Crypto Exchanges

What is a stock market
An exchange is a place where assets are exchanged for money. It used to be a physical place and today it is all internet. The regular exchanges are exchanges where stocks, bonds and other securities are bought and sold. There are exchanges of commodities such as metals, diamonds, grain. And there are also exchanges of crypto.

What is crypto exchanges
Crypto exchanges are online sites to which you sign up, open an account, and trade in various virtual currencies.

All exchanges have the main virtual currencies - Bitcoin, Atherium, Lightcoin, Tesos, Ripple, etc., but there are certain virtual currencies that are traded only in some of the exchanges, or even only in one of them.

All exchanges allow for a simple account opening procedure, but the account that will be opened will be limited in the amount of money that can be withdrawn from it. To remove the restrictions, additional supporting documents such as passport photo, proof of address, up-to-date selfie, etc. must be provided.

Recommended Crypto Exchanges

Binance

The crypto exchange has the highest trading volume in the world today. Founded in 2018, the crypto exchange has listed around 600 virtual currencies for trading, and offers a variety of services and financial products to both trader and investor. The crypto exchange has a very convenient interface to operate with standard but also advanced trading orders.

The TASE presents a very broad and free order book, with the largest liquidity in the world, and allows high-frequency trading to be supported.

The crypto exchange issues dozens of new virtual currencies a year and allows all its account holders to participate in their issuance easily.

The crypto exchange makes it possible to make withdrawals from it easily and quickly.

The crypto exchange has a convenient application that allows you to perform operations very easily.

Additional benefits:

• Allows leverage trading up to x10, depending on the currency
• Offers futures trading up to x100,
• Allows you to purchase virtual currencies using a credit card
• This exchange provides very attractive savings plans relative to others for virtual currency savings. Saving a virtual currency is actually locking the virtual currency for a certain period of time, in exchange for an annual rate of return.

Disadvantages: Psychologically, the crypto exchange interface pushes the user to constantly use their money and participate in risky issues of new financial products, issues of NFTs, or participate in such and such new financial plans. You could say that the interface is reminiscent of a casino in the twinkling lights and tempting offers. Also the marketing is very aggressive - the crypto exchange offers participation in many lotteries in exchange for participating in certain financial activities that will endanger your money in one way or another, and sends early morning and evening emails and push messages to the smartphone about offers and advertisements. Care must be taken.

The crypto exchange does not have very advanced trading orders, as the Bitfinex crypto exchange has.

Bitfinex

This crypto exchange is much older than Binance, and is a "former" with the largest trading volume in the world. The exchange has listed about 200 virtual currencies for trading, and it also offers a variety of services and financial products, but the amount of diversification is less than that of Binance. This is a good thing because sometimes "too many trees do not see the forest" and offering too many financial services to the novice investor or trader will simply cause confusion and misunderstanding.

The Bitfinex exchange also has a very convenient interface to operate. Compared to Baines, and in fact compared to all other major exchanges, including traditional securities exchanges and even trading platforms such as Forex, the BitFinx exchange offers the trader the most advanced orders available on the market today (for example, OCO, stop, trailing stop, stop limit, FOK, IOC, and the most useful command - scaled: A command that divides the purchase or sale into steps like iceberg, only language can also determine the amount of purchase / sale at each level in a linear (slightly-to-many or very-to-some) way or "according to dimensions" [custom] ).

Bitfinex also presents a very broad and free order book, and has a very large liquidity, not to mention that in some medium-sized currencies that have low liquidity on this exchange. The core of this exchange is also very strong and it makes it possible to support high frequency trading.

Bitfinx issues new virtual currencies but at a much lower frequency.

Bitfinex also makes it possible to make withdrawals from it easily and quickly.

BitFinx also has a convenient application that allows you to perform operations very easily.

Additional benefits:

• Allows trading with leverage of up to X5, depending on the currency.
  The crypto exchange is very "clean" - there are no tempting distractions or "attractive offers".
• The crypto exchange looks very professional and "of interest".
• The crypto exchange also manages a market for granting / taking loans of virtual currencies. The market for loans held by the crypto exchange makes it possible to offer the virtual currencies you have to others in exchange for an annual return to borrowers, in a mechanism that completely neutralizes the risk of the lender. The yield varies depending on the currency.

Disadvantages:
The crypto exchange does not offer futures trading
The crypto exchange does not offer particularly attractive savings plans. On the other hand, existing savings plans are automatic and flexible, meaning that it is not necessary to deposit the virtual currencies in savings and they are not locked in savings, but the deposit of the virtual currencies on the platform and holding them will yield an annual return on them.

