The Cryptocurrency Exchanges

What is a cryptocurrency exchanges

A Cryptocurrency exchange is a digital marketplace where users buy, sell or exchange different cryptocurrencies for other digital currency or traditional currency like US dollars or Euro. It is important to note that not all crypto exchanges accept fiat money; some exchanges only allow you to deposit coins (most commonly Bitcoin) to purchase other alternative coins. Also some of them requires you to verify your ID and open an account especially to have access to fancy trading tools while some others platforms, that you can use for occasional or straightforward trade, do not require an account and allow you to remain anonymous.

We can distinguish tree types of exchanges:

• Trading Platforms – Websites that connect buyers and sellers and take a fee from each transaction.
• Direct Trading – They offer direct person to person trading where individuals from different countries can exchange currency. They don’t have a fixed market price, instead, each seller sets their own exchange rate.
• Brokers – Platforms where anyone can visit to buy cryptocurrencies at a price set by the broker. They are similar to foreign exchange dealers.

Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEX s)

Crypto-exchanges involve risks resulting from the key feature of cryptocurrencies. While you keep cryptocurrency in your wallet, there is no need to trust anything to a third party. As soon as you transfer cash to the wallet of the exchange, this exchange, in fact, becomes its owner; It is the exchange that also becomes responsible for its safety. The only thing you will have to do is trust the service.

Some good old CEX s

• Paxful: A leading NY, US peer-to-peer crypto-exchange as well as a wallet with different payment methods.
• Poloniex: is one of the oldest and most trusted crypto exchanges in the industry! Founded in 2014, security, new features, and user interface are some of our top priorities.
• Kucoin: A low fees platform, operating since 2017, to manage cryptocurrencies and Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
• Bitmex: A Hong Kong based peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange operating since 2014.
• Bittrex: Another amazing low fees and secure cryptocurrency exchange.
• Coinmama: A respectable company working since 2013 (over 1M users).
• Coinbase: Good but not available globally (if you’re from USA, UK, EU this maybe best choice).
• coinpayments: another popular exchange but with some restricted areas.
• Kraken: A low fees cryptocurrency exchange for experienced traders.
• Bitpanda: Operating since 2014 but some countries are not supported yet, it has a variety of payment methods (Skrill, SEPA, ..)
• Uphold: A good platform to buy precious metals and cryptocurrencies.

Some good new CEX s

• Blockfi: Join and get sign-up bonus. It’s a trusted platform with low fees and managing $10b in assets, borrowing money and offering rewards visa card.
• Binance: is the best place to buy, sell, trade. and hold BTC. It is secure & trusted by 28.6 million users (as of October 2021) and has the biggest liquidity ($7.7 trillion) across multiple crypto- pairs.
• Probit: Trusted exchange with trade fees as low as 0.03% onli!
• Pointpay: It’s a legit payment system (PCI compliant, and UK crypto laws regulated) with all crypto services in one place
• Waves: The easiest way to access DEFI.
• Bybit: A cryptocurrency spot and derivatives exchange offering many card payment options.
• MOBILE WALLETS:
  • atomicwallet: A secure crypto wallet for buying, stacking and exchanging.
  • trustwallet: The most trusted & secure crypto wallet joined by 25 million+ people.
  • safepal: A secure hardware wallet in addition of the mobile app.
  • wirexapp: An amazing multi-blockchain wallet for traditional and crypto currencies
  • bitcoin: Offer free wallet to download in your mobile trusted by over 22 million users.
  • abra: A simple and powerful full-service crypto platform. Trading, yield, borrowing, and funds 75+ cryptocurrencies.

Some other CEX s

• Localbitcoins: This is a person to person place to trade but only bitcoins (Look for good deals near you!)
• Spectrocoin: An all-in-one solution for cryptocurrencies. The headquarters is in Lithuania,
• Huobi: One of the most liquid crypto-exchanges in the world (to be vigilant with this one).
• Digex: A zero trading fee BTC-futures exchange (We are still testing it!).
• xcoins: Leading cryptocurrency exchange with many instant payment methods.
• coins: Good if you are dealing with Philippine!
• wasirx: Good if you are dealing with India!
• CEX: Another trusted and secure bitcoin and crypto exchange

Popular Decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges (DEX s)

Decentralized Crypto-exchanges is the best way to mitigate if not eliminate the risks due to the fact that they allow you to keep your funds in your wallet during the exchange transaction with no meddle man or third party to trust. The only thing you will have to do is to follow closely step by step the ongoing transaction.

