Most Frequently Asked Questions

How did you Evaluate These Bitcoin Exchanges?

If you’ve gone through the brief reviews, you probably have noticed a trend. We focus mostly on:
Number of markets – Direct digital currency exchange is only one of the many ways to trade bitcoin for profit.
Security – Site security and history together with transaction security are crucial
Payment methods – The more deposit methods available, the better. Especially for first-timers from the USA, to be able to buy bitcoins with a credit card often is the only conceivable way.
Interface – Smooth user experience is essential, especially if you plan on using some of the best crypto trading platforms frequently.
Trading tools – The best crypto exchange sites must provide versatile and informative cryptocurrency trading software to empower their users.
Bitcoin exchange rate – For many, the best crypto trading sites are good because of competitive cryptocurrency exchange rates and nothing else.
Volume of trade – Experienced traders often like to sort the top Bitcoin exchanges by volume to maximize profit and play it big.
Bitcoin trading app – Mobile support is a must nowadays and the best cryptocurrency exchanges are quick to develop robust mobile apps for their users.
Fees – Every cryptocurrency exchange platform has processing fees. Their levels vary and the reasons behind their existence are not always justifiable.
Customer support – Good customer service is a must.
Reputation – This is a bit harder to judge. Discussions on bitcoin trading on Reddit and other forums give idea about a site’s trustworthiness and correctness but online stories are also tricky to verify.

Evaluating the best bitcoin exchange platforms takes time and concentrated effort.

Of all these factors, the only that is a harder to establish is reputation. We take our time to research the cryptocurrency exchange under scrutiny, including bitcoin Reddit reviews and other reputable forums. We try to weed off outright banter and (possibly) paid smearing posts, but sometimes the bad things far outweigh the good ones.
The other factors are relatively easy to evaluate by our reviewers. More details can be found in the in-depth review of each exchange listed here.

Which is the Best Bitcoin Exchange?

This is a difficult question. For me, site security, interface and volume of trade, paired with eventual fees or lack thereof, are leading factors and have influenced the ranking a lot. This being said, the interface is a rather subjective category, while security is always a shifty topic. Sites boast 100% integrity all throughout their history and then get hacked, and their impeccable reputation is tattered in the matter of minutes.
Keep your coins stored safely away, regardless of the site’s reputation.

Get a decent crypto wallet and store your assets there. However secure a website may be, its fame and size often puts a target right between its virtual eyes. Recent history has seen many compromised pages and databases.

How to Buy and Sell Bitcoin Through Exchanges?

Many of the sites have specific rules and technical requirements, as well as fees for different operations. To get the most of the above list, I suggest that you go through the some of the brief overviews below and then click on the name of the exchanges that grab your attention.
The best bitcoin exchanges top the list, but keep in mind that the differences between them are small, hidden in the detail. Check out their terms carefully and see which one appeals to you the most.

Before jumping on the cryptocurrency bandwagon, make sure to learn at least a little bit about the coins you wish to trade with. Focus on their technology and market history.

These are sites that gain greater and greater universal acknowledgement for being reliable and secure. Now, tight security is all nice and dandy, but I strongly recommend to not keep more than what is absolutely necessary stored on the exchange sites.

Which is the Best Bitcoin Exchange in the USA?

There are several very big and reliable US bitcoin exchanges, with Gemini, Coinbase and Kraken being among the most popular ones.
Again, it is not that easy to single out one of them as the best bitcoin exchange US traders can use because these cryptocurrency exchanges have many virtues and some shortcomings; the latter would deter some users, while the former would make many enjoy the trading experience provided by each platform.

How Bitcoin Trading Works?

I said that I am going to refrain from specific investment advice, as I am far from an expert in the field.
What I can do for you is to provide you one general piece of knowledge. It is useful in life in general and in investment in particular: know what you are doing.
Granted, investment by definition is related to risk because you must work with incomplete information. That’s particularly true with cryptocurrencies, as their fluctuations are frightening and impressive at the same time.

Find a good wallet, research and start small.

All the same, research the market, study the technology, learn how to invest, learn about the best bitcoin trading platform and what makes it so good, take advantage of its features.
As far as I am concerned, cryptocurrency and bitcoin trading involves three main aspects: the underlying technologies, the markets and the investment know-how.
Right now, bitcoin is just like any other trade. It is not a get-rich-quickly scheme. Instead, you must invest some time in learning the ins and outs. To start trading bitcoin for profit, you must know as much as possible about it. There is no way around it.
And since you are here, trying to learn and find out which the best bitcoin exchange in 2019 is, I will share the most fundamental piece of knowledge about investment: do not invest more than you are ready to lose. Ever.
The alluring promise of tomorrow’s riches is nothing compared to the solid dime on the nail of today.

Is Bitcoin a Better Investment than, say, Shares?

