Simplefx.com Review 2023 – Pros and Cons of Trading on SimpleFX

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About the Company

SimpleFX is an online trading company based in Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It was founded in 2014, but registered in June 24, 2015, under number 22361 IBC. The Local Operating Unit in charge of SimpleFX is the London Stock Exchange, under Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) 21380042B8QJ87V4HA89.

In March 2019 SimpleFX won an award for their world class trading app. On the Finance World Expo Summit (Switzerland) the app was voted as best trading app due to their excellent usability on mobile phones, remarkable reliability and speed as well as for their quick updates of app features. The crypto broker has a huge increase in new users lately. Go to the website here.

The platform is not focused on any particular market, but it runs under the laws of the United Kingdom. There is no public information about its daily trading volume, but they claim to be associated with “top liquidity providers”.

Trading Products

SimpleFX is a CFD (Contracts for Difference) trading broker, not an exchange for real assets. So you trade price differences and never buy or sell the underlying asset. In comparison to other cryptocurrency CFD brokers, SimpleFX offers a large variety of CFDs, not only cryptocurrencies but also traditional markets. You can actually trade CFDs of

• Cryptocurrencies (BTCUSD, BCHUSD, ETCUSD, ETHUSD, LTCUSD, XRPUSD)
• Forex (about 50 pairs)
• Indices Cash (ASX200, CAC40 and 10 more)
• Commodities (NATURALGAS, UKOIL, USOIL)
• Precious Metals (XAGAUD, XAGUSD, XAUAUD, SAUEUR, XAUUSD)
• Equities (DE, JP, US, BR, FR, SE, TR, UK)

All trading products are Contracts for Difference (long or short) for which you can manually set expiry dates.

Using The Site: Signing Up

Setting up an account is extremely easy, you can either register through social login (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Telegram) or just with an email address. After email signup you get a confirmation link. The password is established right after completing the signup through confirmation.

From this point on, you can decide whether to stay anonymous by depositing with cryptocurrencies or switching to a verified account and have a broader range of payment methods at your disposal.

If you opt for a fiat-enabled account, you must submit a valid national ID and a proof of residence, and the SimpleFX team will decide whether to upgrade your account or not.

Demo Accounts

Demo trading accounts are available and two are automatically created after signing up. You can add up to 10 such accounts to test the platform, in any of the 15 supported base currencies, or in cryptocurrencies. In General each account (live or demo) is divided into 2 sub-accounts, one based on BTC, the other one based on USD. In your first demo account after signup you automatically have 50 BTC and 10,000 USD as play money at your disposal in your demo sub-accounts.

Using The Site: Funding Your Account

All accounts allow cryptocurrency deposits, more specifically Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Dash, Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Monero (XMR), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Tether ERC20, Tether OMNI or by Fasapay.

There are no account top up commissions besides the network fees, and the funds will arrive immediately, or at least within 2 hours, depending on the congestion.

Other payment methods are available for users who’ve verified their identity in order to use the whole range of services of SimpleFX. Supported systems include credit cards, Skrill, Neteller, bank transfers, Fasapay and many local alternatives. Verified accounts can be directly funded using any of the accepted currencies, avoiding losses for currency conversion.

The following Currencies are supported by SimpleFX:

Australian Dollar, Canadian Dollar, Swiss Franc, Chinese Yuan, Czech Koruna, Danish Krone, Euro, Pound Sterling, Indonesian Rupiah, Japanese Yen, Norwegian Krone, Polish Zloty, Russian Ruble, Swedish Krona and United States Dollar.

Besides anonymity, cryptocurrencies offer the added benefit of chargeless withdrawals. On the other hand, most fiat methods originate a fee that starts at 0.2% with a minimum of 10 USD per transaction.

Generous First Deposit Bonus

Users of SimpleFX get to enjoy a quite generous deposit bonus when making their first deposit to their SimpleFX trading account. This bonus is as much as 20% or even 25% of the deposit on top, depending on the deposit amout. The offer runs until 12/31/2022. See the details below:

Using The Site: Trading

SimpleFX offers a wide range of investment options, including cryptocurrencies, currency pairs, indices, oil and precious metals. About 50 Forex pairs are available for trading on the site, along with 6 cryptocurrency pairs.

