Italy on Thursday joined the crackdown against cryptocurrency exchange Binance, the world’s largest.

The Consob financial regulator said Binance Group companies were not authorized to provide investment services in the country. The U.K. and Japan have taken similar moves against Binance.

The regulator noted that sections of the Binance website had been written in Italian and said savers “are invited to make use of their utmost diligence.” A message left with a Binance representative wasn’t immediately returned.

Consob extended the warning to crypto assets in general, saying trading “may imply the total loss of the sums of money invested.”

Consob said crypto risks include their complexity, volatility, malfunctions and cyber attacks.

Binance had the highest volume, by value, in both the spot and derivatives market for crypto in trading today, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Huobi Global, Coinbase COIN, -0.51% , FTX and Kraken round out the top five for spot exchange volume.

Bitcoin BTCUSD, +11.15% , the world’s top crypto asset, slipped 3%.

In its annual report released Thursday, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority said “cryptoasset businesses pose increased risks of financial crime” and said a significantly high number of businesses aren’t meeting anti-money-laundering standards. The regulator added there were 138 firms that are trading without applying for registration.

Also read: Dogecoin co-creator blasts crypto as a scam

Two of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges announced on Sunday that they would curb a type of high-risk trading that has been blamed in part for sharp fluctuations in the value of Bitcoin and the casino-like atmosphere on such platforms globally.

The first move came from the exchange, FTX, which said it would reduce the size of the bets investors can make by lowering the amount of leverage it offers to 20 times from 101 times. Leverage multiplies the traders’ chance for not only profit, but also loss.

“We’re going to be the ones to take the first step here,” Sam Bankman-Fried, 29, the billionaire founder of the platform, which operates from Hong Kong, said on Twitter on Sunday. “Today, we’re removing high leverage from FTX. The greatest allowable will be 20x.”

About 14 hours later, Changpeng Zhao the founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, echoed the move by FTX, announcing that his company had already started to limit leverage to 20 times for new users and it would soon expand this limit to other existing clients.

It had previously offered a maximum of 125 times, meaning that an investment of $1,000 could be turned instantly into a bet of as much as $125,000 on Binance. Now, with the new cap, the maximum in that transaction would be $20,000.

“In the interest of Consumer Protection, we will apply this to existing users progressively over the next few weeks,” Mr. Zhao wrote on Twitter.

The announcements came after The New York Times, in an article published online Friday, detailed the risky trades offered on FTX and other global exchanges like Binance and BitMEX that accelerated a global crash in May. That month, more than $20 billion worth of those bets were liquidated on cryptocurrency exchanges worldwide.

Mr. Zhao and Mr. Bankman-Fried were both asked about the high-leverage offerings — and the risks they create — on several occasions over the past two months by The Times.

Mr. Bankman-Fried said on Sunday that lowering the leverage amounted to “a step in the direction the industry is headed, and has been headed for a while,” adding that “while we think that many of the arguments are high leverage miss the mark, we also don’t think it’s an important part of the crypto ecosystem, and in some cases it’s not a healthy part of it.”

Global platforms like FTX and Binance allow traders to borrow big when betting on price fluctuations. Traders do not buy and sell cryptocurrencies but instead predict where prices in the underlying assets will head.

Those bets, known as derivatives, allow investors to make a bet on the future price of a cryptocurrency rather than buying and selling the actual underlying cryptocurrency. They bet on Bitcoin price moves without actually purchasing it.

This type of transaction is not supposed to be available to nonprofessional investors in the United States, but in the past some amateur investors have found workarounds to trade on the sites.

Leverage leaves investors much more vulnerable to having their accounts liquidated as a result of an automated margin call if the price of cryptocurrency moves against their prediction, and they do not have enough collateral in their accounts to back up their bets.

That is what happened in May. Once prices of cryptocurrency began dropping based on market-moving events, like China’s announcement of a regulatory crackdown or the decision by Tesla to halt Bitcoin payments, it automatically prompted the exchanges to liquidate the accounts of the most highly leveraged investors before their collateral became insufficient to cover their positions.

“These liquidations are obviously a huge factor in the price crash,” Clara Medalie, the research lead at Kaiko, a cryptocurrency market data provider in Paris, said, recalling the sudden decline in cryptocurrency value in mid-May. “It is a vicious cycle.”

Mr. Bankman-Fried said on Sunday that only a small percentage of traders take advantage of the maximum available leverage. He also argued that FTX had fewer liquidations than other exchanges and he had long tried to “encourage responsible trading.”

Still, he had predicted in an interview last week that some investors might not welcome any move to cut leverage. “We would get consumer outcry if we got rid of it, and we’d get very bad press,” he said. “But it might be the right thing to do.”

Mr. Bankman-Fried also acknowledged that high leverage created a perception that exchanges like his encouraged risky trading, even though he asserted this was not a fair conclusion.

That perception is in part why regulators around the world are eying Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Just since June, the exchange has faced increased scrutiny from financial regulators in Britain, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Italy, Poland and Thailand, many of them critical of its high-leverage derivatives offerings or a new product line introduced this spring that allows customers to buy cryptocurrency-linked versions of stocks like Tesla and Apple.

Mr. Zhao, the Chinese-Canadian founder of Binance and a developer tracing his professional roots to Wall Street, has said that the extreme leverage figures were just a “marketing gimmick” and that most traders do not use them.

Timothy Massad, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives in the United States, said that he embraced FTX’s decision and that he hoped other platforms would follow. Binance and FTX are two of the world’s largest exchanges, but others including Phemex and BitMEX, were still offering, at least according to their websites, 100 times leverage as of Sunday.

The move by FTX, Mr. Massad said, might be motivated in part by FTX’s success this past week in raising $900 million in venture capital, the most ever for a cryptocurrency exchange. The high-leverage offerings on FTX are more of a reputational liability as Mr. Bankman-Fried looks to expand his platform’s global reach, Mr. Massad said.

“Sam has bigger visions and this move eliminates a flash point that might get in the way,” Mr. Massad said. “Take it off the table.”

It is just after midnight in Hong Kong, and Sam Bankman-Fried stares at the trading data on his six monitors, watching a global cryptocurrency crash happening in real time.

Mr. Bankman-Fried, a 29-year-old from California, often works around the clock, as he was on that May evening. He naps on a beanbag set up near his computer. A folded up blanket sits on the floor. He’s worth at least $8 billion, on paper.

That is even after the downturn that started in the spring, where total global losses in the value of all cryptocurrency eventually topped $1.3 trillion. And as Mr. Bankman-Fried saw it play out, he knew his business played a role in the collapse.

Cryptocurrency — digital money not backed by any nation — is famous for its wild and frequent gyrations. But FTX, the cryptocurrency trading platform that Mr. Bankman-Fried runs, specializes in a kind of trade that was accelerating the global crash.

Most of his customers are betting on future cryptocurrency price fluctuations rather than buying and selling Bitcoin, and they are borrowing to make those bets even bigger.

It is a risky approach. But it can generate big wins.

Now, Bitcoin’s value was dropping — way down — crushing the highly leveraged bets of bullish traders on FTX and other exchanges, and forcing sales of their positions in wave after wave of account liquidations. These forced sales were helping undermine cryptocurrency prices.

“In terms of price movements, the biggest part of it is liquidations,” he wrote to The New York Times on May 24 from Hong Kong.

This is precisely the type of situation that United States regulators have tried to avoid by prohibiting cryptocurrency exchanges like FTX from selling high-risk futures to nonprofessional investors in the United States. And it is why Mr. Bankman-Fried moved to Hong Kong — as he wanted to offer these products, called derivatives.

Mr. Bankman-Fried is a crypto nomad: One of a group of industry leaders who once lived in the United States or Canada and have since set up companies with bases of operation where they are to some degree beyond the reach of American regulators.

Others include Changpeng Zhao, 44, the Chinese-Canadian founder of Binance, who now lives in Singapore, and Arthur Hayes, 35, a Buffalo-born trader who helped create BitMEX, which is based in the Seychelles islands.

It’s a tribe that never turns off — trading takes place 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. (Mr. Bankman-Fried said he sleeps when he has no meetings and works “the hours when this counterparty is awake and the hours when that counterparty is awake.”)

These crypto nomads have built a global playground, inspired by multiplayer online games, with “leader boards” for customers who go by aliases like Dark Crypto Lord and can win prize giveaways of Teslas or iPhones.

The highly leveraged form of trading these platforms offer has become so popular that the overall value of daily purchases and sales of these derivatives far surpasses the daily volume of actual cryptocurrency transactions, industry data analyzed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University shows.

It’s all supposed to be off limits to U.S. investors, but it’s not. Trading data provided to The Times also shows that billions of dollars’ worth of investments from customers with ties to the United States have moved to at least one of these global sites, despite the ban.

“I am not saying this is going to cause the next financial crisis,” said Timothy Massad, a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates derivatives trading. “But could this be something like the butterfly that flaps its wings in Brazil that sets off a tornado in Texas?”

Mr. Zhao, the founder of Binance, conceded, in an interview, that “volatility is amplified by the leverage. So that is for sure.”

But he and other industry advocates argue that highly leveraged futures trading is widespread on Wall Street and foreign currency exchanges. Some also say they had to relocate because U.S. regulators haven’t adequately embraced these creative investment opportunities.

“This is not going away,” said Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur, television personality and cryptocurrency enthusiast who is also a backer in a fund that is helping FTX raise capital. “But we’re losing a lot of jobs and a lot of financial depth by pushing it overseas.”

In fact, FTX just this past week raised $900 million in capital to help it expand its global operations, and it was valued at $18 billion. That transaction could push Mr. Bankman-Fried’s wealth to $16 billion, Forbes estimated, making him the “wealthiest known crypto billionaire,” given that he owns nearly 60 percent of the company’s shares.