If you are wondering why I invested my time in researching and assembling this list, I had two reasons. I got interested in crypto trading about three years ago. Bitcoin was making headlines already. A friend of mine was following it for a while and talked me into investing into it without much difficulty.
At the time, I already was looking for investment opportunities and had actually found quite interesting and lucrative options in traditional means: shares, developing economies, renewable energy startups and the likes.

All investments bear risk. Try to diversify your assets to get a peace of mind.

I had done my research and quickly realized that my knowledge on the subject of investment was seriously insufficient. Rectifying this was bound to take some time, so I decided to go through an investment fund. Got me a meeting with the vice president of big investment fund in my country who showed me plans for investment, numerous tools to create and manage my crypto portfolio, and was even sport enough to suggest some sources for improving my economic knowledge.
While excited about this initial investment, I found the action itself oddly lacking. As if the closure was too anticlimactic.
I spent about three hours every other day for seven weeks studying the basic principles of economics and markets, gathering information about products, services and economies and trying to wrap my mind around the financial undercurrents that influence them. These undercurrents are under the influence of the fickle human masses and the invisible pressure points certain politicians and organizations impose at will, to harvest handsome profit.

What do I Need to Know?

I must admit, I am not that great a student, especially when it comes to economy. Never had the flair needed to “smell” where the money is, so to speak. The end result of my readings was a slightly improved understanding, clearly insufficient to understand the forming factors of economics but enough to create a reasonable portfolio to handle to my investment manager. Granted, researching felt also rewarding (how much, remains to be seen) at times but thrusting my investment in the hands of the investment fund left me oddly unsatisfied.
Slightly appalled by the complexity of economics and disappointed by my struggles with the topic, I went for a beer with the friend I mentioned earlier.

Find out why you want to invest and decide how much time and effort you are willing to put into it.

He had already invested in bitcoin and explained me what the cryptocurrency is.
Now, I am not that great with economics but technology is a much more agreeable topic. In short, BTC sounded like an intriguing idea, so I slept over it and the next day got me my first bitcoin for about $420.
Since, I have made several investments in cryptocurrencies, combining my understanding in the blockchain iterations behind them with my rudimentary understanding of the market. My experience has grown somewhat, largely thanks to the stupid mistakes I’ve made.
Because of all this, I will abstain as much as possible from imparting investment advice: my expertise is vastly insufficient to give a reliable advice.

Truth be told, with crypto, it is anybody’s guess what the market’s next move will be. I am trading with changing success for three years now and still have to rely mostly on other people’s opinions and predictions, which is why I can promise you that there is no infallible prophet in the world of cryptocurrencies.
With all this being said, it is not so difficult to buy and sell bitcoin. The main principle to generate some profit is very simple: buy low and sell high.

Define Clear Goals

The thing with more complex bitcoin trading strategies is the complete lack of predictability. Step 1 for beginners would be, indeed, to buy low and try to sell for profit. Right now a bitcoin costs nearly $8,000; buying one coin and selling it for, say, $12,000 in a month is nothing short of spectacularly insane profit.
But, if that is your profit target, will the crypto grow to $12,000? If it stays around $9,000 for three months, what would you do?

Define your goals and know what you are aiming at when investing.

What if the price plummets down to $4,000? It is far from unthinkable. The fact that cryptocurrencies are often mentioned in conjunction with the word “volatility” is not a coincidence or a conspirative narrative from the media. They really are unstable and should not be used as a get-rich-quickly scheme.
You should approach cryptocurrency trading and bitcoin trading sites with respect, somberness and clear goals in mind. Most importantly, though, never ever invest – in BTC or in anything – money you are not ready to lose. Their eventual melting into eternal nothingness should not take away the bread from your table or all your life savings.

Instead, do your research and try to understand some of the forces acting behind the crypto world. Maybe, unlike me, you have theoretical and practical experience with investing and just want simply to learn which the best Ethereum exchange is. If this is the case, click your way to the rank list.
If you want to learn more about the way cryptos work and what makes them so revolutionary, keep on reading.

What is Bitcoin, Exactly?

In brief, bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. The “crypto” part is due to the fact that coins are produced (or mined, as is the correct terms) through the solution of complicated algorithms. Advanced cryptography is used in those, as well as in the conducting and recording of transactions between different entities.
Confused yet?
Wait until you hear why it is a currency.
But before that let me tell you a bit more about the technology used to power BTC: blockchain. It is one of the things that differentiate bitcoin completely from fiat currencies; the fact that it doesn’t rely on a central authority to exist is truly revolutionary as far as payment methods go.

Absolutely all traditional currencies are issued, i.e. printed and governed, by a central bank behind them. This is the Federal Reserve in the case of USD, the European Central Bank in the case of the euro and the Bank of England for the British pound.

Cryptocurrencies are far from fully understood.

