The top five cryptocurrency exchanges in 2019

Binance

Binance is probably the most popular and fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Binance’s popularity is a function of its dual-nature interface that provides a “basic” trading experience for beginners and an “advanced” experience for sophisticated traders. Binance supports the deposit and withdrawal of more than 100 coins and is one of the top 10 exchanges in the world in terms of 24-hour trading volumes.

Binance offers some of the most competitive trading rates with a flat fee of 0.1% and an additional 25% discount for trades conducted in its native BNB token.

The downside to Binance is that it only functions as a crypto-to-crypto exchange and it won’t serve your needs if you want to make a fiat transaction. Binance offers decent customer service, but you might spend some time in a queue before you get through to someone on the phone – but this is a totally understandable scenario considering the sheer size of its operations.

At the time of writing, BNB is one of the top performing coins of 2019 due to its increased utility as the go-to token to access hot IEOs (Initial Exchange Offerings).

BitMEX

BitMEX is another popular cryptocurrency exchange that has made a name for itself because of its high trading volumes and attendant liquidity, as well as its leverage trading option. It boasts a daily trading volume of more than 35,000 BTC, it records more than 540,000 accesses monthly, and it has reportedly traded $34 billion worth of BTC since it was founded. Traders love BitMEX because it is the only crypto exchange that provides up to 100x leverage for trades. It also provides the option to trade futures and perpetual token swaps.

BitMEX has a fee structure that varies for different cryptocurrencies and whether you are placing a futures or leveraged trade. You can typically expect to pay maker fees, taker fees, maintenance fees, settlement fees, and initial margin fees on your trades. There’s a 0.001 BTC minimum deposit limit as well.

One of the downsides to BitMEX is that doesn’t have fiat payment options. In fact, it only accepts BTC deposits, which you can then use to purchase other cryptocurrencies. In addition, you can only make withdrawals in BTC.

ChangeNOW

Check out this awesome shoutout to @ChangeNOW_io from @TheCryptoZombie! Thank you so much, K-Dub – looks sweet! 😃

Watch Crypto Zombie's video on YouTube: https://t.co/DEI2HqjguF

— ChangeNOW (@ChangeNOW_io) June 6, 2019

ChangeNOW is a non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange service designed to serve the needs of a subset of cryptocurrency users who wish to make direct crypto-to-crypto trades. Many crypto exchanges limit trading options and pairs to the top five cryptocurrencies – you can easily exchange any altcoin for BTC or ETH, but they don’t have trading pairs that allow you to exchange random altcoins with each other directly.

With ChangeNOW, users can make direct crypto swaps with any of its 170 supported tokens, with access to more than 30,000 trading pairs and without needing to use BTC or ETH as an intermediate store of value. One of the factors driving the popularity of ChangeNOW is that it doesn’t require users to sign up, create an account, or proceed with any form of registration. In addition, it runs a non-custodial service, meaning it doesn’t charge deposit or withdrawal fees and interest is added to the final rate for the crypto swap.

ChangeNOW also boasts impressive transaction speeds, with most transactions being settled in under two minutes. Rarely does a crypto swap take longer than 10 to 20 minutes. A downside is that ChangeNOW doesn’t offer leveraged trading or advanced trading features.

Coinbase

Coinbase is one of the oldest cryptocurrency exchanges and offers a simple and highly intuitive UI that makes it ideal for non-expert cryptocurrency users and investors. It also possesses different layers of functionality and allows professional traders and institutional investors to access complex trading solutions through the use of its professional exchange, Coinbase Pro.

Coinbase provides the option to purchase crypto with credit cards, debit cards, and wire transfers. One of the key selling points of Coinbase is the quality of its storage as it claims to put users’ funds in cold storage to protect itself against hacks. In addition, it offers two-factor authentication to ensure that user accounts are secure.

One of the downsides of using Coinbase is that its fees are relatively pricey in comparison to other exchanges. For instance, it charges 3% to 5% for credit card deposits. Coinbase also offers OTC options and portfolio management to institutions or large private investors.

IDEX

In 2018 Ethereum miners earned $148M in gas fees, and IDEX users paid $4.4M of them! We talk about how we’re scaling IDEX to reduce gas costs and more in our Q1 update: https://t.co/oC2WcozoM1 #ethereum #IDEX $AURA

— IDEX 🐐 (@idexio) May 1, 2019

The IDEX exchange is part of the Aurora project, which is a collection of Ethereum applications and protocols that make up a decentralised banking and finance platform. IDEX, as the name indicates, is a decentralised exchange where users own their private-public key pairs. To trade, users sign transactions using interfaces such as MetaMask.