The honest answer: more than most founders plan for.
Let’s break it down.
First, you need security talent. Not freelancers. Not juniors. Real, experienced security engineers.
At least two full-time professionals, and at market rates that’s easily $300,000 per person annually including benefits. That’s $600,000 right there.
Then comes legal and regulatory.
If you’re operating in or touching the U.S., you’re not skipping this. Expect $50,000–$100,000 just to set up correctly, and more if you support fiat on-ramps and off-ramps.
Now add infrastructure and operations:
Secure office space, hardware, internal tooling, compliance systems, and operational costs. Even bootstrapped, you’re looking at $25,000 .
Next is hosting and cloud infrastructure.
With a provider like AWS, once traffic starts growing, costs rise quickly. A conservative development-stage estimate is $10,000 per year, and that scales fast.
Then comes the part founders underestimate: support, admin, and marketing.
You can bootstrap early, but users expect real service. Between customer support, community, and ops, budgeting $150,000 is realistic once activity increases.
And finally… the unknowns.
Security incidents. Regulatory friction. Competitors. Delays. Architecture rewrites. Compliance updates. Crisis management.
Smart teams add 20–30% buffer for what you can’t predict.
When you stack everything together, the reality looks like this:
- ~$800K–$1M to build a serious centralized exchange outside the U.S.
• $2M if you’re operating in the U.S. with full fiat support.
And that’s before growth really starts.