Which of these exchanges shall I sign up to?

[very_452001]

OkEx - island of malta off Italy
Huobi Global - Signapore
HitBtc - ?
Upbit - South Korea
Hotbit - ?

Have I got the above locations correct and where is hitbtc and hotbit are located?

I understand these are centralised exchanges meaning risks however looking for an exchange with minimised risks.

Does location of headquarters determines the exchange credibility? For example an exchange in Switzerland or Germany will have to follow tougher regulations of that country  or if the exchange gets hacked there's a compulsory legal process or compensate scheme regulations after the hack to reimburse the customers. Or tougher punishment laws for owners of these exchanges depending of the country etc.

Whats up with location malta for Binance the world's biggest exchange? Why malta? I can see it benefits the exchange but does the location benefits the traders? Is there like a exchange that balances both the trader and exchange when it comes to risks?

What's the latest status on decentralised exchanges now, are their volumes catching up?

[cabron]

They are all the same, all of them are gong to ask KYC anyway so whichever you see fit you can register to it.  Locations doesn't matter, they operate online. If there is among them that I can recommend not to register is the hitBTC because the withdrawal fee isn't going to make you happy. Why did you not list Binance?

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Does location of headquarters determines the exchange credibility?

I know it sounds discriminatory, but I think it's a pretty fair statement--obviously different countries have different laws, and in some of them those laws seem to be quite lax.  It's probably why Yobit has gotten away with so much crap in all the years they've been operating.

I've never used any of the exchanges you listed, OP.  I don't know how much you plan to trade or if you're going to be using fiat currency, but you might want to try some of the more legitimate exchanges like Binance, KuCoin, Poloniex, and the like.  I think they service people globally, and you can probably get away with no KYC if you're not trading with fiat.

I think I tried to register on Upbit because they were the only ones who had a coin I was interested in, but they wanted all my dox and I didn't think it was worth it.  I don't think they're a scam exchange, but I couldn't say for sure.  You're not a newbie (unless your account is purchased), so just remember to never keep your funds on any exchange for any length of time.

[very_452001]

Does location of headquarters determines the exchange credibility?

I know it sounds discriminatory, but I think it's a pretty fair statement--obviously different countries have different laws, and in some of them those laws seem to be quite lax.  It's probably why Yobit has gotten away with so much crap in all the years they've been operating.

I've never used any of the exchanges you listed, OP.  I don't know how much you plan to trade or if you're going to be using fiat currency, but you might want to try some of the more legitimate exchanges like Binance, KuCoin, Poloniex, and the like.  I think they service people globally, and you can probably get away with no KYC if you're not trading with fiat.

I think I tried to register on Upbit because they were the only ones who had a coin I was interested in, but they wanted all my dox and I didn't think it was worth it.  I don't think they're a scam exchange, but I couldn't say for sure.  You're not a newbie (unless your account is purchased), so just remember to never keep your funds on any exchange for any length of time.

Ok is there list somewhere showing these legitimate exchanges & It's only legitimate if they serve globally?

[figmentofmyass]

OkEx - island of malta off Italy
Huobi Global - Signapore
HitBtc - ?
Upbit - South Korea
Hotbit - ?

Have I got the above locations correct and where is hitbtc and hotbit are located?

i would avoid hitbtc (hong kong) like the plague. there are lots of reports of frozen funds and unwarranted (and invasive) KYC demands. it's suspected they may be insolvent.

do south korean exchanges like upbit allow foreigners? the price disparities that sometimes emerge between south korea and the rest of the world tell me they have somewhat of a "closed" crypto economy. also, keep in mind that south korean exchanges are being pressured by the government to de-list privacy coins. upbit just announced they were de-listing 6 privacy coins a few days ago.

nothing too bad to say about okex and huobi except they have lots of fake volume. they don't have the liquidity you might assume from looking at coinmarketcap rankings.

never heard of hotbit.....

Whats up with location malta for Binance the world's biggest exchange? Why malta?

low costs for licensing/taxes + a clear (and lax) regulatory regime.

[shaw1]

OkEx - island of malta off Italy
Huobi Global - Signapore
HitBtc - ?
Upbit - South Korea
Hotbit - ?

Have I got the above locations correct and where is hitbtc and hotbit are located?

I understand these are centralised exchanges meaning risks however looking for an exchange with minimised risks.

Does location of headquarters determines the exchange credibility? For example an exchange in Switzerland or Germany will have to follow tougher regulations of that country  or if the exchange gets hacked there's a compulsory legal process or compensate scheme regulations after the hack to reimburse the customers. Or tougher punishment laws for owners of these exchanges depending of the country etc.

