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Coinspot vs BTC Markets 2023
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Sinead Burgess
Choosing the right crypto exchange when investing in cryptocurrency is of key importance regardless of whether you’re a crypto beginner, an active trader or a long term investor. The fact that there are more than 400 crypto exchanges on the market can make it quite complicated to choose the best one in terms of crypto selection, fees, payment methods, mobile app functionality, and customer support.
Most of the top global crypto exchanges, such as Binance and Coinbase, are available in Australia, but there’s also a nice selection of local platforms that specifically cater to Australian customers. In this review, we’re going to take a side-by-side look at two popular Aussie exchange platforms, CoinSpot and BTC Markets.
Table of Contents
CoinSpot and BTC Markets: Leading Australian Cryptocurrency Exchanges
Both CoinSpot and BTC Markets are veteran crypto exchanges, present on the Australian crypto market since 2013.
There are many reasons that make CoinSpot one of the most popular exchange platforms. For starters, it consistently adds to its huge selection of tradable crypto, offers industry-leading services and employs the best security measures among Australian crypto platforms. With this, the team behind CoinSpot really hit the nail on the head when they launched the platform.
Just as its name says, BTC markets was primarily a Bitcoin exchange when it was first launched. In fact, it remains focused on BTC even today, with a limited selection of cryptocurrencies, but in turn, it has some of the lowest fees on the Australian crypto market, along with high service reliability.
Both of these exchanges are great choices for Australian crypto traders; it just depends on which cryptocurrencies you’re looking to buy, sell, trade or cash out and which payment methods you prefer.
Cryptocurrency Selection
CoinSpot supports more than 340 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Tether (USDT), Litecoin (LTC), Solana (SOL), Polygon (MATIC), Terra (LUNA), Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT), Avalanche (AVAX), Dogecoin (DOGE), Chainlink (LINK), Tron (TRX), Fantom (FTM), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Binance Coin (BNB) and a bunch of other popular altcoins.
The platform has one of the largest selections of tradable cryptos among Australian crypto exchanges and one of the main perks it offers to its users is the opportunity to purchase all of these assets directly with fiat currency or sell them for AUD and cash out to a bank account.
BTC Markets offers a strong selection of 19 top trending cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Algorand (ALGO), Chainlink, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Satoshis Vision (BSV), Golem (GNT), Uniswap (UNI), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Compound (COMP), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Stellar Lumens, OmiseGO (OMG), Enjin Coin (ENJ), Powerledger (POWR) and Tether.
The selection of available cryptos is much smaller compared to CoinSpot, but some of the platform fees are lower than CoinSpot, which makes BTC Markets an attractive choice for large-scale traders.
Fees
When buying crypto through the instant buy option on CoinSpot, you’ll incur a standard 1% fee, while placing a market order incurs a much lower fee of 0.1%. A CoinSpot OTC (over-the-counter) trading deal also incurs a 0.1% fee.
The deposit fees can vary depending on the deposit method. Bank transfers, direct deposits, PayID and POLi deposits are free of charge, while BPAY incurs a 0.9% deposit fee and cash deposits incur a 2.5% fee. You can withdraw Australian dollars from a crypto-cash out to your bank account free of charge.
In comparison, there are no fees for fiat money deposits on BTC Markets and withdrawals to your Australian bank account are also free of charge. For non-Australian banks, additional fees may incur. In case you want to withdraw digital currency from your BTC Markets account to a crypto wallet, you’ll incur a withdrawal fee depending on the cryptocurrency in question.
As for cryptocurrency trading fees, BTC Markets uses a standard market maker and taker fee model. Based on this model, market makers who add liquidity to the platform by placing purchase or sell orders at different prices than the currently available ones are rewarded with low trading fees (0.05%). On the other hand, market takers who just take advantage of the current price of given crypto incur higher fees (0.2%).
Crypto to fiat and fiat to crypto trades incur fees based on your 30-day trading volume, and they start at 0.85% for monthly trading volumes of less than 500 AUD. The fees are gradually reduced as your monthly trading volume goes up and the lowest fee you can incur is 0.1% for a trading volume upwards of 5 million AUD.
Payment Methods
All of the most popular payment methods are supported by CoinSpot, including Australian payment services like POLi, PayID, OSKO and BPAY. Classic bank transfers are also an option, but keep in mind that a standard bank transfer from your bank account can take several business days, which isn’t such a good option if you’re in a hurry to buy crypto. A direct cash deposit through a wire transfer is also an option, but don’t forget about the 2.5% fee.
