I did some research on the best/top exchanges I can use for crypto currency trading and decided to do a post about it. In the hopes others will benefit from my research and will make choosing the right exchange for you more easily. I will update the list with more exchanges later on.
I hope that this will become a good guide/resource for people to use and will not be buried by spam.
Criteria for selectionI have been following some criteria in my selection process like:
- large volumes traded everyday
- low fees for trading/depositing/withdrawing
- enhanced security
- large variety of coins traded
- FIAT trading & SEPA transfers enabled
- easy registration process
- straight forward trading - easy to use
- option to trade with FIAT
- multiple trading functions
It may not be enough to use a single exchange for you, you may end up using multiple exchanges in order get your funds from FIAT to crypto and back to your bank account. I am currently using Binance for trading and Bitstamp for getting money in/out to FIAT and avoiding a bank blocade.
Based on these factors, I have come up with my own top of exchanges. Check them out:
1. Binance.comThis is the all time winner when it comes to trading volumes. It has more than $1 billion worth of coins traded everyday.
It has an easy enough sign-up process, you can increase your account limits by providing the details needed and the staff is prompt.
2. Bitfinex.comThey are close behind Binance, with a trading volume of $0.5 billion worth of coins traded everyday. Similar process of account limit lifting as Binance but it can take up to 8 weeks to get fully authorised by the staff. They have the most complex trading platform in this top, ideal for expert traders.
3. HitBtc.comThey have an insane amount of trading pairs. I don't know of any other exchange to offer as many trading pairs as HitBtc. They also have decent volumes too.
4. Bittrex.comThey were
not accepting new registrations in the past but recently they opened up the registration process again. Volumes are not as high as the previous exchanges in this top but they still are decent.
5. Kraken.comFor a long time this was considered to be the best exchange for the EU zone, supporting fast & extremely low fees SEPA transfers.
Their trade volumes look decent too.
6. Bitstamp.comAnother EU based exchange, higher fees but their service is decent and fit for casual traders.
They also work with a lot of banks and "beyond banking" providers with no restrictions, as opposed to Kraken which has started to refuse some.
Exchange detailsRank # | | Exchange | | Trading fees1 | | Deposit fees | | Withdrawal fees | | Security Rank2 | | # Trading Pairs | | FIAT trading | | Trading functions3 |
#1 | Binance | M/T 0.1% | Free | Variable | #1 | 380 | No | M,L,SL |
#2 | Bitfinex | M 0.1/T 0.2% | Variable | Variable | #1 | 82 | Yes | M,L,S,SL,TS |
#3 | HitBtc | M 0/T 0.1% | 0.0006 BTC | Variable | #1 | 779 | No | M,L,SC | |
#4 | Bittrex | M/T 0.25% | Free | Variable | #2 | 294 | Yes | M,L,SC |
#5 | Kraken | M 0.16%/T 0.26% | FIAT/Crypto | FIAT/Crypto | #1 | 56 | Yes & SEPA | M,L,S |
#6 | Bitstamp | M/T 0.25% | Variable | Variable | #2 | 14 | Yes & SEPA | M,L,S |
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Notes1 Trading fees: Usually every exchange charges a percentage to the
maker (user who submits a trade) and a percentage to the
taker (user who accepts a trade made by the maker). Some exchanges charge a fee for deposits but the majority are free, majority of exchanges charge withdrawal fees.
2 Security Rank: Exchanges use a variety of ways to make sure the user's account is harder to hack. This includes e-mail, phone, 2FA, IP address & user agent verifications, ID verifications (for lifting limits).
3 Trading functions: Exchanges support various forms of trading functions like:
market (M), limit (L), stop (S), stop limit (SL), trailing stop (TS), scaled (SC).
Disclaimer1. Since some criteria are more important for some people and some are not, this top may not suit everyone. Please take this into consideration.2. Feel free to suggest other exchanges that you're using and may be equivalent to these or even better.3. Listed fees are the most expensive ones for the lowest trading amounts, up to 1 BTC, for larger values there may be discounts in place.