Currency.com

Currency.com Review

What is Currency.com?

Currency.com is not only a crypto exchange, it is what they call a “tokenised securities exchange”. So what is a tokenised securities exchange? Well, put simply, a tokenised security is a non-crypto asset that has been tokenised, i.e., made into a crypto. For example, at Currency.com, you can trade the tokenised shares of Tesla, Facebook, Netflix and Apple (or even share indices) without having to withdraw cryptos and convert them into fiat currency. This can be good for you in many ways, in particular from a tax perspective. 

Currency.com is from Belarus and is actually the only exchange in our Exchange List from that country. The platform is regulated by the High Technology Park of Belarus, which is a European blockchain regulator. The platform broadened their presence worldwide from 2019 to 2020, with clients from 69 countries in 2019, to 152 countries in 2020.

Currency.com Trading Volume and Supported Coins

On the date of last updating this review (2 December 2021), Currency.com had a 24-hour trading volume of USD 323 million according to Coinmarketcap. It had some of the major coins listed on its platform and supports four fiat currencies i.e USD, EUR, RUB, and BYN.

US-investors

This exchange is not open to people from the United States of America. It is not open to people from any of the following countries either: Botswana, Bahamas, Cambodia, Ghana, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Ethiopia, Iran, Sri Lanka, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Yemen, Pakistan and Bermuda. If you are a resident or citizen of any of the above countries and you’re looking for the trading platform that is just right for you, don’t worry. Use our Exchange Finder to find an exchange accepting investors such as yourself.

Currency.com Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself determine which trading view that suits you the best. What the views normally have in common is that they all show the order book or at least part of the order book, a price chart of the chosen crypto and order history. They normally also have buy and sell-boxes. Before you choose an exchange, try to have a look at the trading view so that you can see that it feels right to you. The below is a picture of the trading view at Currency.com:

We can’t imagine anything that someone would feel is “missing” from this trading view, with all of its advanced functions.

Leveraged Trading

At this trading platform, you can also trade with leverage. Trading with leverage means that you take positions that you would otherwise not be able to take. For instance, if you have USD 1,000 and you trade with 10x leverage, this means that you can place USD 10,000 on something. On Currency.com, you can trade with up to the following leverage levels:

It should be noted though that while leveraged trading can lead to massive returns, it can also lead to massive losses. For instance, let’s say that you have 10,000 USD on your trading account and bet 100 USD on BTC going long (i.e., increasing in value). You do so with 100x leverage. If BTC then increases in value with 10%, if you had only bet 100 USD (without leverage), you would have earned 10 USD. As you bet 100 USD with 100x leverage, you have instead earned an additional 1,000 USD (990 USD more than if you had not leveraged your deal).

On the other hand, if BTC decreases in value with 10%, you have lost 1,000 USD (990 USD more than if you had not leveraged your deal). So, as you might imagine, there is potential for huge upside but also for huge downside. At this specific trading platform, the risk for huge losses is limited by two things: stop-loss orders and “negative balance protection”. So this does indeed provide some extra level of comfort for the leveraged traders, but there are naturally still risks involved with trading with leverage.

Currency.com Fees

Currency.com Trading fees

Many exchanges charge what we call taker fees, from the takers, and what we call maker fees, from the makers. Takers are the people removing liquidity from the order book by accepting already placed orders, and makers are the ones placing those orders. The main alternative to this is to simply charge “flat” fees. Flat fees mean that the exchange charges the taker and the maker the same fee.

Currency.com offers flat fees. The platform charges both takers and makers 0.20%. The global industry average has for a long time been around 0.25%. Many exchanges have now started reducing their trading fees even lower, but we think it’s fair to say that Currency.com’s trading fees still are in line with the global industry average.

With respect to the leveraged trading of cryptocurrencies, Currency.com has another fee structure. In this area, they charge takers 0.075%, whereas makers get paid to trade (meaning that their trading fee in leveraged trades are -0.025%). This is a competitive fee structure. The fees are further set out in the below fee overview:

Currency.com Withdrawal fees

The last time an empirical study on withdrawal fees was made, this one, the study concluded that the average BTC-withdrawal fee was 0.00053 BTC per BTC-withdrawal.

Currency.com charges 0.0001 BTC per BTC-withdrawal, which is roughly 80% below the global industry average. All in all, the fees at Currency.com are competitive.

Deposit Methods

Currency.com accepts deposits through both wire transfer and credit cards (VISA, and – since 13 June 2019 – also Mastercard). The minimum deposit amount for credit card deposits is only USD 10, BYN 25, EUR 10, or RUB 750. Many crypto investors view this as very positive of course. Seeing as Currency.com accepts deposits of fiat currency, the exchange qualifies as a so called “entry-level exchange”, at which new crypto investors can take their first steps into the exciting crypto world.

Regardless of whether you want to deposit fiat currency or crypto, the minimum deposit is 0.002 BTC (which at the date of last updating this review, 18 January 2021, was approx. USD 72.50) or 0.03 ETH (which at the same date was approx. USD 37).

Currency.com Security

On the aspect of security, Currency.com states on its website that:

• it has highly vetted employees, and every decision concerning even remotely sensitive data passes through strict approval protocol;
• it stores user data in servers protected by military-grade physical security measures;
• PGP/GPG is used for email verification, a discrete system for secure document upload and the highest level of global encryption that prevents tampering with any aspect of the client information and holdings. To the best of publicy available information, there is no known method which would allow an individual or group to break PGP encryption through cryptographic or computational means;
• it is subject to the strictest scrutiny from the High Technology Park of Belarus; and (maybe most importantly)
• it will always maintain full reserves, meaning a bank run will never occur. Your funds are stored in a bank account entirely separate from our operations account and cannot be borrowed or lent – even for margin trading – to fund operations on our platform.