I have been trading cryptocurrencies since early 2017. And for a good while, Australians had limited options for reputable and secure exchanges to trade on. The first exchange I joined was Coinspot, which seemed like a decent option at the time in 2017. This was when Binance didn’t have an Australian version of its exchange either.
Since then, a cornucopia of cryptocurrency exchanges and platforms have become accessible to Australians, competition is now fierce.
Look, Coinspot has proven itself to be a well-run platform, but how they structure their fees is a whole other ballgame. What you do not realise is you are losing more money than you need to on high fees.
The buy and sell order functionality is pushed front and centre, which just so happens to have fees of 1%, which is exorbitant for a cryptocurrency exchange. If you want lower fees on Coinspot, you have to use the market orders functionality, which many people don’t use or don’t know is there.
A 1% fee might sound low already to inexperienced cryptocurrency traders. That’s $10 for a $1000 trade which is no big deal, right? If you’re planning on buying multiple currencies and trading between them, all of a sudden, you’re spending 1% for each trade.
Fees matter. You should care about how much you’re spending on fees.
I don’t think Coinspot is intentionally misleading people here, they are trying to offer a platform which rivals Coinbase for ease of use. Making it as frictionless as possible to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, people intimidated by charts and real-time order books will always go for the easiest option.
But, look at this UI. Can you tell me where the market functionality is to get the 0.1% fees?
The buy, sell and swap buttons will result in 1% fees. If you’re frequently making buys, sells and swaps, that can add up to a few per cent. And then you have the spreads, on some cryptocurrencies like StormX the spread rate (the difference between buy and sells) recently was exorbitant.
I understand why these buttons are more prominent, and I don’t think it’s a dark UI pattern designed to get an additional few points of a per cent in fee revenue. It’s just the easiest option for most people. And offerings like Coinspot are appealing to newcomers and inexperienced traders because they don’t overload you with options.
If there is only one piece of advice you take, it is the best exchange around is Binance. Not only do they have more markets and pairings you can trade, but if you hold BNB (Binance’s native token), you can use it to lower your fees, so the fees go below 0.1%. Seriously, look at how low my trading fees on Binance are.
If you plan on making frequent trades, you want your fees to be as low as possible. I’ve been trading on Binance actively since 2018, and now they have an Australian offering. They support instant deposits using a card and Pay ID, as well as instant Pay ID withdrawals.
Despite having some of the lowest fees around and more coin pairings than most small to medium exchanges, one of the biggest reasons to join Binance is their support of airdrops. Not all exchanges will support all airdrops, but Binance always supports airdrops (most recently for me the XYM airdrop) even if they don’t actively trade the airdropped token.
If you join Binance using my referral link here, you’ll get back 5% fees on every trade you make. I get a bonus for referring new users to Binance, but by using the link, you will be getting back money on trading fees (which you were already going to do regardless of the link) can add up. Really, it’s a win-win, and you’re saving money compared to the likes of Coinspot.