Mr. Bankman-Fried was four years out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he entered the cryptocurrency industry.

He was still living in California — where both of his parents are law professors at Stanford — and he noticed that Bitcoin and other tokens were at times selling for different prices in different nations.

It was an open invitation for a creative player to make money, with a classic arbitrage maneuver: Buy it at the lower price in the United States and sell it at the higher price in Japan.

That ended up being complicated. As he tried to quickly transfer large sums of money, financial institutions moved to shut down his accounts. He also needed Japanese nationals to complete transactions in local banks. But he ended up making tens of millions of dollars on these early moves.

A three-day crypto conference he attended in China in 2018 led to two weeks of meetings and his effectively settling in Hong Kong. “I guess there’s a point at which I canceled my lease back in the Bay,” he recalled. He decided instead to create a new company, FTX, which specializes in derivatives.

In traditional markets, derivatives are used to help farmers or other businesses hedge against price changes in commodities like oil or grain.

There is some trading of cryptocurrency derivatives in the United States, on platforms like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which has long offered commodities options and futures in things as diverse as agriculture, energy and metals. But the CME is a classic exchange that has greater restrictions — and federal government oversight — with lower leverage caps available only to professional traders.

Cryptocurrency innovators like Arthur Hayes, one of the founders of BitMEX — short for the Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange — took this classic approach and turned it into a much more lucrative idea, at least for the platforms.

BitMEX began what Mr. Hayes called the perpetual swap — a bet on a future price change that does not expire — and eventually offered 100 times leverage. That meant a $1,000 investment could be instantly translated into a $100,000 bet on the future price of Bitcoin.

From inception, BitMEX was explicitly intended to attract not only professional traders but also retail investors with a taste for gambling and gamers inclined to risky play, as Mr. Hayes explained in an industry talk in 2016. “There are people who offer similar types of products but are focusing on degenerate gamblers, a.k.a. retail traders in Bitcoin,” he said. “So why don’t we do the same?”

The exchange targeted social media advertising to potential customers based in the United States and boasted that to “sign up takes less than 30 seconds.”

At least initially, there was minimal effort on the part of some exchanges like BitMEX to screen investors to determine their true identities, as banks and other trading companies in the United States are required to do, or to confirm their actual locations, despite the ban on U.S. participants. Many of the platforms, including BitMEX and Binance, have recently tightened enforcement to try to curb trades by U.S. investors.

This came after the Justice Department filed charges against Mr. Hayes late last year, with the government asserting that he and other BitMEX executives were illegally operating a cryptocurrency exchange that handled about $11 billion in transactions involving at least 85,000 user accounts with ties to the United States. He has since left the company.

But the business model he helped create has only grown in scale.

FTX and Binance are among more than a dozen global cryptocurrency platforms — most of them based in Asia — that now offer perpetual swaps. FTX alone has one million users across the world and handles as much as $20 billion a day in transactions, most of them derivatives trades.

Like their customers, the platforms compete. Mr. Bankman-Fried from FTX, looking to out promote BitMEX, moved to offer up to 101 times leverage on derivatives trades. Mr. Zhao from Binance then bested them both by taking it to 125.

Losses for traders can translate into big gains for exchanges.

The platforms earn a transaction fee based on the forced sales caused when the price of the underlying cryptocurrency moves against the trader. The crash in May was started by regulatory rumblings in China and a cryptocurrency move by Elon Musk. But liquidations then helped propel it.

Some executives, like Mr. Bankman-Fried, also own related companies that do algorithmic trading to instantly cash in on market distortions that occur during these sell-offs. Mr. Bankman-Fried said that he sees no conflict in his businesses playing the two roles, as these moves help keep the markets liquid during major declines.

FTX, Binance and BitMEX’s founders have each argued that only a small share of their customers actually use high leverage. But even for those making smaller bets, problems can crop up quickly if cryptocurrency prices start to fall. On May 18 alone, there were a total of $1.6 billion worth of liquidations on BitMEX, Binance and FTX, according to Bybt, a crypto derivatives data firm. Collectively, there were $20 billion in forced liquidations in mid-May.

“If you play poker, let’s say for futures trading, if you go all in on maximum leverage every single time, the markets are going to move at one time against you and you’re going to be wiped out,” said Mr. Zhao. “The professional futures traders, they manage risk.”

But Michael Green, a crypto critic and the chief strategist at Simplify Asset Management, said the derivatives market is inherently stacked against novice traders. “The math of highly volatile instruments is that the house almost always has to win,” Mr. Green said, adding that from his perspective, “these are unregistered casinos.”

Mr. Zhao is so focused on the branding of Binance that he has the company logo — two diagonal squares representing bids and asks in trading — tattooed on what he now calls his “crypto arm.”

He and his fellow crypto nomads have become global celebrities with millions of followers on Twitter, podcasts and even livestreams on YouTube of their poker games. They are the diplomats of a renegade industry, attached to no particular state.

Binance set up its offices in Shanghai in July 2017. But two months later, when the Chinese government announced a crackdown on crypto exchanges, the company moved to Tokyo.

Japan then announced new crypto exchange rules. “So we said, well, that doesn’t fit,” Mr. Zhao explained. “So we had to move again.”

The next stop was Malta, the tiny island nation in the central Mediterranean. Now Mr. Zhao does not identify any location as the company’s headquarters.

Binance’s shifting home base, in a way, reflects his own life story. Born in China to academics, he moved to Canada when he was 12, interned in Japan while studying computer science at McGill University and went on to jobs developing trading products in Tokyo, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

“I’ve been moving around quite a bit in my life,” Mr. Zhao said. This international exposure gives him “a broader worldview” that informs his business and its borderless mentality.

Other companies have also moved. The Dutch cryptocurrency exchange Deribit announced last year that it would be operated by a subsidiary company called DRB Panama, and several of its executives moved to Central America, company officials said. Palm trees and tropical vistas now feature in the executives’ social media posts. BTSE, another exchange that specializes in derivatives, moved its headquarters from Dubai to the British Virgin Islands.

But in some cases, the claimed offshore base of operations is little more than a ruse. BitMEX listed its headquarters as in the Seychelles, an island republic in the western Indian Ocean, yet federal investigators found that most of its employees worked in New York, Hong Kong and San Francisco.

Mr. Hayes, the founder, claimed it cost just “a coconut” to bribe Seychellois authorities — less than buying favors from regulators in the United States and elsewhere, federal prosecutors said when they charged him in late 2020. Mr. Hayes pleaded not guilty in April and his case is pending. He now lives in Singapore.

“Arthur Hayes and his co-defendants in this case are innocent and they look forward to defending themselves in court,” Nate Johnson, a spokesman for Mr. Hayes, said.

Until recently, Hong Kong was a gathering place for cryptocurrency gurus, who at least before the pandemic frequently met up at industry conferences held there or at local bars and cafes.

Mr. Zhao said the community was what sold him on cryptocurrency. What he found at conferences around the world, he said, “was a very geeky, honest community.”

These personal associations sometimes lead to financial ties. Mr. Zhao’s company was an early investor in Mr. Bankman-Fried’s exchange, while Mr. Bankman-Fried’s trading company is a client of Mr. Zhao’s platform. They talk to each other regularly.

“I think I met him in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and maybe even Europe,” Mr. Zhao said of his fellow crypto nomad. “But mostly in Asia.”

Mr. Bankman-Fried and Mr. Zhao said in separate interviews that they are committed to honoring United States regulations, even if their global exchanges are based abroad.

But globally, the cryptocurrency derivatives market continues to surge — and there are clear signs that major United States players are still pouring money into the game.

More than a dozen major private trading firms with U.S. roots have set up offices in the Cayman Islands and other offshore locations, creating new corporate entities to push money through Binance’s and FTX’s overseas derivatives platforms on a huge scale, traders involved told The New York Times.

“I’m not a U.S. person,” said one trader who has moved to the Cayman Islands on behalf of a major fund, and initially left his family behind in the Midwest to set up the operation. “But I’m still a U.S. citizen.”

The trader asked not to be named as he did not have authority to discuss the arrangement publicly.

This stateless approach to running these cryptocurrency exchanges — mixed with the constant introduction of new unregulated and often highly risky products — is now facing perhaps its most important test.

Just since June, Binance has been targeted by financial regulators with warnings or other enforcement actions in Britain, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Italy, Poland and Thailand, many of them eying its high-leverage derivatives offerings or a new product line introduced this spring that allows customers to buy cryptocurrency-linked versions of stocks like Tesla and Apple.

Facing a backlash, Binance announced in mid-July that it was abandoning the new stock token products.

“The crypto industry is a very nascent industry and the landscape, including the way that cryptoexchanges are regulated, continues to evolve,” the company said in a statement to The Times. It attributed the recent scrutiny in part to mainstream embrace of crypto over the last year and said “it’s right” for regulators to examine the industry.

Mr. Bankman-Fried, toward the end of a three-hour series of interviews with The Times, said it may be time for the industry to pull back on its most extreme offerings, like leverage on derivatives trades as high as 125 times.

“It would just be easier to get rid of it than to keep having to talk about it,” he said, proposing a cap of perhaps 10 times, mostly, he added, to fight the perception that the industry is encouraging risky bets, a view he thinks is unfair.

Binance and FTX are also looking to secure a sanctioned space in the United States market. They have, within the last two years, opened United States-based platforms that do not offer derivatives but instead focus on the buying and selling of actual cryptocurrencies.

FTX also recently bought the naming rights to the Miami Heat arena and put its corporate logo on a patch worn by Major League Baseball umpires, as it works to build name recognition here. Mr. Bankman-Fried, via $5.6 million in donations, was also one of the biggest givers last year to help President Biden’s election effort — although he said in an interview that it was unrelated to his corporate endeavors.

