Bitcoin Forum

Where would you guys recommend buying cryptocurrency for the lowest transaction fees? I've been researching but there's so many sites and a lot of them keep changing their fee structure. It's pretty confusing.

Coinbase seems to be the most popular but their 1.5% transaction fee seems pretty high.

I heard Gemini is good but it seems they recently raised their fees? Any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks!

Have you taken a look at Coinbase Pro?

https://pro.coinbase.com/fees

I don't use it personally, but I often see it being brought up on discussions like these.

Edit: Kraken is cheaper, apparently -- https://www.kraken.com/features/fee-schedule

You will not find cheap fee when you are looking to do transaction in and out of exchanges like coinbase or any other site where you want to buy bitcoins. Rather than looking for a low fee tx site, try to buy bitcoin from a reputed site so you are not scammed in the whole process. The tx fee is minimal as compare to your investments in bitcoins.

If Binance is available in your location you can easily buy crypto using your bank account or any available payment options with cheap fees using the P2P trading (https://c2c.binance.com/en/trade/buy/USDT) and rate usually depends on the person offering the the service just follow the link above if you want to try thats the easiest way I think you can buy crypto with minimal fees. 

There is a good list of exchanges, but I see it was not maintained for a bit long time: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3140406
However, I am not sure which fee you are talking about (I don't use Coinbase). The usual fee is around 0.15-0.25% for a trade, but then there are the possible deposit and withdrawal fees too, so I guess that you have to do some more research.

Binance fees are imho reasonable, but it depends on how you buy (credit cards have extra fees afaik) and what you withdraw (certain altcoins are super cheap to withdraw).

You can choose after filtering on https://www.cryptowisser.com/exchanges/

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People are finding exchanges with low fee, as low as possible but they should pay their attention on security, reputation of potential exchanges they want to use. I meant that after you filter and get a list of few exchanges left, you need to research their history on security, reputation, hacks, scam. If you forget it, you can lose your capital. Save a little fee and lose capital, it is bad.

Coinbase has comparatively higher fees because of their popularity, but also because the process is simple.  The main competitors usually under cut them slightly, but its not by a great deal. Of course, if you absolutely want lower fees, then P2P is probably the better choice. You will find people willing to negate most of the fees, unless they are built into the platform you are using. For example, you could trade here with no fees, as long as you can find someone trustworthy, and use escrow.

Technically, you wouldn't need to comply to KYC. Of course, every trades would need to still be reported to the tax man. Personally, I'm not too bothered on the relatively low fees, but there are definitely alternatives out there, other than using dedicated exchanges.

I think the first thing you should ask yourself is where it is safest and most reliable, then what type of amounts are you going to buy or sell and with what frequency.

So wondering where is the cheapest should not be the priority. What you should do is know what your transaction volume will be and quantify it so on that decide whether it is worth taking into account security and trust over high fees.

So what you're asking is relevant according to the frequency of your cryptographic digital assets and the amounts involved. Take into account trust, security before a cheap fee.

Trading fee and coinbase fee are not same, if you are going to convert one cryptocurrency into other cryptos or fiat then you are supposed to pay the transaction fee because that is how those exchanges are making money but transaction fee depends on your network congestion which keep changes from time to time.

So would Kraken, Binance, Coinbase Pro be considered secure and reputable sites to buy crypto?

I've seen people using CashApp too. Is that safe?

I'm basically just trying to get started but the amount of sites is pretty ridiculous. I have a cold wallet and just want to get used to the whole process.

If possible and interested, look after your local ATMs on https://coinatmradar.com/. There are some out there having 0% fees for purchasing BTC; you might be lucky.

it all depends on the kind of token or coin you want transact with, all the currencies in the trading platform have their way of fee rates in the various trading platform. e.g, bticoin withdrawal rate can't be the same with LTC.
so non of these exchange has low fee withdrawal.

If you are trying to check most of the exchange or wallet today has three options

Low
Medium
High

These are the common text names if you are trying to use the low it takes time before you will receive your funds, if you are using the medium you will get your funds in a few minutes but if you are using the high you will get your funds instantly.

If you are trying to use bitcoin for transactions right now AFAIK the electrum has the best for adjustable transaction fees which are I do prefer but on other coins I don't have any idea.