You can also fund your platform account with cryptocurrency from your third-party crypto wallet and then use those digital assets to trade on CoinSpot.
BPAY and OSKO are among the fastest deposit options for BTC Markets users since they enable you to instantly start buying cryptocurrency once a deposit goes through. Of course, you can facilitate a bank transfer and fund your platform account this way, but you’ll incur a longer waiting period that can even take several business days.
In case you want to deposit cryptocurrency to your BTC Markets account, you’ll need to generate a receiving address on the platform for each crypto you wish to deposit. This process is really quick and simple, and it can be done in just a few clicks.
Security
As far as security goes, CoinSpot is considered one of the safest Australian crypto exchanges, regulated by AUSTRAC. The registration process requires users to go through a KYC protocol and provide detailed personal information. This information stays available only to the platform, and it’s used to verify the identity of every user and prevent scams.
User accounts are protected with 2FA (two-factor authentication), anti-phishing phrases, phone-verification phrases and geo-lock logins that are used to prevent cross-border hacking by allowing only Australian IP addresses to access an account.
Similarly, user safety and asset security are key priorities of BTC Markets, and that’s why 98% of all assets traded on the platforms are stored safely in an offline, company cold storage. The remaining 2% of assets are kept online just to provide liquidity for transactions on the platform.
All user credentials and account information is protected by SSL encryption, and users have 2FA protocols as a key security option to prevent hacks and unauthorised account access.
Just like CoinSpot, BTC Markets is also regulated by Australian authorities and complies with local laws, which offers a considerable degree of protection from scams for BTC Markets users.
Support Team
CoinSpot support is known to be very responsive and helpful through the support live-chat option that’s available weekdays from 9 AM to 8 PM AEDT and 9 AM to 5 PM AEDT during weekends. You can also contact the CoinSpot Help Desk by email, and they usually reply within 24 hours.
On the other hand, the customer support over at BTC Markets is available through email and support request messages, which are answered quite fast by the support team, but the platform lacks the human support approach of CoinSpot.
Mobile App
CoinSpot has one of the best-rated mobile crypto exchange apps available for iOS and Android among Australian exchange platforms. It’s super easy to use thanks to the simple interface that enables users to place market orders with just a few clicks while still maintaining quick access to their order book. Market charts are also easily viewable, so you can monitor the price change of a selected cryptocurrency or trading pair.
Unlike many popular crypto exchanges, BTC Markets doesn’t have a mobile app, but its interface is mobile compatible, so accessing it through your mobile’s browser app allows you to carry out all of the usual buy, sell, and exchange operations. You can place market orders and send and receive crypto assets to your BTC Markets account while accessing the platform through your phone’s browser.
A Few Words Before You Go...
Changelly and Shapeshift are instant cryptocurrency exchanges that aggregate the exchange prices from different platforms. In terms of security, both exchanges look trustworthy. Even though there have been security breach incidents with Shapeshift in the past, the developers have addressed the issues quickly and revamped the security infrastructure to avoid future threats.
However, if you want an exchange where you can deposit and withdraw cash, Changelly is the way to go since Shapeshift supports neither cash pairs nor depositing or withdrawing fiat money. Plus, Changelly’s supported cryptocurrency environment is definitely more satisfying. On the other hand, if occasional giveaways and interesting products are your thing, Shapeshift might be more interesting for you.
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frequently asked questions
There are several options when it comes to purchasing Bitcoin in Australia. You can go to a broker or buy it from a peer-to-peer platform. However, the most straightforward and hassle-free way is to use a crypto exchange and buy it on the global market. CoinSpot and CoinJar are only two of the many exchanges that operate in Australia. If you are still not sure where to buy Bitcoin from, we advise you to look at our exchange reviews to have a better understanding of the pros and cons of different types of platforms.
No, but the three of them have different features that might attract your attention. CoinSpot supports more crypto assets, but Swyftx is the one with the more attractive trading fees. Moreover, Swyftx supports deposits with credit and debit cards but lacks direct cash deposits, an option available on CoinSpot. Plus, Swyftx can’t compete with CoinSpot’s regulative contracts in terms of security. CoinJar also supports more assets than Swyftx but lacks a demo account that’s pretty useful for beginners.
Coinbase and Binance are international crypto exchanges that have a much greated customer base. This means that these two platforms would come out as winners in a liquidity comparison. But even though they can offer better prices, CoinJar and CoinSpot are more convenient options if you are an Australian resident, thanks to their direct AUD deposit and withdrawal options.