Altcoin Exchanges

Binance

Binance started out in China in 2017. It is the currently the fastest growing exchange for altcoins and they offer a wide range of different trading pairs. Binance offers great customer service and one of the best user experiences in the business right now.

Binance has very low fees (as low as 0.05%). They have great communication with their customers and regularly offer competitions with cryptocurrency and other prices.

Binance does not require any verification for trading or withdrawing up to 2BTC per day. You can find out more and sign up to Binance.

What the basic trading view looks like: 

Pros

• Great user experience
• Good support
• Wide range of coins
• Low fees

Cons

• Registration sometimes closed

Visit Binance

Cryptopia

Cryptopia is an altcoin exchange based out of New Zealand. They do not offer the same great user experience as some of the other altcoin exchanges but their major strength is the extremely wide range of cryptocurrencies they offer.

Cryptopia is known to have almost every altcoin out there. If you are looking for the next hidden gem with a lot of potential, Cryptopia is the exchange to be at. Currently they offer more than 250 different altcoins, ranging from large caps such as Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash to completely unknown small caps.

Their customer service is however known for being slow, especially now that the demand for altcoins has skyrocketed. To handle scaling issues, they do close down registrations in order to not disturb the user experience of current customers.

 

Pros

• Widest range of cryptocurrencies of any exchange
• A lot of small caps
• Offers USDT trading
  
  

Cons

• Support often slow
• User experience is not as good as many competitors

Visit Cryptopia

Kucoin

Kucoin is another Asian exchange similar to Binance. It recently opened and was founded through an ICO. As a newcomer to the altcoin scene they offer great customer service and deals. If you wish to become an affiliate they have a very lucrative program that you can join.

They offer trading pairs in their own token, KCS, USDT, BTC, ETH and NEO.

Kucoin also offers competitions for the community where you can win both cryptocurrency prices and other things such as cars or hardware.

Trading fees are at 0.1%. Withdrawal fees vary depending on the asset and can be quite expensive at times.

Pros

• Good user experience
• Offers NEO trading pair
• Involved with the community
• Wide range of altcoins

Cons

• High withdrawal fees at times

Visit Kucoin

What are altcoins?

The term “altcoins” refer to alternative coins to Bitcoin. In 2009, Bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency around. In the years since, thousands of new coins have popped up looking to solve a wide array of problems. Most of them are based on the same blockchain technology as Bitcoin but often with different attributes to serve their purpose as best possible. Examples of some of the most well known ones are:

• Ethereum
• Litecoin
• BCash
• Monero
• Ripple

More and more exchanges are now offering trading pairs for altcoins as well and the overall market cap for altcoins is growing exponentially.

Altcoins are generally more volatile than Bitcoin, as their market cap is smaller and a lower volume can move the price significantly compared to Bitcoin. A lot of altcoin projects are also more centralized and if one party holds a majority of all coins, this party could crash the entire market value by flooding the exchanges with his or her coins.

What is an ICO?

There are different ways to launch a new altcoin. Developers are often out to make money for themselves and for this purpose and ICO is perfect.

ICO stands for initial coin offering. It is similar to a stock market IPO, but with a few differences.

• All investments are made with cryptocurrency
• ICO’s are not launched by banks, but usually by the team themselves on a platform that serves as an on-ramp for money to invest. Some well known platforms for investing in ICO’s are Ethereum, NEO, Cardano and Stratis.

ICO’s often look to raise money before they offer a working product. Be careful when investing in ICO as it is a very popular way to scam new investors in the cryptocurrency space.

Buying and storing altcoins

Most altcoins do not have any FIAT ($, € or £) pairs. Instead they are most commonly traded against $BTC or $ETH as many altcoin exchanges does not accept FIAT deposits.

If you wish to buy an altcoin, you may have to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum first. We have a list of exchanges here and guides on how to transfer and store it.

Most altcoin exchanges do not require you to verify your account, however your withdrawal limits may be limited. Keep in mind most altcoin exchanges are not regulated and you are trading at your own risk. There is always a possibility that the exchange will be hacked or decide to steal the funds.

Right now the demand for altcoin exchanges is booming and many of the most popular ones have been forced to close registration at certain times in order to not ruin the user experience of existing users. If this is the case, we will list the best alternatives to this exchange. Usually registrations open again within a few weeks however, so make sure you stay up to date on www.cryptopedia.io to find out when you are able to register again.

Storing Altcoins

All smaller altcoins are not supported by hardware wallets yet. ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain can be stored on the Nano Ledger S by using MyEtherWallet.

If possible, we always recommend you move all of your coins off exchanges as soon as you don’t need to trade them. If this is not possible, you can either use the projects own software wallet or store the cryptocurrency on the exchange.

If you choose the latter option, which is not recommended by sometimes most practical, make sure to use a safe 2-Factor Authentication. Most exchanges offer Google Authenticator.

Make sure to remove any connections to your phone-number on the google account you choose to connect your 2-Factor Authentication to. Many traders have been hacked by people stealing their phone number and resetting the 2-Factor Authentication in order to access your exchange account.

There is always a risk that exchanges will be hacked and thus the only way to make sure your cryptocurrency is safe is by holding the private keys yourself.

If you do not take safety precautions to store your cryptocurrency safely, you may lose your funds permanently. If they are stolen, there is no one who can help you to retrieve them.

Exchange Support

Most exchanges offer faster support through messaging apps such as Telegram than via E-mail or support forms on their website. Even though, as their user base is growing at a very rapid pace currently, support may be slow. Exchanges are adding hundreds of thousand of new users every day and are unable to process all of the incoming questions.

Make sure to educate yourself before investing so you make sure that you will need as little assistance as possible from the exchanges themselves as it can be very frustrating waiting for replies when a lot of money is on the line.

This is not investment advice

We are not professional investors. This is not in any shape or form investment advice. We do not advice you do invest in altcoins or anything else. Any trades or deposits you do at an exchange is at your own risk.