Best Crypto Exchanges in the UK

Everything You Need to Know About Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin Exchanges

Features to Look for When Choosing a UK Exchange

Now that you know the two main types of exchanges you will encounter, you next need to know what to look for when picking a specific exchange. Here are some factors that you should definitely keep in mind when comparing different types of exchanges you might want to use.

• Speed: Depending on your situation, you might have different needs in terms of speedy transactions. Read up on the exchange’s policy on how long it takes to complete a transaction before you sign up for anything.

• Risk: Before signing up for a cryptocurrency exchange, check out what measures they take to secure the platform.

• Prices: What sort of markup over the spot price does the currency charge? This could result in you losing a lot of money if you’re not careful, so look for the best rates possible if you’re trying to be cost-effective in your exchanges.

• Location: Where is your exchange located? This might play a factor, especially in certain exchanges that require you to be in a specific geographic area.

• History and Reviews: Looking up the history and reviews of a cryptocurrency exchange is a good way to find out how reliable it is. Have they been involved in any scandals in the past? Do they generally get high ratings and glowing reviews from satisfied users? These are good guides to help you decide if it is the right cryptocurrency for you.
• Coins: From Bitcoin to Ripple, Ethereum, and everything in between. Check which coins the exchange supports.

The Best Bitcoin Exchanges

Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency that the world has heard of and the first one to become popular outside crypto circles and enter into mainstream usage. The growing interest in Bitcoin prompted the emergence of digital marketplaces across the world where traders could buy, sell, or trade these coins with fiat currencies (and later on other cryptos).

By now, there are thousands of Bitcoin exchanges, offering all sorts of trading options, but this accessibility and convenience make it harder to pick the right one. We advise traders to look for a simple clutter-free platform, that instead of investing in altcoin support and advanced tools and features, focuses on facilitating quick and cheap Bitcoin transactions.

For UK traders, Binance is one of the best options available on the market right now. Apart from the amazing cryptocurrency offer, the platform offers support for GBP and EUR payments too.

If you prefer using a UK-based Bitcoin exchange, CEX.io is a reliable platform that lets you pay in GBP and make deposits via Visa or Mastercard. The fact that it’s located in the UK guarantees high responsiveness and fast trade execution.

The Best Altcoin Exchanges

More and more traders turn to altcoins these days, mostly because they like speculating on the price of these volatile coins and making small investments. Trading altcoins, however, is never risk-free as these coins have low liquidity and market cap which makes them susceptible to “pump and dump” schemes.

As long as you’re careful and have a well-thought-out strategy, you have nothing to worry about. The next step is finding a reliable altcoin exchange that has large trading volumes and liquidity so that it can withstand potential altcoin flash crashes.

Again, our number one recommendation is Binance because it offers more than 1,000 altcoins for the adventurous traders among you. You can trade these tokens with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, or the exchange’s very own token, the Binance Coin (BNB). You can use the platform’s trading tools and in-depth charts and always stay one step ahead of other traders.

Apart from Binance, traders can also try CEX.io and Kraken as they both have a decent variety of altcoins as well. We recommend Kraken to experienced traders who would feel comfortable with the advanced interface and crypto jargon.

The Cheapest Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Sometimes, looking into the fee schedule of a crypto exchange can help you make a better assessment and decide whether it works with your investment plan or not.

For example, if you’re a retail trader who looks at crypto trading as a hobby, you probably won’t produce large trading volumes all the time. This means that you need an exchange with a lower starting fee as opposed to one that takes into consideration the trading volume to adjust its fees.

Binance has the cheapest option for crypto to crypto trading because its fees start as low as 0.1%! In case you own enough BNB (Binance’s native token), you can use them to pay your fees and get an additional discount. Incredible, right?

Another exchange suitable for UK retail traders is Kraken where the average fee is 0.26%.

If you’re involved in the corporate or institutional market, an exchange like Coinfloor might be exactly what you’re looking for. Based in the UK, Coinfloor has built a solid reputation among high volume traders for its affordable fees. The fees vary between 0.30% and 0.10% based on your 30-day trading volume. For example, volumes over 500,000 GBP qualify for a 0.20% fee while those over 1 million GBP get a reduced 0.10% fee.

