Bitcoin Forum

So im doing a research on bitcoin exchanges, and thought you guys could help me. What are the minuses on bitcoin exchanges? Dont leave anything out for that matter on any exchange

Thank you  alot!

I have tried quite a few exchanges it really depends on many things and among them just your personal preferences. I personally use Kraken most of the time. Why? It's the highest volume EUR exchange and works well with my bank (same-day deposits and withdrawals). I am pleased with their support and even their fees. If anything I wouldn't mind seeing one or two more altcoins listed on Kraken - but that's not a big deal. The user experience (for me) was not so good on either btc-e or BitStamp. Bitfinex seems to be where the serious traders go though.

The exchanges I most of the time use are Bitstamp and BTC-E which are working fine if you are trading, but there are some annoying things.

BTC-E annoyances for me :
- Support is very slow most of the time.
- Support is lacking English staff members.

Bitstamp annoyances for me :
-Bistamp is very focused on your personal details, and will force you to send ultra high res pics of your documents. Not a problem when you sign up as new member, but very annoying if you already have gone through this time consuming hassle.
-Fee is 0.25% if your trade volume is below $20,000 which is a bit on the high side.

I would love to see these exchange adopt the same fee structure as Bitfinex where "makers" pay a start fee of 0.10% and "takers" 0.20%.

Some of the time it's just personal preference. I recently wrote a checklist (http://bitcoinx.io/how-to-choose-the-right-bitcoin-exchange/) for some things users should think about before choosing an exchange, just to give out some tips to help people.

But some basic things that exchanges should do that most don't are public audits. There have been debates on how to do this, but nobody seems to be doing it at all. Also all exchanges should have a public order book. Most don't because they are small volume and don't want to concern potential users by not having any volume. Security should be top priority in this space, so publishing all security techniques (on a high level without giving too much away of course). Sometimes fees are complicated, and it shouldn't be. Fees should be simple and flat.

The most frustrating thing is when you want to log in and you can't because... they've been hacked, robbed, decided to run with your money or are under a DDoS :D
Normally the most annoying thing is when they can't handle the load and become laggy and it's hard to place your order or withdraw it right away.

Definitely one of the biggest minuses. They may at any time in-effect take all your money via a shut down, disappearing act, legal troubles, whatever, and more than 90% of the time the only recourse you'll have is to complain about it on these forums.

Secure your coins in your local wallet.

After using many bitcoin exchanges I have to say that the most frustrating thing about them is their design. Their UI/UX is really behind compared to other web services where the focus is mainly put on the UX and UI of the Platform. Also many exchange just aren't responsive and fast as they should be. I would use angular.js and bootstrap to make the exchanges faster and the responsive. So dear exchange owners invest as much funds designers as you invest in developers because design is really important for a better user experience. 

 I have encountered the frustrating things on bitcoin exchanges:
   1. when I deposit my fund there, I have to wait 1, 2, 3... confirmation before being able to trade.
   2. The deposit address is fixed for the specific altcoin. The public will easily track the flow of my money.
   3. I normally carry my iPhone to go out to do business. It takes ages to load up the exchange website fully. And they are very slow to respond to the placing order by me. 

The only thing that really frustrates me is that sometimes the deposits don't show up and withdrawals don't appear in my wallet. And it just freaks me out. The site says they require this many confirmations for the deposits to show up but it happens sometimes that even after many confirmations over the minimum requirement, the deposits don't show up.

And then I have to write a message to the support and prove the ownership of the address from which the coins were sent etc etc. until it gets resolved.

Same thing with withdrawals, sometimes a withdrawal is shown as processed but it doesn't shows up in the wallet and it creates a panic and then again you have to report it to the support until it shows up.

I have had cpl of similar experiences described above with Bittrex. But thankfully they were resolved and I didn't lose any of my coins.

i don't have any real frustration, because kraken is very very good, everything work smooth and flawless, perhaps one thing could be the requirement of id for higher amount and maybe the fact that they require 6 confirmation, to add your deposit..a bit too much

On the same boat here... Highly recommend Kraken if you're in the euro-zone in a country using SEPA. Fast bank transfers ftw!

Bitstamp - all right. but withdraw fiat speed is quite slow!

LakeBTC - quite right. but sometimes the site slow due to it can't assume so much ddos attack.

BTC-e - right. just we can't find them and can't see they true colors, and the fiat fee is horrible (not sure whether had it changed now).

I bought my first bit of Bitcoin on Coinbase just recently. My overall experience was positive. It took a few days for the coin to appear in my wallet but that's for security purposes and I understand that. The selling part of it was more positive, the funds were deposited back in my bank account within a couple of days. So overall not bad. Still getting the hang of bitcoin dynamics.

used to be worried about their cost is too high
but now it's not satisfied with the secure and service, such as ddos, withdrawal speed.