I started my Crypto journey recently and this is my own review of crypto exchanges.
I’m in Australia so being able to deposit and withdraw in AUD is a must. I started with Crypto.com simply because they offer Visa pre-paid card so I thought they must be secure enough, I checked their team, certifications and all looked pretty trustworthy.
Downloaded the mobile app, opened an account online, uploaded my driver licence and within a day or so, I made my first deposit in Australian dollar, all went smoothly.
After money was landed, I bought a few coins and started “staking”, which is similar to a term deposit but with much higher return than any bank offers.
I was then confused as its “SuperCharge” product mentioned a trading account but I wasn’t sure what that for. I tried to log into “my account” on their web hoping I could find more on a bigger screen but then realized my mobile app didn’t even asked me to create a password (it only required a 4-digit pin to log in) so how could I even log in? I then had to contact their customer service and roughly half day later, I received an email saying Crypto app and Crypto.com are two different products and they don’t talk to each other, confusing.
Later I learned Crypto App really is just a wallet with staking feature while its Crypto.com offers trading, i.e. buy/sell different coins in a market. I hope they could have made it clearer.
My biggest complaint with Crypto is its fee structure: it markets itself “the only place to buy Crypto at true cost”, this is probably correct for buying but definitely not true when you sell your coins, I find their buy price is always lower than most of other exchanges. The effect is your money in your wallet looks big but you’ll have much less after your sell, this doesn’t give me good feeling at all.
Because of this “inflated” feature, I decided to look for a second exchange. Did some Google search and it appeared Swyftx and Binance were the top two. A lot of people rated Swyftx higher because of customer service and user interface but I didn’t care those two parts to be frank. Binance offers the lowest fee and someone mentioned this was because it’s a real exchange while Swyftx was just a broker. For me, fee and security are the top considerations and it appeared Binance is a winner on both.
Opened Binance account online, everything went extremely well(even quicker than Crypto) and made my AUD deposit and the money went into my account almost instantly. Both Crypto and Binance use Osko PayID but the latter gives you a unique email address so you don’t need to type in anything else while Crypto’s PayID is generic so you must also type in your account number in reference field, well done Binance!
Binance’s app is a combination of wallet and trading account so it’s very convenient to buy coins and trade coins in one place, I prefer this more than Crypto; Of course this means you have a lot more menus to navigate and sometimes it’s confusing. I guess this is why many reviewers gave its interface low rating but for me, I like the feeling of exploring so I don’t complain, rather I enjoy finding all features out of the platform 🙂
Binance is definitely a winner for me.
Last sentence, crypto trading is high risk so think twice before you open an account and only invest what you can afford to lose.