For now, these operations in the United States generate little profit, compared to their overseas counterparts. They do follow U.S. rules, though. That does make a difference.

“It’s a much less exciting product,” Mr. Bankman-Fried said.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies captured our rapt attention with their amazing gains, creating newly minted millionaires and billionaires. There’s also talk about the volatility associated with buying digital assets and the recent sell-off in Bitcoin, along with other coins. What’s left out of the conversation is the dire need for top talent to work at these fast-growing companies. 

The U.S. economy and job market have roared back to life. Businesses—ranging from small mom-and-pop restaurants to investment banks—are engaged in a heated war for talent. Companies complain that they can’t keep up with customer demands and find enough suitable workers to satiate their needs.  

The lack of experienced talent is particularly problematic within the turbo-charged crypto community. The exchanges need highly specialized professionals, such as software engineers, compliance, legal, risk management, marketing, sales and recruiting personnel to manage, scale their businesses and deal with the anticipatory tighter regulations and government oversight.

According to Bloomberg, crypto firms are finding it tough to find the appropriately skilled candidates for thousands of open roles across the world. This sector faces a number of challenges recruiting people. Since it's still an emerging area, there aren’t large numbers of job seekers with five or 10 years of relevant experience for the specific nature of most of the job openings. 

Some people are enamored with the space, but there is an equal—or larger—number of potential candidates that shy away from the crypto field. They are afraid of the unknown, concerned about career safety and would rather pursue more traditional roles. 

With cryptos going mainstream, there is now intense competition from major banks, investment banks, hedge funds, FinTechs and all sorts of other financial institutions. Apple, Facebook, Square, Tesla, MicroStrategy and other tech companies are looking to get in—or already are in—on the action. Even the country of El Salvador got in on the game, making Bitcoin legal tender. A large number of job openings seek software developers and engineers, and these folks are in high demand everywhere.

Frederick "Fred" Ernest Ehrsam III is an American business executive and investor who is the cofounder and managing partner of cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm. He is also the cofounder of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. In an interview with Bloomberg, Ehrsam contends that the crypto industry has the potential to create as many or more jobs than the internet. 

A quick search on both Indeed and LinkedIn’s job boards shows thousands of listings for roles related to “bitcoin,” “cryptocurrency” and “blockchain.” Writer Sarah Butcher, in a piece for eFinancial, shares some crypto companies that are aggressively hiring.

Coinbase, the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange that recently went public, has been hiring from investment banks, like HSBC, Barclays and JPMorgan. At the end of last year, Coinbase employed 1,249 people globally. It plans to keep hiring “meaningfully" and currently has around 183 jobs open globally, including 26 for recruiters. 

Binance is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. Founded by Changpeng Zhao, a former head of Tradebook futures development at Bloomberg, Binance is currently advertising over 350 jobs globally. The job listings include software developers, data scientists, compliance, legal, marketing sales and human resources professionals around the world.

"We are hiring aggressively," Zhao, Binance CEO, told Bloomberg. He said, "We see the industry growing exponentially on a year-to-year basis, and we need to scale our team to cope with it," Zhao added, "We are a geo-equal-opportunity employer. We don't mind where people are, as long as they produce results." 

Blockchain.com runs a crypto exchange and says it's "rebuilding finance from the bottom up"  and is the "easiest and most powerful crypto wallet." The company has about 40 open headcounts, which could be based remotely. The jobs include low-latency developers, commonly found at high-frequency trading firms, data scientists, data analysts, quant developers, traders and even someone to work in M&A. 

BlockFi is a crypto-management platform that offers cryptocurrency trading, pays interest on cryptocurrencies and offers loans with crypto as collateral. It's currently hiring 100 people internationally, including both in-office and remote options.

Grayscale Investments, a crypto asset manager based in Stamford, Connecticut, seeks 15 people. The listings include positions for engineers and ETF professionals.

Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered digital asset bank, has about 50 job openings globally, seeking traders, engineers and risk and compliance professionals. 

Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins, has plans to increase hiring in Singapore. Crypto.com, based in Hong Kong, has over 200 openings—with more than half of them based in Asia.

To fight the war for talent, crypto firms are upping the compensation, promoting remote-work options across the globe and offering other incentives to entice people to join their companies.

I am a CEO, founder, and executive recruiter at one of the oldest and largest global search firms in my area of expertise, and have personally placed thousands of

I am a CEO, founder, and executive recruiter at one of the oldest and largest global search firms in my area of expertise, and have personally placed thousands of professionals with top-tier companies over the last 20-plus years. I am passionate about advocating for job seekers. In doing so, I have founded a start-up company, WeCruitr, where our mission is to make the job search more humane and enjoyable. As a proponent of career growth, I am excited to share my insider interviewing tips and career advancement secrets with you in an honest, straightforward, no-nonsense and entertaining manner. My career advice will cover everything you need to know, including helping you decide if you really should seek out a new opportunity, whether you are leaving for the wrong reasons, proven successful interviewing techniques, negotiating a salary and accepting an offer and a real-world understanding of how the hiring process actually works. My articles come from an experienced recruiter’s insider perspective.

Crypto tracking bot Whale Alert, which regularly publishes data on large cryptocurrency transfers, has shared that, in the past 22 hours, a massive amount of XRP, totaling 101.5 million coins, has been moved.

Ripple crypto decacorn Binance, which is currently under investigation by U.S. authorities, and several other top-tier crypto exchanges, took part in transferring this gargantuan sum of XRP.

Ten hours ago, Ripple sent 10 million XRP tokens to one of its reserve wallets, RL43-EE. Possible goals are internal use and covering operational expenses. Another Ripple wallet, RL18-VN, is used for sending XRP from Ripple to digital exchanges.

In particular, for the past few weeks, it has been sending XRP to the largest Chinese exchange, Huobi. This week, it has been 5.4 million XRP per day. Last week, the daily amount of XRP sent to Huobi was seven million coins.

Other major players that took part in moving this staggering amount of XRP on the blockchain were Binance, Bittrex, Bybit and Huobi.

The largest amount of crypto was moved by Bybit to Binance: 59.5 million XRP.

Overall, a total of $139,941,964 worth of XRP have been shifted.

As covered by U.Today, on Thursday, April 13, Binance Holdings Ltd. became the target of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on allegations of money laundering and tax evasion.

No specific accusations have been made against Binance yet, and the exchange says that it is collaborating with regulators in a very serious manner.

Earlier this year, Binance was reported to be under investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

However, CZ dismissed this news as FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt)—a popular label to put on the news by the cryptocommunity.

According to blockchain tracking service Whale Alert, which tracks large amounts of wired digital currencies, in the past 20 hours, 177.6 million XRP tokens have been moved by Ripple, Binance and several other big crypto exchanges.

That amount of XRP is equivalent to a whopping $228 million in fiat.

Recent tweets published by Whale Alert state that several major crypto companies, including the Ripple blockchain decacorn, as well as leading crypto exchanges like Binance, Huobi and Coinbase, have kicked over a total of $227,995,486 in XRP equivalent between each other.

Ripple has moved almost 10 million XRP to the Huobi exchange from its RL18-VN wallet. Notably, the same transaction took place on April 21.

BitGo has sent 10 million XRP to the Binance exchange. Coinbase shifted 38.9 million XRP (equal to $50,624,877) between its wallets.

Apart from that, Coinbase moved 7.7 million XRP to the Bitstamp exchange located in Luxembourg, one of the exchanges that delisted XRP back in January after the SEC brought its legal suit against the fintech giant on Dec. 21. The same goes for Coinbase, Binance US and Bittrex.

Binance transacted 10 million XRP to the BitGo custodial service. However, the largest lump was moved by the Bybit exchange: 130.7 million XRP ($173,389,199).

As reported by U.Today earlier, the SEC agency seeks a court order that would forbid Ripple from obtaining its internal communications and prevent it from accessing the personal gadgets of its commission staff.

The SEC insists that Ripple is making "new and broader claims" which exceed the limits allowed by the court order.

The regulatory agency accuses Ripple of "discovery gamesmanship" and harassment.

This started when the court had partly approved of Ripple accessing the SEC's documentation regarding Bitcoin and Ethereum's status as non-security assets.

But now, the SEC seeks a prohibition order to allow Ripple to work only with the SEC's external documents in this case.

According to the popular Whale Alert crypto tracker, in the past 24 hours, blockchain behemoths Ripple and Binance have wired 127.3 million XRP tokens.

This represents $71,858,922 in traditional fiat.

The Whale Alert team spreads the word that an astounding amount of XRP has been moved by key players on the cryptocurrency market, including the San Francisco-based Ripple decacorn.

The SEC-battered company has wired 39.1 million XRP tokens to Binance. The largest crypto trader by volume then moved these funds further.

The same amount of XRP was shifted internally between Ripple wallets.

Earlier, U.Today reported on large sums of XRP sent from Ripple to Binance in order to support the coin's liquidity. Binance also, from time to time, sends XRP back to Ripple.

As covered by U.Today earlier this week and last week, Ripple has made some progress in defending its interests in the legal battle against the U.S. securities regulator, begun in late December 2020.

The first sign of progress is that the federal court has agreed to conduct a telephonic discovery conference regarding Ripple's request that the SEC be compelled to produce documentation regarding the non-security status of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The event will take place on April 6.

The second step forward is that the XRP community is now legally allowed to file a motion to intervene in the lawsuit.

Curiously, Jay Clayton, the former head of the SEC who initiated the legal action against the company, has now joined One River Asset Management fund — which deals with cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ether in particular.

The cryptocurrency market continues its slide downwards, hitting its lowest level since early February. It has now sunk to a total value of $1.24 trillion, having stood at $1.42 trillion only a week ago. This represents a decline of just over 12%, with most of the top altcoins falling by higher percentages.

