Bitcoin Forum

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 selection
I 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area) 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.com
This 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.com
They 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.com
They 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.com
They were not accepting new registrations in the past (https://support.bittrex.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003463331-New-Account-Sign-Ups) 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.com
For 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.com
Another 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 details

Rank # |	Exchange |	Trading fees1 |	Deposit fees |	Withdrawal fees |	Security Rank2 |	# Trading Pairs |	FIAT trading |	Trading functions3
#1	Binance	M/T 0.1%	Free	Variable (https://support.binance.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000429332-Fee-Structure-on-Binance)	#1	380	No	M,L,SL
#2	Bitfinex	M 0.1/T 0.2%	Variable	Variable (https://www.bitfinex.com/fees)	#1	82	Yes	M,L,S,SL,TS
#3	HitBtc	M 0/T 0.1%	0.0006 BTC	Variable (https://support.hitbtc.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005148605-What-are-withdrawal-fees-)	#1	779	No	M,L,SC
#4	Bittrex	M/T 0.25%	Free	Variable (https://support.bittrex.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000199651-What-fees-does-Bittrex-charge-)	#2	294	Yes	M,L,SC
#5	Kraken	M 0.16%/T 0.26%	FIAT (https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000279946-Fiat-currency-deposit-fees)/Crypto (https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000292886-Digital-assets-cryptocurrency-deposit-fees)	FIAT (https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000423043-Fiat-currency-withdrawal-fees)/Crypto (https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/201893608-Digital-assets-cryptocurrency-withdrawal-fees)	#1	56	Yes & SEPA	M,L,S
#6	Bitstamp	M/T 0.25%	Variable (https://www.bitstamp.net/fee_schedule/)	Variable (https://www.bitstamp.net/fee_schedule/)	#2	14	Yes & SEPA	M,L,S

Notes
¹ 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).

Disclaimer
1. 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.

Very nice guide. Good to have them all at one place.
 

What's the situation with Binance presently? They are moving their HQ to EU (Malta), if they haven't already done so. Does that make them an EU exchange?

Thanks! I hope this will help others too. I didn't find something like this on BCT, it would have been useful for me too.

Going back to your question, I don't think it will. According to wikipedia, Kraken is a US based exchange (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken_(bitcoin_exchange)) operating in multiple regions of the world.

Since Binance is not accepting FIAT right now, it won't really matter. If they do start accepting FIAT (euros) then they will probably accept SEPA transfers too and it will be good news - more people will be able to use FIAT to purchase crypto.

I was expecting more interest in this thread to be honest.  :(

What exchanges are you guys using and what was your criteria when selecting them?

I still think this could be useful to a lot of people but this seems to get buried extremely fast by spam.

Since we're on the Trading forum, I'm expecting a lot of you guys to use exchanges to trade crypto currency.

Which exchanges are you using?

I personally like Liquid. I have been trading there for a long time, even before re-branding. There is a margin trade up to x25. One major pair is allowed to trade without commissions, both spot and margin. All assets on cold storage, withdrawal only through the permission of several instances. State license of Japan. Very good and customizable interface, fantastic app.Works only with fiat. Withdrawal to your bank account.

the most puzzling thing for me up to now is HitTC, with all the little activities, deposits, trades, withdrawals, all these things with fees above the average market, but HitBTC still has high popularity, even though there is still a better market than that, some my colleagues also have problems when trading on hitbtc, their fees are really fierce

It nice you found one that works for you. I need to take a closer look at it too.

Yes, that's correct, their fees are above the market prices but I guess a lot of people prefer to use it since they have a huge number of trading pairs.

Bitfinex is actually a big no for me, like was before I created an account there but to my astonish I can't make any deposit since I need to have at least a $10k balance, though it's accumulated it's impossible for me to have that. So I ended up not using it even I really need it.

Wow I just know that, 779 pairs. Considering many hated hitbtc plus the fees that literally robbing us but if the liquidity is concern then fees shouldn't be weigh.

Good list, thanks for sharing.  I would like to add the following:

 - you have forgotten the most important criterion in choosing the platform is the support team: they have your private key, so the faster response is better.

 - Regulations: Many platforms are known to lock accounts without notice and then amend their rules after filing and so on.

Also, adding ways to protect your account "which platform accept 2FA, the second password, KYCm,..etc. " will be good.

I'm glad to see this question :) By the way, your guide is great. Really useful, not only for newbies.
Answering your question. I'm using CEX (https://cex.io/), their security measures and an easy-going interface played a decisive role for making a choice. Though the verification procedure looks like it's gonna eat you alive but this also makes you feel safe and confident.

Yeah i too had been using cex.io for some years and it is also a good site.
Earlier it took a long time for verification but i guess things have changed now.
only 1 problem I faced when I wanted to update my details there,it really pissed me off.
can anyone tell me what is the present scenario in bitbuy.ca and shapeshift, I had been thinking to use some other exchanges for some different reasons.

That is very informative post and it can be really helpful for the people who looks to start trading and which exchange to pick up and as you said the Binance is still best of all because of its high trading volume first of all and the no deposit fee and also less trading fee when compared to other top exchanges but as I am not a regular trader I will look for the exchange which offers the highest price for my coin because I am going to do this one time trading and then withdraw all my funds from there and later will invest on some other coins.

