PROFESSIONAL NO-BS BITCOIN BROKER REVIEWS

[t_armstrong]

Hello all,

As a lover of bitcoin and trading/investing with 2 decades of experience in reviewing, consulting, and supporting traditional financial services, I thought I’d start this thread to provide honest, no-bullshit reviews of trading/investing bitcoin services.

There are just so many popping up out there that it’s easy to get lost and hard to know what or who to trust. This could go a long way toward transparency and perhaps serve as a reference to newbs who are just getting started.

A bit about me: I bought my first bitcoin in 2012 and became enamored. I’ve worked in the financial services industry and have reviewed hundreds of brokers, investment services, investment firms, banks, and more. I’ve worked with nerdwallet, stockbrokers.com, The Motley Fool, Schwab, and many others.

So go ahead and name which platforms you’d like me to review. No gambling or casinos but pretty much anything else that involves investing/speculation is a go. I’ll use the service extensively if I haven’t already and do a write-up.

I'll write a professional review for the first 5 services/brokers posted here, free of charge. First come first served!

I’ll post all my reviews in this thread and build a comparison and ranking table in this first post as I get to reviewing more and more services. I’ll kick it off with a couple of brokers I’ve been using recently: whaleclub.co (bitcoin CFDs, use bitcoin to trade the real financial markets) and okcoin.com (20x leveraged futures contract on BTC/USD).

I’ll post around 1 review a week and maybe more if I have time.

Services will be reviewed according to the following framework:

• summary: a paragraph detailing pros and cons

(every topic below is given a rating out of 5 stars and a brief note)

• overall
• fees
• spreads
• order execution
• platform and tools
• customer service
• mobile trading
• ease of use
• education / simulation
• security
• social media presence
• management / ownership
• innovation
• affiliate program

[1715551251]

1715551251

[t_armstrong]

As promised here goes the first review: whaleclub.co. If you want your service reviewed, DO NOT PM me, please post in the thread below.

Whaleclub.co Review by t_armstrong

Summary
Whaleclub is a breath of fresh air when it comes to bitcoin brokers. It is professionally designed and run, simple to use, and easy to get started. It requires no AML/KYC verification and allows you to go long or short certain financial markets such as Oil, Gold, and EURUSD directly using your bitcoin, with no need to link a bank account. I’ve been using it for a little over 8 weeks and am generally very satisfied with the service, especially with the quick and pro support they provide. However, many improvements remain to be made, such as offering a much broader range of markets, higher leverage, reducing the financing rates, MT4 integration, automation (API), and lowering the spreads on the markets offered.

Overall: 4.5 stars ★★★★★
Ease of use, fixed spreads regardless of volatility, and instant and full execution of orders.

Fees: 5 stars ★★★★★
There are zero trade executions fees. Leverage financing fees are not taken into account for this topic.

Spreads: 4 stars ★★★★
Spreads are fixed, which is great especially given full execution of orders. Euro market however needs a spread reduction.

Order Execution: 5 stars ★★★★★
Never had a lag, delay, rejection, or requote. All order executions are instant and what you see is what you get here.

Customer Service: 5 stars ★★★★★
Incredibly responsive, kind, and friendly customer support, available 24/7. They say their mission is to focus on the customer - they are doing it well.

Ease of Use: 5 stars ★★★★★
The best trading experience I’ve had with a bitcoin broker.

Leverage: 3.5 stars ★★★★
Up to 40x leverage is offered in Forex. This should be increased to 200x to match similar competitive offers.

Platform and Tools: 4.5 stars ★★★★★
Awesome interface design and intuitive experience using their trading dashboard.

Mobile Trading: 4 stars ★★★★
Whaleclub's mobile site adapts to your phone or tablet. Could use independent mobile apps or MT4 integration which would take care of that.

Breadth of Offer: 2 stars ★★
Only 4 markets are available to trade: BTCUSD, Gold, Oil, EURUSD. They will need to expand to other markets to attract more traders.

Education / Demo Trading: 4 stars ★★★★
Demo accounts are available and free of charge. Simulation is very realistic across markets. Could use a How-To or Tutorials page to provide more information about the platform.

Security: 4.5 stars ★★★★★
Account-wide 2-factor authentication and offline storage of all funds. No automation is linked to their wallets, making it much harder for funds to get stolen. Withdrawals are processed manually usually within one hour.

Social Media Presence: 5 stars ★★★★★
Very active on Twitter with useful trading and charting content.

Management / Ownership: 5 stars ★★★★★
I’ve had the privilege of speaking with Petar Zivkovski, Whaleclub’s director of operations, over email. Peter is a 20-year trading and financial services veteran and has built a very skilled team to go after the Whaleclub opportunity. The team has raised over $500K from Hong Kong based investor groups.

Innovation: 4 stars ★★★★
Features are being released at a good rate, however there needs to be faster expansion into more FX and commodities markets for the service to remain competitive.

Affiliate program: 5 stars ★★★★★
50% commission share for referred users is unheard of in the industry. This is an affiliate program that actually pays big.