However, if you’re a believer in the long-term viability of crypto, then the market falls only ever provide discounts. Accordingly, we’ve picked the 5 best cryptocurrency to buy at low prices. This mostly covers coins with an absolutely low price, but it also includes a couple which priced low compared to their potential long-term value.

Bitcoin (BTC) has led today’s slide to fresh lows. It’s down by over 5% in 24 hours, having dropped to nearly $29,500. It’s also down by 10% in a week and 16% in 30 days. At the same time, its current price is 53% below its all-time high of $64,804, set back on April 14 (which now seems like an age ago).

Most major models of bitcoin’s price suggest that it’s grossly undervalued right now. The stock-to-flow model — which compares new bitcoin minting with its current stock — suggests BTC should be closer to $100,000 than $20,000.

— PlanB (@100trillionUSD) July 19, 2021

Likewise, bitcoin’s 11-year price history indicates it should reach $100,000 by the end of year. At the same time, a recent survey of 42 cryptocurrency researchers and executives found that 61% of them believe BTC is undervalued. They also, on average, expect a price of $66,284 by the end of the year.

In other words, bitcoin is cheap compared to where many expect it to be. This is why it appears among the 5 best cryptocurrency to buy at low prices.

Given its association with the controversial Bitfinex exchange, LEO Token (LEO) may not necessarily be a popular choice. However, it’s the only top-50 cryptocurrency to rise significantly over the past 24 hours and week.

At $3.17, it’s up by 7% in the past day and 8% in the past week. Better yet, it’s up by 24% in the last fortnight and 22% in the past month. This is enough to make it the best-performing coin across the past 30 days.

For those who aren’t familiar with LEO, it’s the native utility token of the Bitfinex exchange (owned by iFinex, which also owns Tether). As with Binance’s BNB, it provides Bitfinex users with discounts on trades.

💵Fiat deposits and withdrawals 🦁Access to UNUS SED LEO and its trading discounts ✅Stable and utility tokens deposits and withdrawals PLUS more! 🔥

Upgrade your account NOW!https://t.co/h6yw3UOHFn pic.twitter.com/oTTcpRp4pR

— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) November 27, 2020

At just over $3, LEO is certainly cheap. That said, the only problem with it is that it’s not entirely clear why it has been rising so strongly, particularly when the rest of the market is down. Data from Nomics shows that Bitfinex has enjoyed rising volumes over the past year.

This may suggest an increased demand for LEO. However, the volume has certainly declined in the past couple of months, implying weaker demand for the cryptocurrency.

Still, with the rest of the market tanking, LEO may be only one of the few chances for short-term gains right now.

Another cryptocurrency that has bucked today’s trend is Dash (DASH). It’s up by nearly 5% in the past 24 hours, at the relatively low price of $119. On the other hand, it remains down by 6% in the past week and 21% in the past month, following the rest of the market.

Compared to an all-time high of $1,493, DASH is certainly very cheap right now. In fact, it’s one of the few major coins that didn’t break its December 2017 ATH during the recent bull market. It’s currently 92% below this ATH, suggesting it has plenty of space left to rise if another bull market picks up.

And while Dash isn’t as widely discussed as the biggest cryptocurrencies, it continues to attract new partnerships. Most recently, it announced a deal with Naijacrypto to launch the first cryptocurrency exchange in Haiti.

More details: https://t.co/fBduO6VsnW pic.twitter.com/OylsYbBhKj

— Dash (@Dashpay) June 28, 2021

Cardano (ADA) certainly hasn’t escaped today’s selloff unscathed. It’s down to almost $1.00, having fallen by 12% in 24 hours. It’s also down by 21% in a week and by 25% in a month, with its current price some 57% below its ATH of $2.45.

These falls may be steep, but they arguably make ADA one of the best cryptocurrency to buy at low prices at the moment. According to Blockchaincenter.net, it is the fourth best-performing cryptocurrency over the past 90 days. This is due largely to it rising after May 12, when the market fell following Tesla’s rejection of bitcoin.

Cardano’s status as a proof-of-stake blockchain helped it to rise to new heights after the outgoing bull market began its decline. And it’s actually one of the few major platforms with some big positive news to look forward to in the coming weeks. This is the arrival of smart contracts, which are due to launch at some point in August. Once they do go live, Cardano will effectively become a fully-fledged dApp platform and likely enjoy increased adoption. In turn, ADA will leave behind its current low price.

Ripple (XRP) is probably the lowest, sub-$1 coin with the best long-term prospects. Its price has sunk to $0.522760, a fall of nearly 10% in 24 hours. This also marks a fall of 20% in a fortnight and 31% in 30 days.

There are two things that make XRP one of the best cryptocurrency to buy at low prices right now.

Firstly, Ripple’s ongoing case with the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to go well. Most recently, two SEC commissioners submitted a letter to the case’s presiding judge, declaring that Ripple didn’t have fair notice from the SEC to the effect that XRP might be considered a security. This letter might make a settlement or dismissal more likely.

— Jeremy Hogan (@attorneyjeremy1) July 19, 2021

Secondly, Ripple and XRP can boast more adoption than many other coins and platforms. Ripple announced a partnership with Egypt’s largest bank in May, while it also revealed a move into tokenisation at the beginning of this month.

Taken together, such developments put XRP in a position to rally strongly if and when the SEC case is settled in Ripple’s favour.

Though they're soaring Wednesday, the world's largest cryptocurrencies are still far from their peaks earlier this year as a result of heightened regulatory scrutiny in China and bearish comments from Tesla chief Elon Musk—here's when every top 10 cryptocurrency (save for Tether and USD Coin, whose values are meant to float near $1) peaked this year. 

Anticipation over crypto-brokerage Coinbase's public-market debut helped lift bitcoin to new highs in April, but after the occasion—hailed as a watershed moment for institutional adoption—failed to meet high expectations, the world's largest cryptocurrency struggled to hold on to its meteoric gains.

Amid crypto-mining bans in China and criticism over the coin's massive carbon footprint, bitcoin prices have plummeted nearly 47% from their all-time high on April 14, the day Coinbase debuted on the Nasdaq exchange.

Though Ripple's XRP hasn't surpassed its high from the crypto-trading frenzy four years ago, the volatile token's peak this year also occured on April 14—buoyed by both Coinbase's listing and a judge's favorable ruling in the Securities and Exchange Commission's ongoing Ripple investigation—but its price has plummeted a staggering 65% since.

As investors sold off their bitcoin holdings in the weeks after its peak, many plowed into other top cryptocurrencies, lifting the likes of ether, polkadot, uniswap and binance coin to new highs in early May, as big banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley started revving up operations in the space.

Some cryptocurrencies also got a boost from billionaire Elon Musk—including his unabashed favorite, "joke" token dogecoin, which surged to a new high on May 8, the day of Musk's highly anticipated Saturday Night Live debut, but has plunged nearly 70% since the self-proclaimed "dogefather" used his airtime to call the digital asset a "hustle."

After days of surging while the broader crypto market started crashing over environmental concerns, Cardano's ada token, which claims to have a much less carbon-intensive mining process than bitcoin, peaked on May 15 and has fallen nearly 45% since, much like the rest of the crypto-market.

Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market soared during the pandemic in light of inflationary concerns and soaring institutional adoption, but prices have plummeted since April, when Tesla—one of bitcoin's biggest corporate investors—disclosed it sold a large chunk of its holdings. Musk, who cheered on the crypto market during its massive rally earlier this year, helped intensify crypto's crash last month by tweeting out that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin because of its hefty environmental cost—a single development that wiped out more than $300 billion in crypto market value in just hours. Markets have failed to recover since then amid an intensifying regulatory crackdown in China, and the value of the world's cryptocurrencies—at less than $1.4 trillion Wednesday—is roughly half of the nearly $2.6 trillion at its peak on May 12.

“The fall that has taken place since [Musk first soured on crypto] shows just how wild an instrument bitcoin is, how overbought it has become and how influential the Tesla CEO now is in the space,” Oanda Senior Market Analyst Craig Erlam said in a recent note. “I’m not sure any of that is a good thing.”

Regulation. Experts have long warned that heightened government intervention could stunt the crypto market’s massive rally, and the recent mining crackdown in China has proven that. Still, the last time regulatory concerns crashed the market—by more than 80% in 2018—prices managed to bounce back. The market is still up about 50% from its early 2018 peak.  

Major Cryptocurrencies—Including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin—Plummet As China Widens Crackdown (Forbes)

Crypto Crash Intensifies As Losses Eclipse $1.3 Trillion Just Two Weeks After Market's All-Time High (Forbes)

Crypto Markets Crash Again After DOJ Seizes $2.3 Million Bitcoin Ransom (Forbes)

I'm a reporter at Forbes focusing on markets and finance. I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I double-majored in business journalism

I'm a reporter at Forbes focusing on markets and finance. I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I double-majored in business journalism and economics while working for UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School as a marketing and communications assistant. Before Forbes, I spent a summer reporting on the L.A. private sector for Los Angeles Business Journal and wrote about publicly traded North Carolina companies for NC Business News Wire. Reach out at jponciano@forbes.com. And follow me on Twitter @Jon_Ponciano

By now, investors will have a relatively good understanding about the biggest cryptocurrencies in the market, however, the more niche coins such as cardano, litecoin and polkadot to name just a few are now also being wrapped into exchange-traded product (ETP) format.

With bitcoin, ethereum and others setting fresh all-time highs through the first half of 2021, many investors have started looking to the more dimly lit corners of the crypto universe, to the coins whose day in the sun is potentially yet to come.

Happy to service this demand, ETP issuers have taken to launching products targeting increasingly innovative, early-days – and frankly, niche – digital assets, to offer the reassurance of on-exchange trading to those looking to speculate on ‘the next big thing’.