The Largest Cryptocurrency Exchanges

The largest crypto exchange is the one with the largest daily trading volume. The trading volume shows whether an exchange is liquid or not, and whether it’s used by a large number of traders because they’re satisfied with its performance or not.

If you visit the official website of any crypto exchange, you would typically find a box that counts the daily trading volume and website visits. Unfortunately, most of the data is either false or has been manipulated before with wash trading. You shouldn’t find this so surprising as there are platforms that are ready to do anything to gain more customers.

One of the few reliable organizations that still try to combat and filter the spread of fake information, as well as to bring some more frankness to the industry, is the Blockchain Transparency Institute. According to their research, Binance is the largest crypto exchange in the world. The daily trading volume of Binance exceeds $2 billion!

Coinbase is an American brokerage based in San Francisco that’s both suitable for UK traders and belongs to the list of largest cryptocurrency exchanges with a trading volume of almost $150 million on a daily basis.

The Most Popular Cryptocurrency Exchanges

There’s not much difference between the largest and the most popular crypto exchanges. Namely, if a platform demonstrates large trading volumes, it means that it’s popular with traders and they trust it enough to make large investments over and over again. Coinmarketcap has live statistics of which exchanges have the largest trade volumes which is a good place to start.

Therefore, it’s only logical that Binance and Coinbase are both on our list of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges. The same estimations coming from the Blockchain Transparency Institute and Similarweb show that we’re not the only ones who think so. These trustworthy sites have found out that Binance and Coinbase have the highest number of website clicks.

As far as UK crypto exchanges are concerned, Coinburp and CEX.io definitely take the crown here. They have been continually praised for their efforts to popularize crypto trading in the UK and make it seem less intimidating for novices. They offer account customization, live market data, and charts for market analysis.

The Best Cryptocurrency Trading Platforms

Are you more interested in trading cryptocurrencies rather than making a simple buy or sell order? If the answer is yes, then here’s a quick summary of what a fully-fledged trading platform should offer.

First of all, you need a variety of digital assets to make your trading more versatile. You want to choose a platform that offers advanced features such as margin trading, limit and stop offers, over-the-counter (OTC) services, different market charts, customizable portfolio, futures, etc.

Most of these features will be available to you if you create an account with Binance. You’ll get to enjoy margin trading with up to 125x leverage, peer to peer, and OTC trading options.

For traders drawn to futures investments, Kraken offers up to 50x leverage on returns. It has the same OTC option as Binance, with one-on-one service for high-volume traders. These traders are eligible to apply for Kraken’s Account Management program and get extra help to make the most cost-effective trading decisions.

Moreover, Kraken is one of the few exchanges that offers a dark pool for Bitcoin purchases. The dark pool functions as your personal order book where you can place buy/sell orders without disclosing your interest to the rest of the network.

The Safest Cryptocurrency Exchanges

One of the biggest challenges for crypto exchanges is dealing with hacker attacks and illegal trading. Investing in sophisticated cybersecurity measures is crucial in the development of any online platform that stores sensitive data and provides financial services.

To elevate the security standards, reliable crypto exchanges obtain licenses and register as money businesses with local or international financial regulators based on the markets and countries they provide services for.

Current regulatory frameworks require mandatory KYC checks for every single customer, monitoring and identifying suspicious trading patterns, reporting illegal activity, conducting third-party audits, implementing mandatory two-factor authentication method, etc.

Our candidates for the safest crypto exchange that have shown a satisfying level of security with consistency are Coinburp, Binance, and Coinbase. The three of them apply encryption protocols to sensitive data and keep the funds in air-gapped cold storage.

On top of the regular security methods, Binance has its own Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) to which the exchange allocates 10% of the collected trading fees. By now, you already know that Binance has the highest trading volumes which means that their SAFU reserve vault could cover any unfortunate money losses.

Cryptocurrency Exchanges That Don’t Require ID

As we said in the previous section, KYC checks are mandatory on almost every well-known and respectable exchange.

