Topic: Don't you think the percentage fee thing is way way too much ? (Read 1010 times)

Oh, nice! BTC-e was the exchange I was thinking of using but I had misread it as 2% rather than 0.2%. Big difference! Also BTC-e allows you to trade LTC, which I might be interested in. Got 1 LTC just for fun.

I never saw Bitcoin-24 before but am checking it out now. You're right about the volume. USD looks quiet but EUR has some decent movement. Definitely worth trying out for the zero transaction fees!

btc-e does 0.2%.

Looks like bitcoin-24 is the only place where min-trading is doable. EUR volume is usable. Transfer btc in, trade the shit out of it, transfer btc out, no need to deposit/withdraw fiat, completely free, sounds good in theory.

VertEx charges a full 3% on every trade in either direction. Where are you getting the 0.2% rate? Is that what mtgox charges? That's less than 10% of the rate I'm paying at VertEx!

I agree that it may be an attempt to reduce volume due to capacity limits on the servers, etc...   However, VertEx just did a big upgrade on their servers less than a week ago.

I guess crypto currency/assets exchanges just followed Gox model since nobody complains. 0.2% sounds cheap but actually is pretty expensive for the current price and volatility of btc.

or maybe they are not confident to handle volume so opt to take big fee.

I agree. It makes day-trading a lot more risky. The more people day trading, the more fees can be collected by the exchange and they can make up the difference in volume. As mentioned by honeybadger, CaVertEx charges 3% on every trade (it reduces to 2.5% if you move 100 BTC within 120 days.) In this case, if I sell 1 BTC at $100 CAD, it becomes $97 CAD. If I wanted to buy back at a profit, I would have to wait for the price to drop back down to below $94. Sometimes it happens kinda fast but mostly it can take days or never at all. Is it worth the risk for the tiny increase in Bitcoin you'd get?

I've actually decided to discontinue my use of CaVertEx altogether because of the high fees. It's a simple matter for a Canadian to open a true US Bank account based in Florida. You can do this at any RBC branch. The flat fee to wire transfer money to the USA from Canada is usually around $55 but with an RBC USA account there is no fee at all. This opens up the door to getting money into and out of the system using other, less expensive ways. I am also going to move the BTC balance I have in my CaVertEx account into another exchange that has lower trading fees. It really doesn't matter so much if I am trading against the Canadian dollar or the American dollar or any other currency for that matter.

Canadians do have a choice and if the fees continue to be higher than other exchanges around the world CaVertEx will likely see more people like me deciding to take advantage of their other options.

If your not willing to pay anyone well for there services there will be no intensive for people to create a service and have people complain that your not doing a good enough job. The more you trade the cheaper the trading fees get. I think when bitcoin has been adopted by millions of people and they can make good money off smaller percentages it would be fair to lower the price.
   

It is high compared to traditional brokers but I believe the fee is a fair compensation to the developers of the exchanges. (for now)

I think of the fee as a donation to help them build their business. 

I'm in Canada and I can only dream of a 0.55% fee.
Cavirtex charges 3% both ways.

I'm talking in the bot trading point of view, since these exchange provide way to automate it, they would want customer to trade frequent, but the fee kills it, especially in % term. For example, 5 minutes timeframe might be enough when it's between 10-20, for 90, it could requires 30 mins for the price to move in a profitable range, this increases risk.

% fees are fine.
But i could agree that the %'s are too high.
Then again, I could disagree and tell you "where else are you gonna arbitrage coins for lower"

Have you seen the way the market moves, people sell at $90, and buy back at $50 the same day.
I'm not sure they're caring about the minimal fees to be honest.

on these crypto exchanges.

In order to break even,

(sellPrice - buyPrice) / (sellPrice + buyPrice) must > %fee

for 0.55% fee, when btc is at 30, 0.332 move is enough to profit,
but when it's at 70, 0.775 is required
at 100, 1 point move is not enough.

This is fine for buy and hold approach, but since most provide some sorts of api for trading, it does not persuade user to trade in small time frame because of the %fee, and the timeframe have to be widen when the price become higher, although you may argue that volatility also increases along with price.

As far as I heard only bitcoin-24 comes with no trading fee. It would hold more sense for the future btc exchanges to offer fixed price, like $2 for round trips, or some sorts of leverage at fixed cost, since btc is skyrocketing.