Cardano ADA

The largest of the coins on our list is ADA, from the cardano platform, which has a market cap of $42.5bn.

The cardano infrastructure relies on Ouboros, currently considered the world’s largest proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. The advantage of this framework is its much lower energy consumption versus the proof-of-work (PoW) protocols currently used by most cryptos. In fact, the Ethereum Foundation has announced it plans to shift its native currency onto PoS.

Cardano allows developers to construct decentralised applications and conduct peer-to-peer transactions via its native token, ADA.

Now the world’s fourth-largest crypto infrastructure, cardano has a settlement layer, similar to bitcoin, and a computation layer, similar to ethereum.

At present, the 21Shares Cardano ADA ETP (AADA) and the Valour Cardano SEK ETP offer investors access to the coin within an exchange-traded wrapper.

Ripple XRP

Starting life as opencoin before transforming into ripple, the platform has its own token, XRP, which is designed to allow financial institutions to transfer money with minimal wait times and fees.  

By 2018, over 100 banks were using ripple’s xcurrent messaging technology but avoided XRP due to concerns around volatility.  

Based on a common shared ledger, the platform relies on a network of independent servers that compare transaction records. Ripple can support a range of tokens representing fiat currencies, cryptocurrencies, commodities and other units of value such as frequent flier miles and mobile minutes.

A sticking point for the platform was the lawsuit brought against it by the Securities and Exchange Commission, with the regulator stating XRP had been illegally marketed to retail investors without making clear the risks involved in trading the asset.

This update saw 21Shares remove XRP from its mixed-basket HODL ETP but investors can still gain exposure via the 21Shares Ripple XRP ETP (AXRP) and the CoinShares Physical XRP (XRPL). At present, Ripple has a market cap of $31.8bn but in 2017, was briefly the world’s second-largest crypto.

Polkadot DOT

Moving down the list in terms of market cap, the $14.9bn polkadot platform was created by ethereum co-founder, Gavin Wood. 

Designed as a sharded heterogenous multi-chain architecture, polkadot allows external networks and customised layer one ‘parachains’ to communicate, creating a connected internet of blockchains.

Wood developed the polkadot protocol while mulling the sharding hurdles that might be faced in the ethereum 2.0 specification. By embedding sharding, the platform breaks the blockchain network down into separate entities to reduce latency – allowing it to scale and process more transactions per second.

Currently, exchange-traded exposure to the protocol is offered by two products from Swiss issuers, the 21Shares Polkadot ETP (ADOT) and the Valour Polkadot SEK ETP.

Litecoin LTC

Beginning as an early bitcoin spin-off in 2011, litecoin is a peer-to-peer digital asset released via an open-source client on GitHub, with a market cap of $9.7bn. 

Though bearing many similarities to bitcoin in its technical makeup, litecoin differentiates from the mega -ap coin in its lower block generation time (two-and-a-half minutes versus ten minutes), a higher maximum number of coins, and different hashing algorithms and user interface. 

The coin also uses scrypt in its PoW algorithm, which is a sequential memory-hard function that requires more memory than non-memory-hard equivalents. As a consequence, the devices used for Litecoin mining are more complex and expensive than those used for bitcoin prospecting.

The CoinShares Physical Litecoin (LITE) and ETC Group Litecoin ETC (ELTC) currently track the performance of the asset.

Solana SOL

With only a marginally smaller market cap of $9.1bn, solana is a third-generation PoS blockchain that creates a trustless system for determining transaction time called Proof of History (PoH).

Versus a PoW protocol, a PoH orders transactions in a series of hashes, allowing validators to process and transmit less information in each block, in turn reducing the time it takes to confirm a new block. 

Solana also uses other capabilities – Tower BFT, Turbine, Gulf Stream, Sealevel, Pipelining, Cloudbreak, Archivers – to create a network with a 400 millisecond block time, versus 10 minutes per block for bitcoin and 15 seconds per block for ethereum.

Earlier this week, the first ETP targeting solana, the Solana (SOL) ETP (ASOL), was launched by 21Shares.

Stellar XLM

Finally, we have stellar, an open-source, decentralised protocol for digital currency to fiat currency transfers with a market cap of $6.3bn.

Founded by ripple co-founder, Jed McCaleb, the platform uses the SCP protocol created by Stanford professor David  Mazières.

Since 2014, stellar and its native token XLM/lumens have been backed by $3m in seed funding from Stripe. The platform was then integrated into South African messaging platform, Vumi, and Nigerian microfinance facilitator, Oradian, in 2015.

A year later, the crypto integrated with Deloitte to create cross-border payments application, Deloitte Digital Bank. And since, stellar has partnered with the ICICI Bank in India, African mobile payments firm Flutterwave, French remittances company Tempo Money Transfer, IBM and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.

At present, investors can gain exposure to the digital asset via the 21Shares Stellar ETP (AXLM).

Just click on any of the ETF links in the article above and you will get access to a whole host of data including:

Please note: The tool is provided by ETF Logic who shall process your personal data in accordance with their privacy policy.

The ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline hit the headlines in May.  Colonial  Pipeline decided to pay the hackers who invaded their systems nearly $5 million (75 bitcoins) to regain access. Over the next several weeks, the FBI traced the address of the wallet the criminals gave to Colonial to make the payment according to Bloomberg. At that point, federal law enforcement seized the assets, recovering 2.3 million worth of bitcoins transferred. 

The FBI said in its request for a warrant that its investigators had in their possession the private key for that cryptocurrency wallet. How they obtained the private key which is closely held is unclear.  One scenario is that hackers had made the choice to entrust the private key for their Bitcoin to a cryptocurrency exchange which was forced to hand over the funds to the FBI. 

This incident is a reminder of the threat of cyber attacks on critical infrastructure in the U.S. and the use of crypto currency in ransomware attacks.  Criminals favor Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies because of the pseudo-anonymous nature of the technology, and funds in the wallet can be accessed only with a complicated digital key. 

It can also serves as a case study of risks and controls of the cryptocurrency platforms that facilitate the trading of cryptocurrencies.

Crypto investors who are more sophisticated and security-conscious tend to keep their coins away from major trading apps, such as on ‘cold’ wallets and USB keys.  In reaction, the fintech firm Square is reported to be developing non-custodial bitcoin hardware wallets to give investors sole control of their private keys and retain greater control of their cryptocurrency.

The boom in cryptocurrency investing has made the industry an attractive target for malicious hackers and thieves to go after and carry out frauds, scams and thefts. In 2018, cryptocurrency crimes hit $1.7B value, revealed CipherTrace's annual Crypto Anti-Money Laundering and Crime Report. This figure soared by almost 165% year-over-year to $4.5B in 2019, before dropping to $1.9B in 2020.  

A range of vulnerabilities affect crypto exchanges from operator error and security flaws to malware affecting hard drives in search of wallet credentials and private keys.  This has led regulators to call for greater protection of customers and investors. Internal controls modeled on established financial institutions include robust verification of new accounts that complies with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules. Since most cryptocurrency services and exchanges fall outside financial services regulations, standards of integrity and security are inconsistently followed.

On the internet you can even find examples of cryptocurrency exchanges advertising that they do not conduct KYC verification of customers, customers are allowed to keep their personal information to themselves. One such exchange is Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, based offshore. I note that Binance is currently under investigation by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice for money laundering and tax offenses.

A challenge for trading technology is to maintain the level of security, anti-fraud and other capabilities in keeping with greater volumes and types of transaction.  Larger centralized crypto exchanges have had to tackle system outage issues amid extreme market volatility. They are deploying RegTech tools for advanced KYC/AML risk monitoring and analytics to achieve their risk management and compliance strategy.

Insiders fear that tighter internal controls and more regulation will deter innovation and push the business offshore. In recent study by Brian Feinstein and Kevin Werbach, Wharton professors of legal studies and business ethics, in their paper in the Journal of Financial Regulation, the authors argue that greater regulation of cyber platforms would not necessarily dampen enthusiasm for crypto or push trading to more laissez-faire countries. They studied trading activity at several exchanges worldwide following key cryptocurrency regulatory announcements. Good business drives out bad. As bad actors leave, legitimate investors, from day traders to major investment firms, become more prominent, they argue.

In conclusion, the Colonial Pipeline hack and FBI investigation have provided a case study of the systems and controls of crypto currency trading venues, particularly relating to the risks of security breaches, KYC/AML and custody of private keys. Exchanges and other platforms remain vulnerable, and security and compliance frameworks must continue to be made robust to prepare and defend against potential hacks and thefts of customer assets, and keep fraudsters and money launderers away. This can be a competitive advantage.

I have very diverse experiences and outstanding past achievements in risk management, finance and technology as well as a passion for teaching. I created the ERM program

I have very diverse experiences and outstanding past achievements in risk management, finance and technology as well as a passion for teaching. I created the ERM program at New York Life Insurance Co. from scratch, built on strong enterprise risk management processes, minimizing operational risks, robust credit risk measurement techniques, CCAR stress testing, Board communication and strong partnerships with the businesses. I discussed and debated with professionals about all kinds of contemporary challenges and issues in risk management, finance and technology. I am considered a thought leader in risk management in the industry having spoken at many conferences. I now teach new graduate level courses on fintech, blockchain and cyber security risk management at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College.

Most people consider investing or trading in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as intimidating. This is because the cryptocurrency market has been presented to most people as a very technical financial market.

However, that is not the case. You can start trading or invest in cryptos in no time, as long as you follow the right process. Following the right process starts by choosing the cryptocurrency exchange to use. Crypto exchanges are your gateway to the cryptocurrency market. Hence, the reason why they are important.

This guide helps you learn how to choose a crypto exchange and some of the best ones in the market.

What Are Crypto Exchanges?

What Are The Criteria For Choosing Crypto Exchanges?

