What are the best crypto trading platforms? When you plunge into the world of crypto trading, you have numerous options on which platform you choose to trade. There are two general categories for platforms, paid and unpaid. If you’re just getting started with a small amount of investment capital, you may want to go with a “Free” platform.
Do you require more service? Then you’ll likely be willing to spend some of that hard-earned capital on a paid service. The reason that the “Free” is in quotes is that, as we all know, nothing’s free.
Every service wants to make money. And they will; by either selling you something, charging you something, or through the use of your trades or sale of your information.
ShapeShift and Robinhood are the only US-based large trade “Commission Free” crypto exchanges making our list. What is best for the individual trader depends on their volume and type of trading, experience level, and security concerns.
Table of Contents
How to Judge the Best Crypto Trading Platforms
- Security (safe?)
- User friendliness
- Insurance
Because most crypto trading is in first Bitcoin(~78%) and the second Ethereum(~15%), we reviewed platforms where both of these currencies at a minimum are available. These best crypto exchanges must have two additional benefits.
Security- which includes two-factor authentication, an integrated safe wallet, and cold storage.
User-Friendly- platform (both mobile and desktop preferred.
For the minimum security of our readers, we chose to only deal with both online and traditional exchanges that are based in and thus regulated in the US.
Some Euro and select Asian-based companies and exchanges are great, but others have histories of impropriety with their client’s funds and trading.
Many of the platforms also offer “Free” or low-cost non-crypto trading in stocks, bonds, ETFs, and other types of investments.
Coinbase
Coinbase is the largest exchange, with over 20million users founded in 2012. It has high liquidity for most cryptocurrencies (it supports 14 of them).
The website and its Coinbase Pro Trading platform are easy to use for all levels of investors, and the app is also quite good.
For trading of cryptos, the commission is ~1.49% (this is on the high end). If using an already Coinbase wallet held cryptocurrency to buy another, you’d average pay a ~0.50% commission. The company is planning a Coinbase IPO later in 2021.
Best Crypto Trading Platform in Trade Station
Trade Station is an excellent all-around choice for intermediate to advanced traders. The only reason for not being great for beginners is that it requires a $2000 minimum deposit.
The robust web-based platform provides compound interest on “eligible” crypto holdings. Trading in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and XRP is available.
For account balances below $100,000, there is a 0.50% maker or taker fee. For stocks, options, and ETFs, there is $0 commission trading. Check out our Trade Station broker review.
Etoro
Etoro is most famous for the pioneer of Social Copy Trading. Social trading enables users to share information with other members of the community in real-time.
Copy trading is the stringent form of social trading; which binds a Copy (your) account with the account of another trader, following their trades.
There are good for some beginners to see how successful traders are trading. Currently, Etoro has 9 million users. Etoro has quite low costs for most activities; charging no fee for sending or receiving transactions.
However, Blockchain sending and receiving fees are applicable. There’s a 0.1% conversion fee, and a minimum withdrawal amount of $30, and Etoro USA LLC does not charge a withdrawal fee.
How to Pick the Best Crypto Exchange for Yourself?
Trading cryptocurrancy is a lot like the wild west. There’s no regulation to it. As a result, there’ve been some brokers that have folded. And with it, has gone some money. The best crypto trading platform is going to be one that trades option based credit spreads, other options strategies along with stocks. When they’ve been around awhile and they offer other forms of trading, you know they won’t disappear one night.
The Best Crypto Trading Platform in ShapeShift
ShapeShift was founded in 2013, now with US operations, as a conduit to easily buy and trade cryptos. Many hard crypto wallets, including Ledger and Jaxx, make it easy to convert their coins to the ShapeShift exchange
This makes buy/sell transactions cheap and exchanges of many cryptos (45 of them) instant. There is “free” conversion of bitcoin to altcoin, altcoin to altcoin, or altcoin to Bitcoin.
The instant rates that Shapeshift provides include the small “miner fee” charge levied from users for using their conversion services, in the range of 0.5% (50 basis points).
Kracken
Kracken was founded in 2011. They’ve been trading in 18 different cryptos. And though they don’t have an app for the US, only a few EU countries, they do have a quality web platform.
Kracken makes its money with a maker/taker fee schedule that looks at the previous 30 days of volume. Each $1000 in volume under $50K pays $2.60 in fees.
Maker fees are from 0 to 0.16%, and taker fees are from 0.10 to 0.26%, are cheaper than the likes of Coinbase and Gemini.
Bittrex
Bittrex is excellent for offering the largest selection of coin trading pairs (over 100 coins). They now offer a quick mobile app; known for speed, stability, and have a perfect record of not being hacked.
However, there is talk of suspended user accounts and some limited customer support options. So not everything is perfect.
Bittrex’s pricing model is simple. There’s a flat fee of 0.25% on all trades. If you’re trading under $25,000 per month, this is a great choice. Those that are over this amount should be better served(price-wise) with Kracken.
What Are the Main Features of the Best Crypto Exchanges?
Security is going to the absolute best and main feature of a Crypto trading platform. It’s your money. As a result, you don’t want someone to be able to hack in and take it. Just think how’d that feel. And with no real recourse of recovering it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever want to find out how that feels whether I’m day trading cryptocurrancy or mining it.
Gemini Is the Best Crypto Trading Platform
Gemini is five years old and maybe most famous for its owners, the “Winklevoss twins” who sued Mark Zuckerberg over the creation of Facebook. Did you know they currently hold 1% of ALL the Bitcoins.
Gemini is a fully SEC compliant, custodian, and digital asset exchange for several top cryptos as well as its own Gemini dollar (GUSD). If you’re concerned about a safe place to trade, this is the best choice.
However, it has very high fees, and otherwise, unless you are a Gemini dollar holder is probably worth a pass. Fees range from $0.99-2.99 for under $200 transactions and 1.49% for over $200.
This is approximately five times what you can find from other exchanges just for being SEC-compliant.
Robinhood
Robinhood is probably the most famous of the “free” trading platforms. However, Robinhood has had some crashing issues. But it allows trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as five other coins.
Ten additional crypto coins can be watch listed. If you wish to trade different assets along with cryptos, this is the platform for you. They have commission-free crypto trades.
However, the fee that Robinhood charges for trading is semi-hidden as payment for order flow (PFOF) routing fee; which is also charged on any stock trades.
They also admit that it may obtain undisclosed revenue(nearly half) from activity-based rebates from crypto exchanges, market-makers, and brokers, among other crypto intermediaries.
Since Robinhood’s pricing structure is not transparent, potentially the all-in costs are higher than some other platforms. There’s no way to know.
The Bottom Line
Should you buy cryptocurrancy? As long as you have the best cryptocurrancy trading platform, you don’t have to shy away from it. It’s a hot button topic and one that’s widely debated. But if you have strong risk management, you can trade anything.
