When most people start trading crypto they typically gravitate toward one of the big exchanges like Bittrex or Poloniex. That's what I did. My first trading platform was Bittrex, and it was great for a while. Unfortunately, they've now limited non-verified accounts. My daily limit for withdrawal is a mere $90/day. Ick. I could verify, but I don't want to. I'm using crypto to be more free not to be more limited! So, I set out to look for alternatives. There are a few decentralized options, but as of this writing they don't support the altcoins I want to trade. That's a deal breaker for me since I'm big into staking coins. I did find one option I've been quite happy with in Cryptopia!
Cryptopia is a crypto exchange based in New Zealand. While they do still have verification requirements their limits are much more lenient than the likes of other US based exchanges. You can withdraw up to $5,000 NZD without having to go through any verification process. That's more than I'll ever need, and I'm fine with that. True, a completely decentralized platform would be better, but I'm fairly happy with their service. Keep in mind that I don't ever keep any coins on exchanges. Though nobody has ever tried to break into my Cryptopia account I have had numerous attempts from Local Bitcoins and from Bittrex too I believe. This makes me hesitant to keep coins stored on any exchange platform.
My other favorite thing about Cryptopia are the altcoins! If you want to trade altcoins Cryptopia has a ton of them. The only coin I trade that they don't have is STEEM, but it's easy enough for me to use Blocktrades to turn those into bitcoins before I send them to Cryptopia to trade for other altcoins. This makes Cryptopia a pretty convienient place if you like to scour the Bitcoin Talk forums for new coins to invest in as this is an easy exchange for them to get listed at, but the quality seems better than Yobit (which I hate).
While Cryptopia does allow you trade against Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin the volume available may not be sufficient to do so. Lower volume is just one of the trade offs that you have to live with if you don't want to use the big exchanges. I'm okay with that for more freedom.
Cryptopia also has a marketplace which is pretty interesting. While I haven't actually purchased or sold anything on the exchange yet they do have a better variety of stuff available as opposed to Bitify which seems to just be full of a bunch of scam stuff or stolen gift cards. Cryptopia's marketplace actually has real products, and I might do an experiment listing some stuff.
The only bad thing about it is that there is no escrow service as far as I can tell which means you'll just have to trust that the seller will really send what you ordered. This could be pretty iffy. It is an interesting idea and perhaps they will improve upon it in the future. More places to spend Crypto are always great, and I think it's important that alternatives to restrictive places like eBay are established! Hopefully soon a platform like this one will be able to gain enough traction to do so.
If you're interested in arbitrage Cryptopia also has an interesting section that will compare prices of coins on Cryptopia to other exchanges. You can use these small differences to buy the coins on the cheapest exchange, and then sell them on the highest exchange should you be so inclined. I've tried a few times, but thus far I haven't found anything I've thought to be worth trying to flip, but some people do find ways to make money in this manner. Maybe I'll try again sometime in the future. The more money you have to flip the more dramatic the profit will be based on these tiny margins of course. Just make sure you account for any fees, and you'll have to flip quickly to take advantage of the gaps.
I talked early about how I hated Yobit. That's because half of their wallets are in perpetual maintenance mode, and it's infuriating! Something else cool about Cryptopia? You can go to the coin info page to make sure the coin you want to trade has an active wallet easily. It's also a great way to find new coins you might be interested in based on their specifications. For example, if I only want to see POS coins so I could earn passive income while I HODL I could filter for that like in the screen shot below! You can also view coins by rating if you're looking for safer investments as well as other criteria. In the left hand corner you'll also be able to see all the relevant links available for the coin such as the official website, explorer, available wallets, ect. It's a pretty useful feature if you like exploring new coins!
Cryptopia is also a very easy exchange for new coins to get listed on. It can take new coins many months to be listed on a big exchange like Bittrex, but Cryptopia makes it easier for these coins to get noticed by the community which I think is pretty cool. They also allow developers opportunities to advertise their coins on the homepage or through special reward promotions where users are rewarded with donated coins by performing actions on the site. This not only helps fund the exchange, but helps new coins get started.
EDIT!: I just found out Cryptopia has recently tripled their listing fee! It now apparently costs 9 bitcoins to be listed on their exchange! This is very disappointing to me as it makes it difficult for newer coins to be listed, AND it makes it harder for me to buy those coins if I want to! That means I could potentially miss out on a great new coin unless I get it on another exchange. I hope they will consider reducing the listing fee to help small projects and developers get their projects out there. : (
Cryptopia also has its own token! They are called DotCoins, and they are used by developers to list their coins, and to pay for promotions on the platform which is quite interesting. That really only makes this coin useful for developers. The price is very low right now, but I'm not sure I even want it to go up, because that would make it more difficult for new coins to get listed.
I hope you've enjoyed my short review of the Cryptopia platform.If you're interested in registering a free account you can do so below. Only an e-mail address is required.