Whats up with location malta for Binance the world's biggest exchange? Why malta? I can see it benefits the exchange but does the location benefits the traders? Is there like a exchange that balances both the trader and exchange when it comes to risks?

What's the latest status on decentralised exchanges now, are their volumes catching up?

OP, if I were you, I'd go with Binance, as long as you aren't US based.

They had good liquidity, a decent UI, and fun competitions. I quite enjoyed the platform back when they still allowed Americans.
Binance was good to its users when they suffered a hack a while back:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-08/crypto-exchange-giant-binance-reports-a-hack-of-7-000-bitcoin

Not many exchanges I know of would swallow a 7K BTC loss, and just pay it out of pocket to protect their customers.

Decentralized exchanges seem to have less interest these days. :/
I used to use Bitshares quite regularly, but the volume on the pairs I would trade dried up.

Never used an ETH DEX, but that's just because of the fees associated with the smart contracts.

[BitMaxz]

Hotbit is located in China I'm using this exchange until now but never had any issue.

Here's my own opinion and based on my own experienced.

Never use HitBTC and Huobi Global because I heard many people complain about lock accounts or freeze accounts. They are very strict on KYC verification that is why I never tested them.

For Upbit, Never heard this but it looks like it is one of the exchanges with high trade volume according to coingecko data.

OkEx and Hotbit I used these two exchange many times they are both fine to me with or without KYC verification.

[joniboini]

An alternative is to use instant swap like flyp.me. They're a good option if your coin is listed there. I've used Changelly (need to register, but you can get away with it if you don't trade a lot), flyp.me, Airswap, Coinswitch, etc. It is risky because they can away with your funds (unless contract-based exchange like Airswap), but it's a good alternative.

Most of them act as an intermediary between you and CEX. For someone who trades under $10k, that's enough. DEX still have a long way to go before they can catch centralized exchange volumes. Binance DEX is probably the closest with IDEX, but your options are limited to recently released IEO tokens or ETH tokens.

[jossiel]

Never use HitBTC and Huobi Global because I heard many people complain about lock accounts or freeze accounts.

Yes! actually there are too many complains about this exchange. I've never used them but I probably don't want to try them either because of these reasons.

Accusations:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2556342.0
https://www.reddit.com/r/hitbtc/comments/7hgwxp/hitbtc_is_a_scam_they_blocking_account_with_2_mln/
https://coinnounce.com/alert-bitcoin-core-developer-accuses-hitbtc-of-scam/

[TheUltraElite]

I have actually used HitBTC in the past because they are easy to sign up without the need of immediate verification compared to Bittrex and Poloniex at that time in 2017. But the only problem I face there is the big withdrawal fees. If thats ok with you then you can use them but be warned that they have a slow support response system so any problem you face will take some time to get fixed. I never faced a problem with KYC there so I continue to use it.

Best exchange system was Shapeshift and Changelly - those were some good times, Alas they now force KYC on customers.

[Rodeo02]

OkEx - island of malta off Italy
Huobi Global - Signapore
HitBtc - ?
Upbit - South Korea
Hotbit - ?

Have I got the above locations correct and where is hitbtc and hotbit are located?

I understand these are centralised exchanges meaning risks however looking for an exchange with minimised risks.

Does location of headquarters determines the exchange credibility? For example an exchange in Switzerland or Germany will have to follow tougher regulations of that country  or if the exchange gets hacked there's a compulsory legal process or compensate scheme regulations after the hack to reimburse the customers. Or tougher punishment laws for owners of these exchanges depending of the country etc.

Whats up with location malta for Binance the world's biggest exchange? Why malta? I can see it benefits the exchange but does the location benefits the traders? Is there like a exchange that balances both the trader and exchange when it comes to risks?

What's the latest status on decentralised exchanges now, are their volumes catching up?

kucoin should be your best option if you dont want to make a kyc but this was have a daily widrawal limit .
You can also try livecoin.net you are able to widraw even without kyc

Okex - i already try this before easy widrawal .
Hitbtc- no bad experience there are too many scam issue with this one.
Upbit- never try
Hotbit- new exchange ill never try this one.

For decentralised exchange . Idex  has a good volume however there are many tokens has been delisted there and only accept ETH contract token.

[NeuroticFish]

Poloniex, and the like.  I think they service people globally, and you can probably get away with no KYC if you're not trading with fiat.