The Top Four Cryptocurrency Exchanges For Experts And Beginners

How To Use A Cryptocurrency Exchange

Crypto Exchanges are platforms where people can buy and sell cryptos like Bitcoin. You can use the exchanges to trade one cryptocurrency for another — converting Bitcoin to Ether – or to purchase the cryptocurrency using regular fiat currencies like the USD or GBP. These platforms reflect the current market prices of the cryptocurrencies they offer. The users can also convert the cryptos back to fiat currencies on an exchange, giving them the option to withdraw the funds back to their regular bank account or leave it on the exchange platform to trade back into cryptocurrencies later.

There are hundreds of cryptocurrency exchanges available to traders and investors. Hence, making it a tough decision to choose the best ones. However, the criteria outlined below will help you determine how to choose the right cryptocurrency exchange for you.

Conduct your research to determine whether the exchange you are choosing is a legitimate and secure platform. The authenticity and security of a platform will help you determine if your funds would be safe with the crypto exchange. Traders have lost billions of dollars to scam platforms. Hence, ensure you check the reputation of the platform and the various security protocols they have in place to secure your data and funds.

The method of purchasing cryptos varies between platforms. Some platforms support deposits by bank transfer, some use PayPal, others accept credit and debit cards, and some only use cryptocurrency for purchases. Study the various payment options available on the platforms and choose the one most suited to you. For starters, with no coins, it is essential that you choose a platform that accepts fiat currency as it allows you to enter the market with little stress.

Virtually all crypto exchanges support Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, there are thousands of cryptocurrencies, and some investors want to gain exposure to others aside from BTC and ETH. Thus, you have to know the coins and tokens supported by a crypto exchange before you choose one. Binance is the most popular because it grants traders and investors exposure to more cryptocurrencies than other platforms.

The transaction fee structure differs across various crypto exchanges. Understanding the fee structure of a crypto exchange is crucial as it allows you to know what you are dealing with when conducting several activities. Ensure that you choose a platform that doesn’t have hidden transaction fees. You can choose a platform that offers flat transaction rates or those with a more flexible structure.

This criterion is very important to your success as a cryptocurrency trader or investor. An exchange with an intuitive interface and good user experience makes it easier to trade the cryptocurrencies available. However, user experience is subjective, and people enjoy various interfaces. Furthermore, ensure to check the customer service and other customer-related functionalities offered by a crypto exchange. The easier to access the platform, the better.

There are hundreds of cryptocurrency exchanges available to traders and investors. However, these four are some of the leading and most powerful crypto trading platforms in the world.

Binance is considered the most powerful cryptocurrency exchange in the world. With a trading volume above $13 billion per day, Binance is the largest. It also offers traders access to hundreds of coins and tokens as it has one of the largest collections of altcoins in the market. In addition to regular spot trading, Binance offers other services such as staking, derivative trading services and more. Binance is available in over a hundred countries globally, providing crypto trading services to millions of people. Finally, Binance is a good option for anyone who wants more advanced charting than most other exchanges.

Register on Binance here.

Coinbase is amongst the most widely used digital currency trading exchanges, especially for traders in the United States. It is now a publicly listed company and provides services to crypto traders in the US, Europe and other parts of the world. Coinbase processes over $2 billion in trading volume per day. It offers crypto trading services to both retail and institutional traders, with the Coinbase Pro platform specially dedicated to the professional traders and investors. As a publicly-listed exchange, Coinbase offers insured custodial wallets for investors and traders to store their coins. Coinbase is highly secure but doesn’t offer as many cryptocurrencies as Binance.

Sign up with Coinbase here.

Kraken is one of the oldest trading platforms currently in existence in the crypto space. Due to the number of years, it has been around, Kraken is admired by many and provides trading services to thousands of traders globally. Similar to Coinbase, Kraken is looking to become a publicly-listed company. Kraken allows traders to access hundreds of cryptocurrencies, fund their accounts using fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies, and gain access to other cryptocurrency trading services.

Register with Kraken here.

CEX.io is another leading cryptocurrency exchange. Its excellent user interface makes it a good platform, especially for people new to the cryptocurrency world. It allows users to access a wide range of cryptos, including the leading ones such as Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin. The customer support on CEX.io is also one of the best in the crypto space

Register with CEX.io here

Using a cryptocurrency exchange is simple and involves a few steps. They are;

Register with the cryptocurrency of your choice.

Provide your name and other correct details and proceed to verify your account in accordance with the AML and KYC standards

Access your cryptocurrency exchange account and fund it using any of your preferred payment methods

Identify the coin or token you wish to buy and swap the deposited funds with the desired cryptocurrency. You can also buy BTC, ETH or USDT with the deposited fiat currency before swapping these cryptocurrencies with your desired coin or token.

If you intend to hold the coins for long, it is best to move them to a cold storage wallet. However, you can leave them on the exchange wallet if you intend to trade the coin.

Cryptocurrency exchanges are central to your success as a trader or investor. Hence, knowing how to choose a crypto exchange is crucial. The above-reviewed platforms are some of the best exchanges available to traders globally.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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What do Vladimir Putin and Burger King have in common? 

For starters, they both have a cryptocurrency named after them. Actually, PutinCoin and Whoppercoin might be the only thing they have in common. But their namesake cryptocurrencies are among the thousands of different virtual currencies making up a growing marketplace grabbing investors’ attention.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have a growing track record of holding and increasing in value over time, though recent dips have wracked the market, while lesser-known cryptos are considered much more speculative and unpredictable. And while PutinCoin and Whoppercoin belong to a category of cryptocurrencies marked more for their absurdity than their potential as either an investment or cryptocurrency, they show just how unique different types of cryptocurrencies can be.

Here’s Where to Start:The Most Popular CryptocurrenciesDecentralized FinanceDigital GoldDigital Cash or Internet MoneySoftware Platforms Stablecoin or Digital FiatMemecoins, and Other Strange Cryptocurrencies

In general, cryptocurrencies can be grouped by utility: What is the purpose of the cryptocurrency? What is its value proposition? What is it for?

“They all have different utilities, they all have different founders who have different visions for where that cryptocurrency is going,” says Mike Uehlein, founder and financial planner of WealthU advisors. Uehlein regularly talks to clients about investing in cryptocurrency. 

The Most Popular Cryptocurrencies

There are thousands of cryptocurrencies, most with very little value and unclear potential. Many advisors recommend investors stick to Bitcoin and Ethereum — if any — and pass on the smaller cryptos. 

Leading cryptocurrency news outlet CoinDesk maintains a Coindesk 20 list of the most popular cryptocurrencies currently being bought and sold. This list includes cryptocurrency assets and networks by their most common names. Some, like Bitcoin (BTC), have one name for both the blockchain network and the cryptocurrency. Others, like Ethereum, are named for the broader blockchain network, but have a different name for their associated native cryptocurrency (Ether, or ETC, in the case of Ethereum).

Updated quarterly, the list ranks cryptocurrencies based on dollar volume and other data from third-party cryptocurrency exchanges, where people can buy and sell different cryptocurrencies.

BitcoinEthereumXRPCardanoStellarUSD CoinChainlinkUniswapPolkadotBitcoin Cash

Note: This list was last updated – using the Coindesk 20 – on July 1, 2021.

1. Bitcoin

As the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC) is also the most popular and highly valued, despite high volatility over the course of its history. Bitcoin was initially created to be used as a digital payment system, but experts say it is still too volatile to be used for that.2. Ethereum

Ether (ETH) is the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, an open-source blockchain upon which developers can build apps and other cryptocurrencies. It’s also the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, behind Bitcoin. Ether’s value has risen sharply since its creation in 2013, to nearly $3,000 for one token as of late May, but still lags well behind Bitcoin’s value of nearly $40,000 per coin. 

3. XRP

XRP is the cryptocurrency of the Ripple digital payment network. Built for digital payments, XRP touts itself as a faster and more efficient way to power global payments. Ripple and XRP also allow for third-party development on other uses for XRP.

4. Cardano

Cardano (ADA) uses a technology called Ouroboros, a peer-reviewed blockchain protocol. It describes itself as a more secure and scalable way to maintain decentralization.

5. Stellar

Stellar’s native cryptocurrency is the Lumen (XLM). Stellar is designed as an “open network for storing and moving money” that allows people to create, send, and trade digital money. It’s designed to sell and trade all digital monies, not just Stellar’s own associated cryptocurrency, the Lumen — although you’ll need to own some Lumen to make transactions.

6. USD Coin

USD Coin (USDC) describes itself as “the world’s digital dollar.” Created by a global financial firm called Circle, USDC is the result of work that has been invested in by Goldman Sachs, Baidu, and IDG Capital, among others. USD Coin is tied to the U.S. Dollar, which makes its price much more stable than other cryptocurrencies. That stability lends itself more toward digital payments, while other cryptocurrencies have more potential to increase in value as investments (along with more risk of losing value, of course).

7. Chainlink

Chainlink (LINK) uses “real-world data and off-chain computation while maintaining security and reliability,” according to its website.

8. Uniswap

Uniswap (UNI) is a decentralized crypto exchange that operates on Ethereum’s blockchain. Its developers promise to get rid of unnecessary intermediaries, which it says gives users more control.

9. Polkadot

Polkadot (DOT) says its mission includes allowing different blockchains to exchange information and transactions with one another. Its website plays up data and identity security and users being in control.

10. Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, which was the original intention of Bitcoin. The currency allows you to send money anywhere for very low fees.

While each of these top cryptocurrencies is unique in its own way, they all tie into an underlying principle called  decentralized finance (DeFi).

Decentralized Finance 

In its simplest terms, decentralized finance refers to financial activities conducted without the involvement of a traditional bank. 

