Topic: What do you guys use for trading cryptos? Exchanges vs Shape-shifting wallets? (Read 575 times)

I'm looking into directly exchanging ETH to LTC.

I was looking at Changelly and my Exodus wallet for exchanging ETH to LTC.  I don't have a Changelly account and I've read some horror stories out there, but any ways, Changelly seems to have better rates than Exodus, says I'll get more LTC from 1 ETH... now the question is.. how fast are the transactions? 

I see people mentioning bittrex.com and bitfinex.com, I should go and look into them more.

I have a Kraken and a Poloniex account, and from what I understand... I cannot do a direct ETH to LTC exchange on either one... seems like BTC is always the base standard to transform into anything.  Is this a correct assumption? 

Hi thanks for the response.  But on coinbase, dont they just buy the coins from you automatically?  Last time i sold very small btc on circle when they allowed selling bitcoin and they automatically converted my small btc to cash to a bank transfer that i later received.


Okay about your 1 btc example.  So if you put 2849 per btc when price is 2850, ppl will buy it quickly. So when this happens, does the money automatically get posted to your bittrex account in usd?  How does that work?  Also do most ppl do this while on the computer or do they just do something that i heard like a limit order?  Like you set price at 2849 for 1 btc to sell?  Or do ppl just stay on computer and track price while having this pending etc?  Because if you put it at 2849... then btc goes up to 2875... then wouldnt that get gobbled up very quickly and you got screwed? 


Okay what about the example if you have altcoins like litecoin or waves etc.  You would put you want to sell 10 waves for example to make it simple.  You cannot do this into usd right?  Thus you can only sell waves for bitcoin?  Then if you want cash, you sell bitcoin?  Thus its 2 steps since you cannot go from an altcoin like waves to cash?  What is confusing is this.  Its easy to say 1 btc is 600 waves.  However, what price are you suppose to list you want to sell waves at?  If its 3.50 at the moment and you want to sell it at 3.49... are you suppose to put the 3.49 usd price?  Or it has to be the waves to btc price... which would be like 0.00645121 btc etc.  Because if its the decimal way, well wouldnt you need to do this everytime going from altcoin to bitcoin?  What is confusing is since bitcoin fluctuates, what happens there there?  Wouldnt that 1 wave is 0.00645121 btc need to get adjusted etc?  I assume of course not but this is confusing with altcoins.

It works like any other exchange, where you can exchange btc or ltc for any other currency, including usd. You don't post any requests, you put a trade into the order book, and it gets filled or not depending on how much you requested. For example, if you are trying to sell 1 BTC and the current USD price is $2850, you could put $2849 and someone is going to buy that 1 BTC very quickly. But if you put $2855, it may take a few minutes, or not get executed at all if the price falls.

I used shapeshift with converting btc to litecoin and also waves.  Can someone explain to me how high are the fees?  Because when i did the tranactions, it gave me 2 options... quick or precise.  At first i thought precise would mean the fees would be cheaper than quick.  However i did quick and it seemed like it offered me more litecoin and waves for my btc.  Does anyone notice this?


Also the fees didn't seem really that bad when i compared it to the btc to usd.  The current btc price and other altcoin prices seem to be pretty close to the prices on coinmarketcap.  Does anyone else agree?


To those who use bittrex, i never used it.  But could you trade btc for litecoin, waves and other altcoins pretty easily?  Im talking about using btc to trade for altcoins.   Im also not familar with trading but say you want to trade 1 btc for litecoin.  When you do this, how do you do it?  I assume you are trading with another trader who is offering litecoin at a certain price that he wants right?  Then there would be lot of other traders who offer litecoin but give a bit higher price?  This is what also confuses me.  When you trade btc for altcoins on bittrex, so you would post you have 1 btc looking for litecoin?  Or would it be 1 btc and looking for litecoin at a certain price?  The thing that confuses me more is would you be putting the litecoin price you want in terms of dollars or like 0.03901 etc?  Because wouldnt that be very confusing to do since well you are looking at the litecoin price in terms of dollars?

I use bitfinex and bittrex. Not only does it have a total lower cost than shapeshifting wallets, you can see an order book, set limits, etc. I also find shapeshifting to not be transparent at all.

I never use shape shifts due to their high fees. There are good exchanges available and bittrex is my best place to trade crypto coins. Its very user friendly with good support team.

I would also like to add that ShapeShift fees are very high and so I will recommend you to use small amounts with ShapeShift whereas big amounts should be dealt by the exchanges.

These wallets are just integrated with shapeshift.io.  When you're exchanging between coins in your Exodus or Jaxx wallet, you're using shapeshift.io.

Shapeshift are not very transparent with their fees - they claim to have none, but the exchange rate varies.  I just compared the Ether-Bitcoin exchange rate from Shapeshift (on quick setting) and Coinmarketcap, and I found that the Shapeshift rate was about 0.4% higher.  By comparison, Bittrex rates are 0.2%.

Personally, I'm happy using Shapeshift for small amounts, but I would prefer to use an exchange for larger amounts because of the liquidity and, arguably, lower fees when doing it in bulk.

Thanks for sharing and giving input.

I never did the math, but I was under the impression that an exchange would cost more due to fee to transfer, fee to exchange, and fee to exchange back to wallet.  However, in light of things it's probably going to cost a bit either way.  Nice to know that it's quite fast with shapeshift wallets. 

I personally use bittrex.com and bitfinex.com to exchange my crypto, because personally, I want the option to set my own prices. shapeshift.io is also good if you're quite in a rush. but the fees are higher obviously, since its an instant exchange, so you're paying for the  sort of quickness of it. All comes down to personal preference.

If you want a quick trade that is anonymous with the hassle to move your coins to the exchange and sending them back again to your wallet then use Shapeshift enabled wallets.

If you are an active day trader then of course, an exchange is what you really need.

I was just curious to know about other's experience.  On one hand you have the major exchanges Poloniex, Kraken, Coinbase, etc.  Then on the other side you have shape shifting wallets, Exodus, Jaxx, keep key, and shapeshift.io 


I have heard horror stories on both sides, but was wondering what you guys use to exchange various cryptocurrencies to and from??