They’re part of the application form itself and request user details such as full name, physical address, contact information, utility bill or bank statement, and any kind of government-issued ID (passport and driving license included).

However, not all traders approve of this verification method. Many of them condemn it for ideological reasons because they believe in one of the strongest arguments of early crypto proponents and that’s the need for more privacy in online and cross-border money transactions.

If you belong to this group and privacy is of key importance to you as well, you definitely want to learn about the best platforms that require almost no documentation to let you purchase cryptocurrencies – Paxful and LocalBitcoins.

These exchanges only ask for your email address to let you access their trading platform and search for a matching order. They let buyers and sellers find each other and agree on the payment method that works best for them. Some users might ask to see your ID before completing the deal, but it will be up to you to accept or deny their offer.

The only drawback is that you can’t purchase more than 1,000 EUR in one year on LocalBitcoins or $1,500 on Paxful.

Another platform to have in mind if you want to avoid disclosing your identity is Binance. Here, you’re not allowed to surpass their withdrawal limit of 2 BTC per day.

Cryptocurrency Exchanges That Let You Pay With Cash

If you want to purchase cryptocurrency with cash, the first option is to look for a Bitcoin ATM if there happens to be one near you. This can be done on websites like Coin ATM Radar. This comes really handy when you’re traveling and can’t connect to the Internet to use your platform’s mobile app.

If you prefer paying with a credit or debit card, use Coinbase or CEX.io. Unfortunately, card purchases incur the highest fees. Coinbase charges a 3.99% fee on instant buys with a debit card. On CEX.io you can pay via Visa or Mastercard only, with a fee of 3.5% + £0.20.

The option to pay via card is also available on LocalBitcoins and Paxful. You can even arrange to meet with your partner in person and pay for your coins in cash. This is a much riskier option so never agree to meet with that person alone.

If none of this works for you, you can buy a Flexpin or Neosurf prepaid voucher that can be spent on exchanges such as Bitit. Just make sure you’re okay with the 8% service fee that comes with these types of purchases.

The Best Non-Custodial Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Another possible classification of cryptocurrency exchange is into custodial and non-custodial. The former decides to store customer information or even their funds (providing their own digital wallets), the latter provides no such services.

Non-custodial exchanges only act as intermediaries in their customers’ transactions and help facilitate the coin swaps. The customers are assigned the task to find a third-party platform where they can store the private keys to their wallet address or purchase a hardware device that offers an added layer of protection by safeguarding the key offline.

If you don’t feel like you can trust custodial exchanges with your private keys, you can check our guide to finding the best crypto wallet, and join a non-custodial exchange such as Coinmama. The platform has received a green light from the US financial regulator FinCEN on its security compliance.

The Best Decentralized Cryptocurrency Exchanges

What’s the difference between centralized and decentralized crypto exchanges?

Centralized or “traditional” exchanges – as they were the first type of crypto exchanges available to traders – are included in the order-making, processing, and finalizing transactions. Most of them offer escrow services and completely or partially cover the insurance for the customers’ funds.

Decentralized or peer-to-peer exchanges find ways to incorporate blockchain technology and create a decentralized network where customers don’t have to wait for their approval to complete money transactions. The most common solutions are smart contracts or atomic swaps.

Today, it’s still a challenging task to create a 100% decentralized exchange. One such decent option is Bisq, a platform where you can purchase Bitcoin with any fiat currency without providing your ID. Sadly, the long waits and slightly higher expenses can put off a lot of traders.

If your crypto trading portfolio focuses on ERC-20 tokens, you can check out the decentralized Ox and Airswap protocols.

Exchanges That Deserve An Honourable Mention

There are a number of exchanges that didn’t make our main list such as Bitfinex, Poloniex, Gemini, Okex, and Kucoin. We’ve gone into great depth on our individual review pages for these exchanges, so if you want to view more about these platforms, you’re welcome to check them out. The reason why we didn’t include them on our Best Exchanges in the UK list was either the lack of trading pairs, supported currencies, customer support, high transaction fees, etc.

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Frequently Asked Questions