As far as I know, only few web wallets and gambling sites have such three categories while selecting transaction fee but mostly exchanges have fixed withdrawal fee which used to be a lot higher than actual fee needed for the transaction which gets included into the next block.

The three exchanges you mentioned are, indeed, one of the most reputable and secure platforms. Security is a relative concept, though.
Centralized exchanges, usually, charge flat withdrawal fees and it's a bit higher than what most fee estimators would suggest.
My advice is to use a reputable exchange and pay higher fees than risking all your money with a new one just to save few bucks.

Reputable? There are a few cases of unhappy customers but there seems to be more who are satisfied. They've also been here for a long time so I guess they are. 

Secure? I can't say for sure. These centralized exchanges or services will always be under attacks. Binance has been hacked already but the amount is miniscule compared to how much they are making so they were able to continue operation.

Here's a better list https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5079048.0

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If you haven't heard of decentralized exchanges and P2P platforms, you may want to check them first before buying your bitcoin.
- https://bisq.network/markets/?currency=btc_usd
- https://localcryptos.com/Bitcoin/United_States

More can be found at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5180421.msg52318386#msg52318386

Using local cryptocurrency exchange for fiat to Crypto conversion is smart option because their fee is extremely small compared to these most reputed centralized exchange when it comes to fiat to Crypto and vice versa or better use p2p which may be available with KYC policy on LBC like sites and no KYC sites like Localcryptos.

I checked out the Localcryptos site and it looks pretty straightforward.

The users selling with the best rates obviously have less feedback (if any at all) because they're new users. The most popular sellers rates are a lot higher.

So if the crytpo you want to buy has to be put into escrow on the site first before you send payment, then how can you get ripped off by someone?

I mean I guess it's like Ebay where the more positive feedback a user has the more likely you're going to trust buying from them. But Ebay doesn't put the item in escrow first so it's more of a gamble.

Just wondering because I'm new to this. Thanks!

I am sure there are many ways to get ripped off by someone. That thing will happen if you are not careful to select popular sellers. But popular sellers will not guarantee that he won't scam others, especially if the amount is too big.

You need to find from your local store that allows you to buy crypto because every country's regulations will not be the same. Maybe if you can search for that, you will find a popular store that will help you to buy crypto with a low fee. But I think the fees will always vary from time to time, not just between the exchanges, because the crypto market will always change.

Then you're looking for low trading fees, not transactions fees, Binance and Kucoin both have trading fees of 0.1% and if you hold their coin you can use some discount on it and lower it to 0.075%.

You usually don't see lower trading fees on exchanges and the only exception that comes to mind is BitMEX which pays you a rebate if you're the market maker, but then again you're paying for funding that occurs every 7-8 hours, so if you hold your position long enough so that's not exactly free.

On the other hand we also got exchanges that have market makers programs which if you're eligible and you're trading with big amount of funds you can join and either use 0% trading fees or even get paid for the orders that you open and act as a market maker on their trading pairs, for instance Binance had one of these programs months ago but I'm not sure if it's finished or they're still doing that.

If you looking to buy Bitcoins with the lowest transaction fees, it won't help. You will have to buy something that is les volatile in price and less transaction fees. For example, XLM or XRP. Send it to reputable exchange and convert it to BTC,ETH. I performed this one to get highest satoshi value for my fiat.

So is fiat to crypto conversion on a p2p more safe/secure on a no KYC site like Localcryptos because it's anonymous or on a KYC site like LocalBitcoins? Both sites have good reviews on Trustpilot while Kraken and Coinbase have some pretty bad reviews.

Trading on p2p with KYC and no KYC requirements has is pros and cons.

Localcryptos: even though there is no KYC required to register on the exchanges still most of the traders will demand one time verification of your nationality with any of your ID and also the prices are little premium while the volume is lesser compared to localbitcoin but it varies from which country fiat you are going to trade.

Localbitcoin: Different tier system can be chosen based on your annual trading volume and as I said the prices are far better with more trading volume.

But trading on p2p for fiat to crypto is not completely safe though, there are less chances for you to get scammed if you chooses bank transfer at the time of trading but still there will be problem rises if someone hacked someone's account and bought money from you which kind of issues rises only after 6 months or later after your trades.

OP is looking for cheapest exchange fees, not cheapest fees of crypto. Read the whole thread before you respond. And you are asking him to purchase XLM or XRP first, right? Wouldn't that charge fee? And how much will be the fee cost all together?