WazirX Review
A crypto exchange guide must provide reviews of all of the top crypto exchanges out there, so that you can find the right one for you. This review of WazirX consists of four parts: general info, fees, deposit methods and security.
General Info
WazirX is an Indian crypto exchange, launched on 8 March 2018. It is run by Nischal Schetty, Sameer Mhatre and Siddharth Menon.
On 21 November 2019, WazirX announced in an email to its users that it had been acquired by Binance. This made WazirX the first Indian crypto trading platform to ever be acquired by an international trading platform, further erasing national boundaries between players in the crypto world.
There are a large number of crypto exchanges based in India. In addition to this exchange, you also have Unocoin and ZebPay, to name a few. Most of them only offer trading in BTC however. The only Indian crypto exchanges with more than a dozen different cryptocurrencies traded are WazirX and ZebPay.
In an email sent out to traders on 27 March 2019, WazirX happily informed that it is now open to investors from all over the world. In the same email, they also informed us that if you sign up and trade on WazirX now, you will receive “100+ WRX Coins” (unclear whether that is 101 WRX Coins or slightly more). As always though, US-investors should do their own independent assessment of any problems arising from their residency or citizenship.
Luckily for any trader wishing to do their trading via mobile phone instead of via desktop, WazirX is also available as a mobile app. Not only that, you can also download WazirX as a client for both Windows and MacOS. So, regardless of your preferences when it comes to trading, this exchange will most likely have you covered.
Liquidity
With respect to liquidity, WazirX is still on its way up. On the day of last updating this review (26 March 2020, right in the middle of the crisis with COVID-19), the exchange had a 24 hour trading volume of USD 3.37 million according to Coinmarketcap.com, placing it on place no. 153 on the list of the exchanges in the world with the highest 24 hour trading volumes. This trading volume is quite low, and could definitely be a problem for traders looking to make larger trades.
WazirX 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 WazirX:
An experienced trader will most likely be happy to hear that as of 28 May 2019, WazirX also introduced Stop Limit orders to its trading experience. At the date of this review, the Stop Limit-functionality is only available in beta mode for the TRX/USDT-trading pair, but it will most likely be rolled out over the entire platform within short.
WazirX Fees
WazirX Trading fees
The fees at WazirX are what we call flat fees, meaning that makers and takers are charged the same fee. WazirX's fees are 0.20% for both takers and makers. This is in line with the industry average, which has historically been around 0.25%. Today, however, we see more and more exchanges moving towards even lower trading fees such as 0.10%. So in comparison with this, 0.20% is maybe even a bit above the industry average.
WazirX Withdrawal fees
WazirX charges a withdrawal fee amounting to 0.0005 BTC when you withdraw BTC. This fee is below the global industry average and thus constitutes a competitive advantage against the majority of other top crypto exchanges in the market. The global industry average is 0.000812 BTC per BTC-withdrawal, so WazirX is roughly 40% lower than that.
Deposit Methods
When it comes to deposit methods, WazirX allows wire transfer deposits but not credit card deposits.
On 6 June 2019, WazirX also announced that it had entered into an agreement with a Payment Service Provider making it possible for Indonesian investors to deposit Indonesian Rupiah directly into the trading platform.
WazirX Security
Finally, how about the security at this exchange? This is actually the only place where this particular cryptocurrency exchange takes the “gold medal” among Indian cryptocurrency exchanges. The security score received by this Indian cryptocurrency exchange site is C, when performing the test at Observatory by Mozilla (https://observatory.mozilla.org/). No other Indian cryptocurrency exchange has a higher security score. A “C” is also in line with the global industry average.
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The exchange reviewed above is what we call an “entry-level exchange”. This means that this exchange also makes it possible for someone to enter the crypto market with fiat currency. There are numerous entry-level exchanges out there, including (but not limited to):