A crypto exchange is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets

Top 10 crypto exchanges in the world. Source: shutterstock.com

The crypto world welcomes all those eager to step away from the traditional monetary exchange ways and embrace financial decentralization. Whether you would like to buy virtual currencies with USD, EUR, and other government-backed money or exchange your bitcoins for Ethereum, you’ll most likely use the service of a crypto exchange.

A cryptocurrency exchange aka digital currency exchange (DCE) is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. The exchange takes place on a web-based trading platform. Here is the list of the top 10 crypto exchanges in the world placed in no particular order.

Top 10 crypto exchanges

Coinbase

Launched in 2012, this US-based platform was one of the first crypto exchanges that focused on creating the most user-friendly interface. It is often used by beginners being super easy to navigate. The exchange allows you to create your own e-wallet and link it to your bank account for seamless trading.

Experienced traders will appreciate Coinbase Pro, which, until May 2017, was named GDAX – Global Digital Asset Exchange. It has advanced trading features and much lower fees compared to Coinbase. Yet it’s not as easy for beginners to utilize.

The Coinbase exchange is also available via iOS and Android apps. The service operates in 102 countries globally, and there are 33 trading pairs available.

98% of customer funds, as well as sensitive data backups, are stored offline in safe deposit boxes and vaults. They are also protected by Coinbase’s insurance policy which currently is $250,000 per individual.

The Coinbase Pro total trading volume over the last 24 hours exceeds $284M. Basic Coinbase exchange trades approximately $150M on an average day.

The Coinbase exchange is also available via iOS and Android apps. Source: shutterstock.com

CoinMama

CoinMama is another beginner-friendly cryptocurrency brokerage that focuses on credit and debit card purchases. It enables instant purchases of BTC and ETH. The platform locks the crypto rate at the time of purchase.

Users cannot exchange their cryptocurrencies here. However, in selected European markets, you can sell Bitcoin online via SEPA bank transfer on Coinmama.

The platform also doesn’t provide its clients with a wallet on the exchange. Instead, users are asked to give an existing wallet address to send the purchased cryptocurrency to.

Based in Israel, the exchange was founded in 2013 and registered in Slovakia. It operates in 190 countries worldwide and is available in 40 US States. Some additional locations are served by third parties.

In comparison to its rivals, Coinmama’s transaction fees are quite high. At the same time, it also offers high buying limits.

Kraken

This one is a US-based cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011. Claiming to be one of the largest and oldest Bitcoin exchanges in the world, Kraken helps both individuals and institutions to build their crypto portfolio. It offers 67 trading pairs to its customers.

The platform’s fee schedules are volume-based: the more total volume you trade in your account, the lower your fee on subsequent trades. The period taken into account is the last 30 days. Fees may be as low as $0. Discount tiers are assessed after every trade, so you get your discounts when you earn them.

Kraken offers fiat currency funding with USD, EUR, and CAD. Depositing funds with CAD and EUR is free. If you already own supported digital assets, you can use those to fund your account. After account confirmation, all crypto deposits are credited to your account instantly. Fiat funding takes about 1-5 working days. An expanded set of funding options such as USD international wire transfers is available to corporate-level clients.

Kraken has numerous interesting features like margin trading, investing in futures, personalized over-the-counter (OTC) trading service from the Kraken Trade Desk for large trades that take place off the open Kraken exchange, crypto-pricing benchmarks with real-time and reference rate indices, dedicated, one-on-one support for advanced clients with Kraken Account Management service, etc.

The trading volume of this exchange exceeds $160M.

BitMEX

BitMEX is a P2P crypto-product trading platform founded in 2014. It claims to have a $3.99B trading volume.

BitMEX offers so-called “perpetual” contracts similar to futures contracts. The difference between perpetual contracts and futures is that, unlike futures, perpetual contracts do not have expiry dates, allowing the trader to hold on to a position until the trader chooses to end it.

Other types of contracts offered are UP and DOWN contracts. With their help, clients participate in the potential upside or downside of the underlying instrument.

The platform also offers a fully-featured REST API and a powerful streaming WebSocket API. All market and user data are available and updated in real time.