Afaik this needs correction: Poloniex (and, although it was not on the initial list I'll add Bittrex) need KYC if you want to withdraw, no matter if you work only with crypto or small amounts.
Polo needs KYC even for trading!

[Quidat]

Poloniex, and the like.  I think they service people globally, and you can probably get away with no KYC if you're not trading with fiat.

Afaik this needs correction: Poloniex (and, although it was not on the initial list I'll add Bittrex) need KYC if you want to withdraw, no matter if you work only with crypto or small amounts.
Polo needs KYC even for trading!

Main reason why Poloniex dumps its rank to the mud due to this matter.Still fresh on my mind on how everybody talks about Poloniex in the past but when
Circle do bought this exchange it becomes centralized and as we all know that KYC is always impart of it.

Upbit,Hotbit? Didnt tried those exchange ever but for Hit and Okex i do have the experience on using em up. Why we cant just simply stick up with Binance?

[NeuroticFish]

Why we cant just simply stick up with Binance?

Simply because "centralizing" trades towards one and only exchange is also bad. Some "variation" is needed.

[magneto]

Don't sign up to HitBTC or Okex.

HitBTC has one of the worst reputations as an exchange that is still operating to this day. They have a track record of holding customer funds both in deposits and withdrawals, and asking unreasonable amounts of identification (even going to lengths of asking for fund sources, which is definitely not required by law).

Okex on the other hand seems to be complying quite heavily by removing certain anonymous coins from their platform in Korea IIRC. It's not really confidence inspiring.

I've used Huobi Global myself and it worked fine. Perhaps that is your best bet.

[barota]

All the sites you mentioned I've never tried  any of them before because of bad reputation and fear of problems deposit and withdrawal which finally ends by refusing reply to messages of users and fraud
i am sure that binance and bitfinex they are most used

[1Referee]

Okex on the other hand seems to be complying quite heavily by removing certain anonymous coins from their platform in Korea IIRC. It's not really confidence inspiring.

They're just following the trend first started by Japan. I don't find it too shocking to see exchanges delist privacy coins. It's not that we haven't seen this coming, right? It was somewhat set in stone with how governments don't want people to utilize anything that might help people to preserve their privacy. It's only a matter of time before it becomes a globally enforced rule.

In the end, it only enhances the underlying properties of privacy coins. I never liked the idea of people buying XMR for example on an exchange they're verified at, to then use it for whatever they want to buy or whomever they want to pay. Makes little sense to me.

[figmentofmyass]

Okex on the other hand seems to be complying quite heavily by removing certain anonymous coins from their platform in Korea IIRC. It's not really confidence inspiring.

there's something amiss in south korea. i think they are on the verge of passing FATF-compliant regulation. upbit also delisted privacy coins from its platform and i doubt they'll be the last.

so i think it'll be jurisdiction by jurisdiction. okex confirmed they would be retaining privacy coins on their other platforms. malta (where okex's main platform is registered) seems pretty accommodating. binance just launched lending services for XMR, ZEC, and DASH.

[magneto]

Okex on the other hand seems to be complying quite heavily by removing certain anonymous coins from their platform in Korea IIRC. It's not really confidence inspiring.

there's something amiss in south korea. i think they are on the verge of passing FATF-compliant regulation. upbit also delisted privacy coins from its platform and i doubt they'll be the last.

so i think it'll be jurisdiction by jurisdiction. okex confirmed they would be retaining privacy coins on their other platforms. malta (where okex's main platform is registered) seems pretty accommodating. binance just launched lending services for XMR, ZEC, and DASH.

Interesting. I thought that they would gradually phase them out on all of their platforms, but I guess it's not their plan.

Okex on the other hand seems to be complying quite heavily by removing certain anonymous coins from their platform in Korea IIRC. It's not really confidence inspiring.

They're just following the trend first started by Japan. I don't find it too shocking to see exchanges delist privacy coins. It's not that we haven't seen this coming, right? It was somewhat set in stone with how governments don't want people to utilize anything that might help people to preserve their privacy. It's only a matter of time before it becomes a globally enforced rule.

In the end, it only enhances the underlying properties of privacy coins. I never liked the idea of people buying XMR for example on an exchange they're verified at, to then use it for whatever they want to buy or whomever they want to pay. Makes little sense to me.

You're right, we have seen this coming a mile away.

My main concern was that Okex would slowly expand these delistings outside of even the countries who are stricter on regulations. But now that I think about it, if that does happen, it is likely that other exchanges will follow suit anyways so it's really a non-issue.

And yes, I think services like xmr.to will really be popular as a result.