Bitcoin has no such authority behind it. Instead, it relies on a global network of connected nodes (read: computers) that hold and update the ledger that records the existence of all bitcoins and the conducted transactions.
Each coin mined is recorded on this publicly accessible ledger.
Every time you buy or sell bitcoin, the ledger is updated accordingly.
This ledger is the famous blockchain, the revolutionary underlying technology that makes possible the existence of all cryptocurrencies. I must tell you that blockchain really is a technological leap the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time. So much so that no one knows how far into the future we have jumped.
Some of the possibilities are just being explored, others are yet to be articulated fully yet.
Enough digressions, though.
The blockchain allows for a decentralized currency like bitcoin to exist and removes the necessity for banks and other intermediaries to record and confirm transactions. Of course, the bitcoin trading sites are a thing, but they simply facilitate easier trade. If you know the wallet address of a person you wish to send cryptocurrency to, you can do it right away, without going through any banks or paying hefty fees for the transfer.
Pretty neat, huh?

The blockchain is a technology with great potential and unknown possible repercussions.

Blockchain achieves that thanks to its vast network. Each transaction is recorded, creating a link in this virtual chain of blocks. Each new transaction is verified by the other nodes in the global network and if its (for the sake of oversimplification) consecutive number matches the one of the previous block, it is accepted and the chain progresses.

It is important to note that blockchain transactions are much more secure than bank transfers. Banks have their own ledgers to record the movement of money, but these records are stored on a central server. Such servers can and have been attacked successfully. The blockchain ledger is distributed across thousands and potentially millions of nodes; attackers have no specific target to aim at.
Second, bank transfers often include a human verification. Even the Romans realized that humans are prone to errors. Computer algorithms not so much.
Now, let’s see why a string of numbers is said to be money.

Why Does Bitcoin Have Value?

So, what’s the value in a virtual currency that you cannot touch, smell, handle over?
The simple, yet difficult to understand, answer states: its value is whatever people believe it to be. Economists can explain at length that exactly the same notion holds true with regular, fiat currencies.
Right?
At the end of the day, the paper notes in your wallet are nothing more than rather dirty pieces of papers. They have absolutely no intrinsic value by themselves.
Not that many centuries ago our ancestors steadily adopted bank notes as truthful representation of gold and other tangible valuables and paper money became the norm for exchange. Originally, they were, indeed, notes written and stamped by the bank issuing them. And, back in the day, paper notes could be exchanged for their respective gold or silver equivalent.
That’s not the case anymore.

What is value?

Today’s money is not redeemable for gold from the central banks, even though they can be used to buy actual gold.
Now, let’s extend the question further and ask: what is the value of silver or gold? Gold particularly is an extremely useless metal. It is too soft to make a tool from and, for god’s sake, it is metal!
What can you do with it?
You can’t eat or drink it, nor can you work with it. By itself, gold is just a shiny waste of space.
This is technically true, but we all know how many shameful pages of the history of the world are written solely because time and again the lust for gold has taken the better of men.

Gold has become such a powerful symbol of wealth and power that it can induce the fever of madness, but this is only because of its ascribed value; value perceived through the eyes of the beholder.
Do you see where I’m going?

Is Bitcoin Going to Take Over the World?

To draw the line, I will tell you that the actual value bitcoin holds and could hold has two axes: as payment medium and as value storage device. The more merchants and organizations begin to accept bitcoin as a valid payment method, the more its value will grow. Respectively, the more people see it as an asset worth the investment, the more its value is bound to rise.
That simplifies things… theoretically.
Nobody, for historical and cultural reasons, doubts the value of gold. Nobody really uses it to buy stuff with anymore, but it still is insanely valuable.

Larger adoption increases bitcoin influence.

Same goes for bitcoin – if people obtain it to store value, it will remain valuable. But for it to become valuable in the first place, it should be useful as a currency which can buy things. Many merchants and companies like Microsoft and Expedia accept bitcoin payments, but it is still a long way from proper adoption. You can’t go to the grocery store and buy milk and eggs with a satoshi or two.

Still, you can buy and sell bitcoin for profit, even if it is in USD.
And that’s not all that bad.

Stay Tuned..!!

The list of best bitcoin exchanges for USA traders and for those from other corners of the world differ somewhat. What is more, the ranking of the absolutely best bitcoin exchanges also undergoes regular revisions, as trading platforms compete constantly, offering new products and tools.
Stay up to date with the newest trends by visiting BTXChange regularly, as new trading sites make their entries in our review section. At present, our list is far from exhaustive. Even though it features most of the undisputed best bitcoin exchanges there are, new sites appear all the time. We are constantly looking for ways to enrich our database and to provide the most relevant and actual information.
Take your time to find the best cryptocurrency exchange for US trade or wherever you are, learn about the currencies you wish to trade with and invest carefully.
Best of luck!