Think about all of the activities in which you’d normally use a bank or some other financial institution — getting a loan, insurance, investing, even using a credit card. “All of these [activities] are traditional-finance based and have intermediary companies,” says Ollie Leech, learn editor at CoinDesk. “Now people are creating these products in a completely autonomous way with [cryptocurrencies].”

It can seem counterintuitive — where else would you go for a loan, if not an established lender? But that’s one of the appeals to DeFi, says Leech. 

In the same way people have increasingly brought “smart” technology into their homes, proponents say cryptocurrency has potential to automate and digitize more and more aspects of the financial system. The appeal of this happening outside the conventional — or centralized — finance system depends on who you ask. 

Many Americans may not understand the appeal of a finance system that operates beyond government control. But things can be very different in countries with less financial stability, says Roger Aliaga-Díaz, principal and senior economist with Vanguard Investment Strategy Group. If cryptocurrencies offer as much or more stability as a given national currency, it’s an entirely different equation than if your national currency is the safe and stable U.S. dollar.

Just like there are different types of accounts and tools in conventional finance — from savings accounts to investment accounts to credit cards — that are used for different purposes, different cryptocurrencies can have similarly unique uses in this emerging decentralized finance system.

Instead of going to a bank to draw out a loan, you might “go to a decentralized application that’s not owned or operated by anyone in particular,” says Leech. 

Where conventional loans involve humans at a bank who take part in processing, reviewing, and approving loans, a DeFi loan — with funding in the form of cryptocurrency — could run via app on a network like Ethereum with an algorithm processing it. The borrower would put up some cryptocurrency as collateral, which they’d get back minus interest when they repay the loan.

“The code runs autonomously using smart contracts,” Leech says. “So once the developers release the data they’re pretty much hands-off, and everything runs automatically so there’s no intermediary.” 

Ethereum’s website offers a comparison chart contrasting decentralized from traditional finance. Along with these technical differences, a big consideration to keep in mind is that the conventional financial system is regulated to serve the interests of everyday customers, while cryptocurrency and decentralized financial systems are largely unregulated, and subject to governance and oversight only by their creators/users.

Unlike the money kept in a bank account, money you have in crypto may not be FDIC insured. Some exchanges offer this insurance while others don’t — something you’ll want to look into before buying crypto from one or another. For exchanges that don’t offer this insurance, there’s no guarantee you will be repaid if there is a hack or the exchange goes out of business.

You hold your moneyMoney held by financial institutions Transfers happen in minutesPayments can take days to processTransactions are pseudonymous Financial activity is coupled to your identity (social security number, name, address, etc.)Market is always openMarket closes Built on transparency – anyone can inspect the systemFinancial institutions are closed books.comparison-table tr td:nth-child(){border-left: 10px solid #5bffb1;border-right: 10px solid #5bffb1;}.comparison-table tr:first-child td:nth-child(){border-top: 10px solid #5bffb1}.comparison-table tr:last-child td:nth-child(){border-bottom: 10px solid #5bffb1}

With that in mind, here are some of the broad categories of cryptocurrencies that tend to organize the market.

Digital Gold

Digital gold refers to cryptocurrency comparable to real gold in its ability to store and increase in value. There’s a limited amount of gold on earth, in the same way that digital gold cryptocurrencies have a limited supply. 

“People buy gold not because they expect to be able to go to the store and spend it, but because they expect it to hold its value and maybe, probably, increase in value over time,” says Galen Moore, director of data and indexes at CoinDesk. 

The primary example of a digital gold cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, though that was not its original intention. Bitcoin was originally put forth as an electronic peer-to-peer cash system, but its volatility, among other things, limited its potential for that purpose. 

In use, such digital gold cryptocurrencies are bought and held, “for the same reason people would have diamonds, or some $100 bills, or some gold coins in a safe,” says Moore. Litecoin is another example — it’s been described as silver to Bitcoin’s gold.

Digital Cash or Internet Money

Internet money is exactly what it sounds like — you use it to buy things over the internet. 

Bitcoin was originally intended to be digital cash, but speculation led to the creation of another cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Cash (a variation of Bitcoin). Bitcoin’s price was too volatile for it to be a suitable currency, which proponents for Bitcoin Cash argued was the entire point of the currency to begin with. 

“There was a big debate about what the future of Bitcoin was going to be. Was it gold or was it cash? The people who wanted it to be more like gold won out,” says Moore. The decision was a “turning point for Bitcoin where it really went down to be digital gold.” 

But the group that wanted Bitcoin to remain internet money split off — or forked, in crypto parlance — the currency and created Bitcoin Cash. The network is devoted to digital payments (with faster processing and lower fees). In these ways, Bitcoin Cash is “meant to be cash. That’s the value proposition,” says Moore.

Though Bitcoin Cash is designed and intended for transactions, its price is still volatile and probably not your best option for making or receiving payments. 

Software Platforms  

Ethereum represents another type of cryptocurrency: It operates as a cryptocurrency network and along with its native cryptocurrency, Ether, offers a programmable crypto environment for developers. Similar to how smartphones allow third-party apps to be downloaded and used, Ethereum allows developers to create “dapps” — Ethereum-based apps that tap into the network. 

Investors can buy Ether just like they can buy Bitcoin, hoping it increases in value. Ethereum’s programmable network allows for other, more customizable uses. One example is the creation of NFTs — nonfungible tokens — that caught the attention of people far beyond the cryptocurrency community this year. NFTs are Ethereum-based digital assets, which hold value based on demand and supply on the Ethereum network.  

Stablecoin or Digital Fiat

A stablecoin pegs its value to some other currency or commodity. A digital fiat represents a fiat, or government-backed, currency on the blockchain, says Moore. One of the most popular examples of a digital fiat is Tether, a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar. 

Tether is a system that enables you to have a cash-like currency that is always worth $1 — but only on cryptocurrency exchanges. A digital fiat like Tether comes in handy when you want to quickly move your assets within a cryptocurrency exchange. For example, if you think the market for smaller, more unpredictable coins is going to crash, you might put your money in a stablecoin like Tether, and then buy back at a lower price after the crash, says Moore. 

Stablecoins enable the exchange to flow better, says Moore. Taking the previous example, you could theoretically cash out your smaller coins for actual dollars, and then reinvest those dollars after the crash, but it could take days to convert your coins into dollars and back again, says Moore. 

Memecoins, and Other Strange Cryptocurrencies

There are thousands of cryptocurrencies available. Many of them have little to no value, and no discernable value proposition, which lands them in the category of memecoins. Experts recommend avoiding investing in this category of coins and sticking with more well-known options like Bitcoin or Ethereum, if you decide to invest in crypto at all. 

Whoppercoin and PutinCoin fall into this category of cryptocurrencies, as does another famous memecoin of recent fame: Dogecoin. While Dogecoin has seen a rise in demand — and thus value — in recent weeks, it still is highly volatile, as evidenced by its drop in value when Tesla CEO Elon Musk made it the subject of a joke on a recent episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

Any cryptocurrency that’s not Bitcoin is referred to as an “altcoin.”

Bitcoin, Litecoin

Bitcoin Cash, XRP

Ethereum, Cardano, Polkadot

Tether, USD Coin

Dogecoin, PutinCoin, Whoppercoin

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Kraken, CoinEgg, Gemini, Binance — we’re not talking about mythical creatures or the Internet’s latest buzzword. These are all cryptocurrency exchanges — digital marketplaces where you can buy and trade crypto.

You can’t just buy crypto from your bank or investing firm. Once you’ve decided you want to buy some Bitcoin, Ethereum, or another cryptocurrency, you’ll need to create an account on a crypto trading platform to exchange your U.S. dollars (or other currency) for digital assets.

Some, like Coinbase, have been around since the early days of Bitcoin, when there was far less oversight into how crypto was bought, sold, and traded. Others, like Robinhood and PayPal, are better-known for other services, and have only recently allowed customers to trade crypto within their existing accounts.

Here’s what you need to know about why choosing the right crypto exchange is important, and the details experts recommend evaluating before making your choice.What is a Crypto Exchange?

A crypto exchange is a platform on which you can buy and sell cryptocurrency. You can use exchanges to trade one crypto for another — converting Bitcoin to Litecoin, for example — or to buy crypto using regular currency, like the U.S. Dollar. Exchanges reflect current market prices of the cryptocurrencies they offer. You can also convert cryptocurrencies back into the U.S. Dollar or another currency on an exchange, to leave as cash within your account (if you want to trade back into crypto later) or withdraw to your regular bank account.

There’s no one crypto exchange that’s best for every user, says Tyrone Ross, a financial advisor and CEO of Onramp Invest, a crypto investment platform for financial advisors. Instead, he says it helps to evaluate your own interests when it comes to crypto, and find an exchange that aligns with your goals. For example, maybe you’re looking for a specific coin, or you want to continue learning more as you get into crypto investing. 

“Am I looking for something like Casa, because Casa does a lot of work for me and I don’t have to worry about a public and private key? Am I going to Gemini, because Gemini has this weird coin that I want and they’ll allow me to buy it? Or am I going to Coinbase because Coinbase has these really cool tools that allow me to learn and earn crypto?”

What to Look for in an ExchangeAccessibility

Your location may prevent you from buying and selling crypto on certain exchanges due to state or national regulations. Some countries, like China, have banned citizens from accessing crypto exchanges at all. 

In the United States, there’s a lot of regulatory uncertainty around cryptocurrency, and some states have instituted their own regulations. For example, New York requires exchanges to obtain a BitLicense before they can operate within the state and only allows licensed companies to offer certain approved coins. Most other states don’t have regulations as strict as New York, but many do regulate in some way, or are taking steps to do so. Thirty-one total states have pending legislation regarding digital currencies in their 2021 legislative sessions, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.

You can often find information about the geographic limitations of an exchange — as well as related accessibility factors, like national currencies accepted — on its website or within the terms of service. 