Great content, would give merit if I have one.
I agree with this list, I am using Binance Exchange Platform for quite some time now, and
so far so good.

I think it should be noted that most of the large crypto exchanges have already emitted their own ERC20-tokens (for example, BNB, HT, etc). These tokens can be bought for getting bonuses and discounts. As I can see, not all the exchanges support the "trailing stop (TS)" function. Nice guide, good work.

Hmm... Interesting, I wasn't required to deposit $10k. Could this be a new policy change? Or maybe something dependent on geographic location?

I guess they are charging higher fees because they also need more personnel to maintain all those trading pairs and issues associated with them.

Looks like I need to check out CEX.IO :) Will review it and add it here later on. Thanks for the suggestions!

Yes, good point. Some of them offer big discounts on fees, like Binance with the 50% off on fees if you're using their token to pay for them.

As much as HitBTC do have an insane amount of trading pairs, I personally do not expect it to even be on the list. For some reasons, a lot of people have complained about the exchange with very low or no level of support and I believe for an exchange, that should always be one of the major criteria to look at when choosing one.

However, you sure have a very great list there for the rest of the exchanges and most especially with binance coming first which probably have all the features mentioned. It is not about having insane number of pairs, it is about not listing too many shit coins which is one thing HitBTC is good for.

Binnace is a great exchange, the volume of trade are the best and you usually have small spread which is a good thing if you intend sell your tokens on time. Hibtc is good also but it seem to be receiving a lot of hits from John McCafe. I have not had any issues with them though

I'm trading on bitfinex, so I can call myself an expert  :)

I try to register on binance and i check that everybody can cash out 2btc with or without id verification some sort of kyc? Is it true?  I am using app an app of binance, can i trade smoothly using binance app?  However,  thank you for the additional information tho. 

After all that I've read about HitBTC, it's not on my list of trusted exchanges. I've used it, it worked fine, but I don't trust them with deposits.

There's a small one that I really like:

BL3P (https://bl3p.eu/). It's only used for EUR-BTC trading, aiming at EU-users, and is currently invite only. They responded very fast when I contacted support, and that's the reason they don't want to grow faster than they can handle.
I switched to this one instead of Kraken because of Kraken's terrible performance (whenever there was action on the market, Kraken went down), and it has much higher withdrawal limits.

Where's Poloniex in your list? I've recently opened an account for my altcoin experiment (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4597341.0), they've had their problems in the past, but as far as I know they have quite a lot of users.

Are there even exchanges that ask for less than 0.5 mBTC nowadays? That's about 100 times more than needed, and at least 10 times more than needed to have a fast transaction most of the time.

Personally for me, I am using Binance, Bittrex and Kucoin at the moment. Certainly my first criterion is good security, they all have that, and most of the time, and the security of your account is usually dependent on you as an individual. Secondly, the trading volume and fees is one thing I really do not joke with and that has made binance and Kucoin my main exchanges that I used.

For some reasons, I guess the only reason I still do some trade on bittrex is the loyalty, but the fee after the feel of binance and Kucoin, can be pretty frustrating for 0.25% and I really wish that can be changed but all the same, it is also a very good and reliable exchange.

Any chance I could get an invite to that? I'm also trading with EUROs.

Yeah, would need to look into that as well. I think I have an account there but haven't really used it to be able to include it here.

As far as I know, all the serious exchanges charge that or more.

I see a lot of people also use Kucoin, I think I need to look into it too.

Very interesting list and help full with basic information, everything that is needed for the picking the right exchange. One thing, from my personal experience, cuz I use cex and they have all this as well. Everything is good with them with good support and good response time. Also have good security which is constantly updated. Maybe if you consider this as option we can suggest some other exchange for this list on global level or just EU based exchange, cuz they are stationed in London. This is just suggestion off course.

The important thing about exchanges in bitcoin is the trust they make as well, just the fee is not enough. Binance has been a great website for us because it has low fee's , it creates its own token for lower fee as well, they have been providing more and more coins as well and just listen to their users for which coins to add next and they also have been getting attacked by everyone and yet they have not crumbled so far which means they are trustworthy. There were many times where binance was attacked and they have done amazing defensive precautions to keep their customers safe and sound. I love binance so much.

I like your post, even I'm not expert in trading/ investment, your information very helpful. To exchange my asset into currency I need exchange services but sometimes I get confuse which one I should take? Now I don't need to afraid exchange my asset because your information. Thank you so much.

Glad to see people are still finding it useful :) I will update this soon with more exchanges but for the time being, this guide should be sufficient for anyone who is looking to trade crypto currency.

Which exchanges have you decided to use?

P.S. There's no need to quote the whole OP, you can trim it to what you want to discuss from it.

Don't use Bitstamp.  They are currently not performing USD fiat withdrawals. My guess is some kind of money crunch or theft that they refuse to publicize. There are people that have been waiting over 2 months for their funds to be moved out of Bitstamp. There are people looking to spearhead a class action lawsuit against them.

I used Bittrex and HitBTC since 2015 and both exchange is very good exchange, both exchange never get any issue of hack and has good reputation. And for now i used Binance as well because alot of good altcoin tradeable there. All these exchange also provide feature of stop limit that i need it for stop loss that important to use and apart of risk management.

USD withdrawal is problem on all exchanges but not that serious, some manage to clear this problem. Me personally go for euro cuz im from Europe and its instant payment to my card.