BitMEX runs a first-of-its-kind multi-signature deposit and withdrawal scheme. All storage is kept offline. Additionally, each withdrawal is audited by hand by at least two BitMEX employees before sending. No private keys are kept on any cloud server and deep cold storage is used for the bulk of funds. All deposit addresses sent by the BitMEX system are verified by an external service to ensure they contain the keys controlled by the founders. If the public keys do not match, the system is shut down immediately and trading is halted.

Binance

The platform features their own coin, Binance Coin. Source: shutterstock.com

Binance is based in Hong Kong, with offices located in several other countries such as Japan and China. It is available to all countries and US states which is impressive.

The platform features their own coin, Binance Coin, that allows users to save big on trading fees. It introduced SAFU (Secure Asset Fund for Users), which takes 10% of all trading fees the exchanges earns, to give back to users in the event of a hack, which proved useful in May 2019. Binance also offers a great number of cryptos, basic and advanced trading.

The platform has a convenient mobile app. Their newest feature is C2C trading which is currently available only to users from China. More regional support will be added in the future.

Binance has been operating since 2017. It has an average daily trading volume of $1.2B.

CEX

Their daily trading volume is 269.75 BTC. Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency you can buy on this platform. Nevertheless, you can do it in a safe, quick and easy way.

Here you can purchase Bitcoins using either your credit/debit card or your bank account. You are welcome to use any valid bank card in any currency. The system will automatically convert your currency into the one supported by the platform.

The company officially registered in the UK in 2013 and has a Money Services Business status in FinCEN (USA).

Bitpanda

Bitpanda is a popular brokerage that sells Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and more for US Dollars, Euros, British Pounds, and Swiss Francs.

The exchange offers several payment methods such as bank transfers, credit cards, debit cards, Skrill, Neteller and more. It also boasts a user-friendly interface appealing to beginners.

Here you can invest in Bitcoin, gold and over 30 other digital assets on your phone or desktop.

With Bitpanda to go, you can purchase prepaid, competitively priced Bitcoin and more with cash at over 400 post branches and about 1350 post partners throughout Austria. The Bitpanda Plus program is designed as an exclusive service for Bitpanda customers, who wish to increase their limits beyond the default limits and trade with large volumes.

The fintech started operations in 2014 in Vienna, Austria. It has got a PSD2 payment service provider license as well. Bitpanda Global Exchange has a daily trading volume of $2M.

Huobi

All popular fiat and cryptocurrencies are available. Source: shutterstock.com

This global platform has been selling crypto since 2013 and has a trading volume of over $10B which makes it one of the largest industry players. It is based in Singapore and has its own token as an extra tool for paying Huobi fees and to make transactions easier, faster and more convenient.

All popular fiat and cryptocurrencies are available, but the main pair here is BTC/CNY. The service operates in over 130 countries around the world. Its digital assets are stored in multi-signature cold wallets. The platform offers high-speed matchmaking engine, real-time price, professional charts, and index analysis, flexible trading methods: limit orders, market orders, and stop-limit orders, fast credit of withdrawals and deposits, and a mobile app.

Bitstamp

Bitstamp has been exchanging bitcoin since 2011 with the trading volume $91M.

It has no withdrawal limits and allows you to cash out directly to your bank account. Their mobile app features both advanced order types & analytical tools for experienced traders and a simple buy & sell interface for beginners.

There’s a range of APIs developed for exchange facilitation. You can make use of high-performance FIX and HTTP APIs or connect to WebSocket for real-time data streaming.

The exchange also provides institutional support to fintechs, banks, brokers, etc.

KuCoin

KuCoin was founded in 2011. It is based in Hong Kong, having a profit-sharing platform, distributing 50% of its overall revenue to holders in exchange-based token KuCoin Shares (KCS). Thus, a user who holds upwards of 1,000 KCS receives both a discount on all trading on the platform as well as a passive income on a daily basis. The exchange supports 119 cryptocurrencies without fiat funding options.

KuCoin Global Communities cover 205 countries and 13 languages. The products offered include spot trading, margin trading, lending, as well as a contract (KuMEX) that has no expiration date and is designed to closely track the underlying reference Price Index via Funding Rate mechanism. Staking products feature staking mining Pool-X.

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