizing fees and slippage as much as possible

Disclaimer
This content is provided for informational purposes only and may cover products that are not available in your region. It is not intended to provide (i) investment advice or an investment recommendation; (ii) an offer or solicitation to buy, sell, or hold crypto/digital assets, or (iii) financial, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Crypto/digital asset holdings, including stablecoins, involve a high degree of risk and can fluctuate greatly. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding crypto/digital assets is suitable for you in light of your financial condition. Please consult your legal/tax/investment professional for questions about your specific circumstances. Information (including market data and statistical information, if any) appearing in this post is for general information purposes only. While all reasonable care has been taken in preparing this data and graphs, no responsibility or liability is accepted for any errors of fact or omission expressed herein.

© 2025 OKX. This article may be reproduced or distributed in its entirety, or excerpts of 100 words or less of this article may be used, provided such use is non-commercial. Any reproduction or distribution of the entire article must also prominently state: “This article is © 2025 OKX and is used with permission.” Permitted excerpts must cite to the name of the article and include attribution, for example “Article Name, [author name if applicable], © 2025 OKX.” Some content may be generated or assisted by artificial intelligence (AI) tools. No derivative works or other uses of this article are permitted.

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