Kraken

This crypto exchange is also older. The crypto exchange has an account with the German bank Fidor (within the European Union) that allows it to deposit and withdraw funds in dollars and euros through direct bank transfers.

Karkan also has savings plans, and the return is even slightly lower than Bitfinex. The clear advantage of Karkan's savings plans is that you can deposit savings in dollars and euros, and the return on them will be between 1.5% and 2%!

The crypto exchange offers only basic trading orders (limit, market), and it does not allow trading in margin - features that make it a very simple crypto exchange that is suitable for investors only (holding long-term virtual currencies).

This exchange is the owner of Cryptowatch for those who know - the best graph system available today in the virtual currency market, which centralizes order books of dozens of exchanges in hundreds of currencies. The cryptowatch system also interfaces to the Karkan crypto Exchange and allows instructions to be sent to the crypto exchange through it.

It should be noted that unless Karkan has improved the core of her command entry at the time of writing this article, she is not considered credible for entering high frequency trading orders.

The difference between a crypto exchange and an exchanger (change)
A distinction must be made between a crypto exchange, as we defined it above - a place where buyers and sellers meet to make transactions with each other - and a changer. An exchanger is a business that you come to to buy bitcoin or sell bitcoin, but the exchanger is the one who buys or sells. The exchanger provides a rate at which he is willing to buy, and a rate at which he is willing to sell, and that's all. This is a business similar to the same change you go to to purchase dollars before your trip, simply on a website.

Usually the changer buys or sells at a rate with a difference higher or lower than the market price (depending on the action - purchase or sale) in order to make a profit on the purchase or sale (the professional term is spread). In fact the exchanger earns on each transaction through the difference between the market price and the exchange rate at which he is willing to execute the transaction. For example, the exchange rate difference of a virtual currency changer, such as the Israeli Bits of Gold, may reach up to 6% difference from the market price. Hence, buying or selling at an exchange will be more expensive than a crypto exchange transaction.

Of course, the exchange of virtual currencies gives advantages that are not available in the virtual currency exchange, but this is a discussion for another time.

Questions and Answers

How many crypto exchanges are there in the world?
There are hundreds of crypto exchanges to date. We gave examples today of three very major crypto exchanges. Other exchanges are the Asian FTX, OKX and Kucoin, the American Coinbase and more.

In addition, even we in Israel have a crypto exchange called Bit2C. This is an Israeli crypto exchange which is subject to withholding tax laws when realizing any profit and trading in it imposes obligations to file tax returns that foreign crypto exchanges do not require, and therefore in my opinion is less attractive.

Also trading venues such as Etoro and Robinhood are not considered crypto exchanges but allow trading in virtual currencies. The buyer and seller is the company itself, so the company functions as an exchange for everything and anything. In addition, we did not refer to the Dutch Deribit exchange, which is unique in that it allows options trading on Bitcoin and Atherium.

How do I register for a crypto exchange?
The process is very simple. All you have to do is select a crypto exchange, and apply to register. The crypto exchanges guide the new subscribers in the "step-by-step" method. For users who want an unlimited trading account with withdrawals, deposits and transactions.

It should be noted that in crypto exchanges it is also possible to open accounts for limited companies, from any country - including Israel, and not just for individuals.

How do I deposit money and withdraw money on the crypto exchange?
The deposit and withdrawal are made in different ways depending on the crypto exchange. For example, Bainens allows you to deposit by purchasing a credit card. Virtual coins can be deposited in the crypto exchange that originate from another place, for example a purchase from a money changer. The withdrawal of funds from the crypto exchange can be withdrawn to any bank account in your name, provided that the bank agrees to accept the transfer. In Israel, banks have always had great difficulties in withdrawing such money, but Israeli banks are not the only banks in the world, and some foreign banks know how to accept withdrawal money from crypto exchanges without special restrictions.

How do I know at what price to buy or sell Bitcoin?
The price of bitcoin in particular and the virtual currency market in general varies greatly, sometimes even from hour to hour. However, at any given moment the crypto exchange, where you conduct your trading or investing, provides a current up-to-date price. The price differences between all major crypto exchanges are usually very small - usually less than 1%. In crypto exchanges where there is a significant price difference, it is usually difficult to withdraw / deposit quickly and therefore it is not easy to profit from the gap (from arbitrage).

In what other ways can you get exposure to virtual currencies?
As of the time of writing this article, there are currently financial products traded on various traditional exchanges. For example, there are futures contracts on Bitcoin, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved an ETF whose only asset is futures contracts on Bitcoin.