Buying Virtual Currency? Here Is What You Need To Know Before Choosing A Cryptocurrency Exchange

November 11, 2018 Quick read

If you want to buy cryptocurrencies, you will need to buy or sell them through a Cryptocurrency Exchange. This works in a sort of similar way as that of the stock market, only here you do the transaction yourself instead of an agent doing it for you. 

An Online Bitcoin Exchange or any other altcoin exchange is a medium through which you can primarily buy, sell or trade in cryptocurrencies either directly with fiat money or by first depositing your current cryptocurrency coins to the exchange against which you can trade coins of your choice.

There are more than 190 cryptocurrency exchanges in the market currently, for you to make a choice, you need to ensure that the exchange provides all the right services that are expected from a cryptocurrency exchange. The features of all cryptocurrency exchanges vary widely, here are a few aspects to consider before you choose a Cryptocurrency Exchange.

Liquidity

When you want to trade in a cryptocurrency, there has to be enough buyers willing to buy your coins or sellers willing to sell their coins to you. Whenever you want to buy or sell your virtual currencies, you always need to ensure that the coins are sold instantly without any delay in buying or selling the cryptocurrencies. This is an important feature you need to consider before you choose a cryptocurrency exchange.

Security

Whenever dealing with precious commodities such as cryptocurrencies, security of your transactions and your virtual coins has to be paramount. You need to ensure that the website of the exchange starts with HTTPS rather than HTTP(Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). HTTPS websites are more protected with greater high end encryption. This protection can help thwart any hacking attempt by unscrupulous elements.

Reputation

Before making a decision, you can check the reputation of the exchange by participating in online forums and reading reviews of the cryptocurrency exchange in question. You can also ask your friends and acquaintances about the exchange before arriving on a decision.

Fees

Before zeroing on an exchange, do read about its payments policy in detail-  how the commissions are calculated and at what stages are they deducted. Some exchanges also have a dynamic commission strategy, do check on that and then make a decision.

With the variety of cryptocurrency exchanges available in the market today, there is no dearth of options available to you. However, with more choice comes more ways you can be cheated on. Do make a well-informed decision before you are cheated of money, God forbid.