• Uniswap (UNI): It’s first and one of the largest DEX build and work on Ethereum (ETH-ERC-20) network.
• PancakeSwap (CAKE): It’s a low fees with staking options and high liquidity DEX allowing BEP-20 token swaps on the BNB Chain. It employs an automated market maker (AMM) model, allowing users to trade against a liquidity pool.
• Quickswap (QUICK): It’s a Uniswap fork and Automated Match Maker (AMM) on the Polygon network. It takes full advantage of the high speeds and low fees that Polygon is offering to DEX.
• SushiSwap (SUSHI): Like Quickswap, Sushiswap is another fork of Uniswap. It ran on Ethereum (ETH-ERC-20) and Polygon networks and has its own governance token called SUSHI.
• Socialswap (SST): It’s a Low fees, safe and fast DEX ranning on tron block chain, No KYC needed for transactions.
• Snowfallprotocol (SNW): It is a cross-chain transfer ecosystem that enables users to swap assets easily across the most widely used to be followedup EVM and non-EVM compatible chains. It includes bridges for stable-coina and NFTs with stacking option (this is styl under radar!)

It is better to take a look, if not now later on, to below check list and from time to time apply it to the following list of cryptocurrencies exchanges:

Your Checklist before joining an exchange

All exchanges are slightly different, however, the best exchange for one person, might not be the best exchange for another. The good news is that by asking yourself some simple questions you can quickly narrow down your options.

We recommend the following checklist that takes a look at important factors for you to consider before making decision to select a crypto-exchange nevertheless it’s important to do a little homework, search through reviews, and ask questions on forums.

• Reputation? First of all make sure the Exchange has a continuous feedback channel. If the Exchange is anonymous, this is sure to be a red flag (in July 2017 the oldest Russian speaking Exchange BTC-E left the market, stripping its users of $95 mln. Three years ago, Mt.Gox was the major exchange. It lost $450 mln, went bankrupt and left the market.
• Security? It is reasonable to make sure the management is knowledgeable and responsible enough to protect your cash from hackers or technical bugs. Make sure the exchange has a so called cold storage that provides holding the main assets of the exchange offline. All major exchanges use cold storage with up to 80% assets there. Cold storage is essential for keeping most assets safely protected in case of an eventual malefactor attack.
• Make sure the exchange site have a secure HTTPS protocol. It must be also offer secure logins along with two-factor authentication (2FA) or Email encryption and verification?
• Where Located? It is very impotent to Know where the exchange is based and its surrounding regulations. Typically It is recommended to buy cryptocurrencies in your home country. The exchange may accept multiple currencies and some specific user functions, offered by this exchange, are only accessible from certain countries. Most of them will let you know during the signup process but make sure to check their terms of service for full access to all platform tools and functions in the country you currently live in.
• Payment Methods? You need to check what are available on the exchange as payment methods? Can you pay with wire transfer, cash, credit cards, PayPal, and so on. Use what works best for you at your convenience and make sure to consider your privacy levels. Remember Purchasing via credit card will always require identity verification and higher transaction and processing fees and Purchasing via wire transfer will take significantly longer as it takes time for banks to process.
• Exchange fees? Fees can change overtime and can vary from exchange to exchange. Some exchanges charge additional fees on top of transaction fees. So You need to understand deposit, transaction and withdrawal fees and check periodically fee-related information on their websites and make sure that fees aren’t exorbitant compared to rest of the market. Low transaction fees on relatively prevent your margins to be eaten away! , especially if you’re a constant trader. Usually we expect to encounter three types of fees:
  • Network / Miner Fees – 0.00001 BTC : Fees that ensure your transactions are quickly processed by miners.
  • Conversion Fees – 0.5% to 5% : Fees for exchanges to make money on your transaction (vary greatly depending on your method of payment).
  • Maker / Taker Fees – 0.1% to 0.5%: Another way that exchanges make a profit.
• Order book volume? An order book is simply a list of buy and sell orders on the exchange that are being offered. Most exchanges will publish their order book but some legit ones, might not have that function yet and/or has a smaller volume than other bigger exchanges. A higher volume order book is an indicator that people are using the exchange and the exchange has liquidity.
• Couple other things to think about!
  • To know How long before the currency will be sent to you after purchase.
  • To check if the exchange offers ‘locked in’ pricing; meaning that the price you buy at, is the price you will be charged for even if the bitcoins take a few days to arrive.
  • Exchanges rates. It’s not uncommon for rates to fluctuate up to 10% and even higher in some instances.
  • Exchanges that are fully transparent will publish cold storage addresses or audit information on how to verify their bitcoin reserves. Bitcoin audits are a good way for an exchange to prove to customers that they have liquidity and can cover all bitcoin exchange sales, and aren’t running a fractional exchange.
  • Custom Support Quality. Having a responsive customer support would save you lots of time. Issues on your verification process, deposit/withdrawals, funds reflection and trading orders should be solved quickly by the exchanges, or it could cost compromise you time, money and well-being.