Bitcoin Forum

isnt it risky to remit so many funds to a company (for example coinbase or etoro etc)
which you have never seen? or does not even have a telephone number/registration number etc?

how can you be sure that this exchange website is trustable or not

what if they say we refunded your funds, but in fact they did not?

what are the criterias we shall consider?

thank you!

This is a common problem that exisits in a area that is pretty unregulated. Which is why I try and only use US exchanges. That way I know the laws and regulations that they are going through, and plus they list a address. So if they ever did something, I could simply go to there HQ and get it straighten out. Plus it will allow me to sue them easier if I had to, rather than a foreign company. I have learned my lesson many times.

I think this common problem dont have the solution so far because the exchange is unregulated.
Choose famous exchange can reduce the risk but not zero risk and put only the amount that you use for trading only and dont put all of the moneynin exchange.

There is not really an accurate measurement to tell whether an exchange is legit or not, there have been a lot of exchanges that were trusted by the community but later turned out to be scams. Make sure to store your coins in a paper- or desktop wallets after you did the trade, in most exchanges this process is called withdrawing.

If you live in the US, your fiat balance in Coinbase is covered by FDIC insurance up to $250,000.  You can read more about that here (https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1662379-how-is-coinbase-insured-).  There are a couple of other exchanges that have similar systems.

In most exchanges though, and in the case of Bitcoin balances, it's a lot harder to say.  In general, you should only keep your coins on exchanges for as long as you need to - one of Bitcoin's most important principles is trustlessness, and the best way to achieve that is by running your own wallet (ideally a full node).

Some exchanges have a dodgy past or present and you should steer clear of them (Bitfinex for example).

I think base on my experienced on trading i feel or trust the exchange of its a trustable one is  some similarities of that exchange are on that site , because almost of my exchange also has a high fee on withdraw ( thats one i think because its for maintenance also of the exchange site ) the popularity is good and no negative feed back also , its my own opinion :)

You should check out the general indicators, of course: Number of users, total market value etc. But as usual, the most important piece of advice is to please never keep your money in exchanges. If your coins are in your exchange wallet, they are not actually your coins until you store them in an offline wallet.

I picked Coinbase which are happy to take your money without much trouble on buying after charging you 3.99% and I clicked a link from Google that offered me
$10 worth of free BTC if i spent over $100 after signing up but i did not get these free coins and Coinbase does not answer emails.

Gets much worse because i should have some bit-gold since i purchased the coins before the fork and they won't give me access to them by putting them in my
account and I suspect they are printing there own BTC because when i checked using the public BTC address that they gave me I was surprised to find no transactions
on the account in the official block-chain.

I did a test using Coinbase to sell coins and get some money back into my bank account and you have to set up a SEPA transaction and send them a euro
before they can send money back to the bank account used to buy the coins in the first place and then when they send the money via SEPA to your bank it
needs converting to euro's and then your bank has to covert them back again and this all costs money.

In short you need to sell $120 of BTC to get just $90 back into the bank so I am far from impressed with the service and they have not even given
me a public address to use on my ETH account so I suspect they printed these themselves and they hold fakes on the internal database that credit
on-line accounts.

i am located in uk and using one famous exchange platform. but after i was reading some reviews, i simply paniced and withdraw my funds (sofar funds not
received yet  :'( )

then i decided to go for an alternative platform, but all reviews are so bad, i simply can not understand how users do trust and sent their money to companies
which may stop existing the next day.

anyway, does anyone know a reputable exchange platform located in uk (with real office and real address etc)?

Coinbase has an insurance policy with Lloyds of London for their hot wallets.

New York state has the Bitlicence, where they regulate exchanges. According to the following article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitLicense

only Circle, Ripple and Coinbase have the Bitlicence.

You are mistaken.

Coinbase has a telephone number.
Coinbase has a registration number.
Coinbase has an insurance policy.
Coinbase has a bank account.

I haven’t bought yet and the one thing that’s putting me off is how awful all the exchanges seem. Getting your money out seems a right struggle.

I try and stay in US exchanges. I only keep a portion of my bitcoin on the exchange for trading the majority of it is in my hardware wallet where I know it is safe. That and i am in Bitcoin for the long haul I don't day trade bitcoin so I have no reason to keep it on the exchange, I keep a small portion on the exchange to be able to buy Altcoins when I want to. But for the most part my funds stay in my hardware wallet that way I will only have t pay the Long Term capital gains tax not a short term.

I was just researching Binance so i can buy Iota, but found they're in China, so really no recourse if they just take my money, i'm not flying to China to chase them down, too bad CB doesn't sell Iota, but maybe that's a good thing.

I think the trustable thing is just a gamble at this point, but then again, you can say that about anything, there's always some risk when doing business with anyone.

what gives me confidence in the idea of trusting trading platforms is that it earns a lot of money, why would it scam a few customers?

Hard to say, even if trust is 100% in specific exchange or whatever site, you should always act as its a 100% scam. That way you are always 100% aware of your security exposure and what steps need to be done to protect yourself. But this can lead to paranoia, which i am sure 100% isnt good for you.

It's nothing about trust in connection with the exchanges. No one really trust the exchanges, but everybody have to use them if there's a need to exchange cryptos to fiat or cryptos to cryptos. The real question is how to minimize the risk for the period of time when the funds/coins are on the exchanges. This is where you can search for well-known and widely used exchanges. Those exchanges will have the less possibility to scam you which has some regulation already in their country.
There's another kind of exchange where you can minimize the risk, those are the decentralized exchanges (like etherdelta) where you can directly exhange cryptos without any need to trust anybody/anything. Unfortunately this only works for ethereum tokens yet, and in my opinion this is hardly possible to implement in connection with fiat.

First of all - do your research.

Second of all - exchanges are private companies so treat them like ones. What would you do before entrusting any other company with a lot of your money (or other assets) and which company would you choose?

Obviously banks and other financial institutions are regulated but that also doesn't mean you have access to your money always and always will have. Bigger financial crisis (like in Greece) and cash withdrawals can be stopped or limited etc.

There are lots of ways to find out.
the easiest way is the social media you cannot close your eyes in the jungle and expect the tiger not eat you.
Open your eyes use social media and google.

The exchange must be regulated and has a publicly known team.  But this is not enough. Even most secure ones can get hacked and you may lose your coins.

there's no an exchanger that really trustful even if they had a big company they can even turned into a scam site if they are keep lossing money from the website and will pending some withdraw too. so if you want to trade your cryptocurrency just choose an exchanger that popular like Bittrex, binance and the other.

There is actually no way to verify if an exchange is safe most exchanges are not regulated directly if it's bittrex or even binance they can run away with your funds. Obviously it won't happen but what you can do is use exchanges like shapeshift or changelly they don't have many coins available but there is no other way.

Second option is you can deposit funds on big exchanges like bittrex or binance buy the coin and withdraw the coins instantly.

You can´t be 100% sure so never let your funds on exchange wallets. But to be fair it is very unlikely that exchanges like bittrex or binance getting hacked.

With 100% certainty I can say you can't be sure in any platform. But there are many markets and exchange places which have been in authority for a long time. Those are the ones I use.

Etoro is not a fake company, they have a few offices on Panama and the Bahamas if i am not wrong. Coinbase is the worst thing that has ever existed, they are heavily manipulating the price.

They do not deserve to be one of the main exchanges / wallets, because they are the cancer of bitcoin.

Check the website security. Find contact email and in the web chat. Read reputable online reviews, just be careful some of them are paid to review, look for office address or main office, use brave browser if possible.