Security

Cryptocurrency isn’t backed by any central institution, and your cryptocurrency holdings aren’t protected the same way as money in the bank or traditional investments. Some exchanges, like Coinbase and Gemini, keep any balances in U.S. Dollars you hold with them in FDIC-insured bank accounts. But FDIC insurance doesn’t apply to cryptocurrency balances.

To protect your crypto, some exchanges have insurance policies to protect the digital currencies users hold within the exchange from hacking or fraud. Coinbase, for example, has an insurance policy worth $255 million. That means if Coinbase’s reserves were hacked and any amount of crypto up to $255 million was taken, account holders would be protected. Others, like Kraken, rely on their security practices to protect clients rather than insurance policies. 

Whether you plan to keep your crypto holdings within an exchange or only have it there for a short time before moving it into your own wallet, the exchange’s security should be top priority. For example, look into how much of its assets the exchange keeps offline, in hard storage. 

This is even more important as the value of cryptocurrencies grows, since more value means more lucrative targets for potential thieves. In 2020, there were 28 total attacks on crypto exchanges, the largest of which resulted in more than $200 million in cryptocurrency assets stolen from Singapore-based crypto exchange KuCoin. 

Look into how much of its assets the exchange keeps offline. While exchanges, by nature, need to keep some crypto active to facilitate trades, it’s smart to keep the majority of holdings in cold storage, or offline, where it’s more difficult for hackers to access. Coinbase, for example, says it stores 98% of customer funds offline, while only 2% is actively traded. That storage, combined with its $255 million insurance policy, offers more reason to trust your crypto assets will be covered in the case of a hack.

You can also look for general online security measures you may already be familiar with on other platforms, such as two-factor authentication. That means, in addition to your username and password, you’ll have to verify your identity using an additional method, like entering a code you receive by text message, each time you log in.

In general, you may feel most secure sticking with more popular exchanges with an already-large customer base. You may be taking more of a risk doing business with smaller or newer exchanges that don’t have their security measures and offerings spelled out clearly online.

“Size matters here,” says Douglas Boneparth, a financial advisor and president of Bone Fide Wealth in New York. He points to Coinbase, which recently went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange. “There are pros and cons to that, but you now have public financials, you can actually see the health of the company, and that’s important when thinking about using an exchange or investing with any company or product or service that they’re providing.”

Fees

Fees are another thing to consider, but don’t necessarily let a high fee structure turn you off an exchange. “The easier they make it for you to buy it, the higher the fee that you’re going to be paying,” says Spencer Montgomery, founder of Uinta Crypto Consulting, a program for new investors to learn about crypto. Higher fees can also be a worthwhile tradeoff for the added protections and insurance that the bigger, more popular exchanges provide.

Exchange fees may be a fixed price, but are often a percentage of your trade. Some exchanges, like Cash App, charge fluctuating fees based on price volatility. Fees are often charged per transaction, and can differ whether you’re the seller or the buyer. There may also be different fees depending on which currencies you trade. Make sure you understand exactly how and when an exchange plans to charge you for your crypto transactions before handing over your cash. 

Liquidity

If you plan to buy, sell, or trade your crypto, the exchange you choose should have enough trade volume to ensure your holdings are relatively liquid, meaning you can sell them when you want. Again, this can be an instance where size matters. Often, the more popular exchanges are also those with the largest trade volumes. 

When a lot of trades are happening within an exchange at any given time, it means you have a higher chance of buying or selling the crypto you hold at the best price, Montgomery says. Crypto prices move very quickly, so when you use an exchange that doesn’t have a lot of trade volume, you could end up paying a higher price than you would on more popular exchanges. For example, say you decide to buy Bitcoin once its price falls below $32,000. If you’re on an exchange with a low trade volume, you may end up actually paying a different price than you think, if your purchase doesn’t actually go through until the price has moved back up. 

CoinMarketCap, a price-tracking site for cryptocurrencies, continually tracks the trade volume of hundreds of exchanges in operation. Currently, it lists Binance, Coinbase, and Huobi as the top exchanges by volume worldwide. 

Coins offered

Not every exchange offers each of the thousands of cryptocurrencies that exist. 

If you’re interested in a popular coin like Bitcoin or Ethereum, you’ll probably find it on any given exchange you’re considering. But newer altcoins, coins with a very small market cap, or meme coins may require a bit more shopping around. 

Just remember, these types of coins are often even riskier gambles on top of already highly speculative, more established cryptocurrencies. That’s why many experts recommend sticking with the big names like Bitcoin and Ethereum. With any crypto coin you’re considering buying on an exchange, only trade in a cash value you’re prepared to lose. 

Educational tools

A big priority for crypto beginners when it comes to choosing an exchange is the opportunity to learn more about different coins, digital assets, and blockchain technology, Ross says. 

“What is it that they do to make sure that they continually update you from an education standpoint?” he asks. 

Coinbase, for example, offers rewards for learning about new coins through its Coinbase Earn program. In exchange for watching videos and completing quizzes related to different coins, Coinbase will reward you with a small portion of the crypto, which you can then hold or convert to something else. Others offer courses and articles on site to help you learn about crypto markets, history, and innovations, such as Gemini’s Cryptopedia or Binance Academy from Binance.

Storage

Storage can be a divisive topic among cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Many believe in the “not your keys, not your coins,” adage, or the belief that you should hold the public and private keys associated with your crypto holdings yourself, rather than keeping them within your account for the exchange to custody.

However, an exchange that allows you to keep your crypto within your online account can be a good choice, especially as a beginner. Later, once you’ve learned more about storage options or increased your holdings, you may choose to keep your crypto in your own wallet. But Ross warns against exchanges that only allow you to store on their platform — Robinhood, for example, has been criticized for not allowing customers to hold their own crypto bought through the platform. 

“Once you become a little bit more savvy, you may want to move your coins somewhere else,” Ross says. If you decide later on that you want to move your coins off that exchange — maybe after learning more about storage options you want to keep your holdings in your own cold wallet, for example — you may find yourself stuck if you choose an exchange without that option.

Tax information

As if taxes weren’t already complicated enough, reporting cryptocurrency can add another layer of complexity to your tax return. “As the tax situation evolves around crypto assets, it’s going to be really important for people to make sure that their personal tax situation is up to speed as well,” Ross says. 

You need to report any crypto trades you make as capital gains on your tax return. That means you’ll need to know the value of your crypto when you buy it in U.S. dollars, as well as the value of it when you sell. 

Because Robinhood only allows you to transact on its platform, it provides a Form 1099-B tracking your cost basis and gains and losses, but that’s not the case on more traditional exchanges.

“When you use cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Kraken, CoinBase, etc., they don’t give you that form,” says Shehan Chandrasekera, CPA, head of tax strategy at CoinTracker.io, a crypto tax software company. That’s because exchanges that allow you to move your holdings off their platform can’t track everything in your personal wallet or trades you make on other exchanges. “That’s when it becomes tricky and when those users have to use a tool to reconcile their entire picture, get the data, and then file their taxes.” 

Bottom Line

There are additional factors you can consider based on your own preferences, Boneparth adds, like customer support, how well you like the platform’s mobile app, and how easy the exchange is to use overall. But like we hear from experts time and again when it comes to crypto, taking the time to learn as much as you can before you put money into crypto is one of the most useful things you can do.

Think about the fee structures and security measures you’re comfortable with, what additional steps you’ll take to store your coins, and your goals.

“You probably should spend more time learning about the space,” Boneparth says. “You’re putting risk on your money in a pretty wild environment. It’s one thing to haphazardly put money into more stable markets, it’s a completely other thing to throw money into volatile markets. So it’s important to get educated, especially when you’re going to deal with something that’s perhaps more volatile than other risky assets.”

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The Financial Conduct Authority is implementing tight regulations in the cryptocurrency space and cracking down on some crypto platforms. The tight regulations have seen more crypto firms withdraw their applications from the regulator.

UK’s Financial Conduct Authority is keeping an eye on the cryptocurrency market after it was appointed anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regulator of crypto-asset firms earlier this year.

Since it was appointed the major regulator of the cryptocurrency market in the U.K., the FCA has asked crypto firms to register with it before they can operate in the region. In the past six months, the British regulator has only registered six firms, and it is assessing dozens more.

Crypto platforms that registered with the regulator in December are eligible to receive the Temporary Registrations Regimes (TRR). With the TRR, they can continue offering their services while the FCA assesses their registration.

The tight regulation in the U.K. is causing several companies discomfort in the United Kingdom. An FCA spokesperson has revealed that 64 applications have been withdrawn in less than a month. This was up from 51 that was recorded earlier this month.

According to the FCA, several businesses are withdrawing their applications because they don’t meet the required anti-money laundering standards. The cryptocurrency companies have to update their mode of operations to comply with the AML standards before they can reapply with the regulator.

Last weekend, the FCA warned Binance that it doesn’t have the authority to conduct regulated activities in the U.K. The regulator banned the exchange from conducting any regulated activity in Britain.

The ban on Binance led another crypto exchange Huobi to suspend its U.K. customers from accessing derivative services on its platforms. Overall, the FCA said it is working with other major regulators, notably in the U.S. and Asia, to ensure that crypto exchanges operate under the rules of law.

The cryptocurrency market could experience massive regulations in the coming months. The Bank of France governor recently urged the EU to quickly regulate the crypto market. Failure to do so could affect the EU’s monetary sovereignty. The regulators in various parts of the world believe it is important to regulate the crypto market as it continues to grow both in size and adoption.

The crypto market is on a positive trend for the third consecutive day. Bitcoin’s price is up by less than 1% over the past 24 hours and is currently trading above $35k. The total cryptocurrency market cap has also gone up, from roughly $1.1 trillion last week to $1.4 trillion at the time of this report.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

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