Users can select from two trading platforms: the built-in web interface of SimpleFX and MetaTrader 4. Four order types are supported by either platform: market, limit, stop and trailing stop orders.

Orders can be placed from the dashboard, which is loaded by default after signing in. If you are somewhere else, you can quickly go to the aforementioned page by just clicking the SimpleFX logo at the top-left corner.

Adding more accounts on SimpleFX. You can add a maximum of 20 accounts: 10 demo and 10 live

SimpleFX has updated their design sometime last year. Now the user interface is even more modern, clear and fresh. Good job. Pairs are presented to the left of the page, while the charting area in the middle uses most of the space. Unlike competitors who mostly have the Tradingview chart embedded, SimpleFX have their own charting tool. And a pretty cool one regarding design and functionality.

You can make an in-depth technical analysis, with any indicators of your choice. You can have open several chart windows at once in order to compare different time frames by clicking the respective icon at the top of the interface; users can take screenshots of their analysis and share their trading ideas with the community.

SimpleFX charting: BTCUSD pair, 1 day & 1 hour chart

There are many different ways to place an order, including clicking on a pair, selecting the appropriate option in the dropdown menu displayed by clicking the arrow at the left of every pair or, clicking the plus sign in the order browser.

The open order menu will be presented in a pop up where you can personalize the terms and select the type of order. When you are done with the configuration, click either buy or sell to place the respective order.

Open order dialog: configuring a BTCUSD trading order

The order will immediately be listed in the order browser at the bottom of the page. There, you can see a summary of its behavior as well as update or delete it at anytime.

You can change the take profit and stop loss by clicking the respective icon and updating the values to whatever you find appropriate.

Once you are ready to close your orders, simply click the x button and grab your hard-earned profits. For long term orders consider that swap rates on SimpleFX are relatively high and your earnings may not be enough to cover the overnight fee. So don’t forget to include that in your  profit calculations.

On SimpleFX you can take advantage of leverage by setting it to anything between 1:2 and 1:500. Actual limits will depend on the balance, with higher balances been limited to lower leverages. For cryptocurrencies, however, the required margin is 1/5 of the position size which means that you can only trade with 5x leverage.

Your account shows the account balances for which the different leverage levels would be at your disposal. This means that the higher the leverage, the lower the allowed account balance, since the broker wouldn’t be able to leverage let’s say 10 BTC with 500x – this would lead to a position size of 5000 BTC which is simply too large:

For more in-depth information about how to trade on SimpleFX, you can download this very helpful file provided by the broker: https://simplefx.com/resources/SimpleFX_Tips.pdf

Using The Site: Mobile App

The website itself is responsive, meaning that users can safely browse the site from virtually any device. But SimpleFX also has an own mobile app for Android and iOS. This is cool, since not many crypto brokers have their own app. For mobile trading you can use the MetaTrader app for Android or iOS as well.

SimpleFX Fees

The CFD broker has a simple fee structure:

Deposits Fees:
None for cryptocurrencies (apart from network fees of the respective coin)
Fiat money deposits can be subject to fees, depending on the payment method, bank, your country etc. This needs to be checked individually.

Trading Fees: None (But be aware of high spread)

Overnight Funding / Rollover Fees: Extremely high (only occurring when leveraged positions are held over night)

We personally would only day trade on this broker due to the very high overnight fees. Then still you have to be aware of the high spread (difference between bid and ask price). In any case it’s recommended to first test the full functionality of the broker through their demo accounts.

Security On SimpleFX

Security comes in different levels. 2FA can be configured to add a second layer of protection to customer accounts.

Fiat funds are stored in segregated client trust accounts, with Sparkasse Bank Malta. Bitcoin funds on the other hand are stored in cold wallets, with no more than 10% of the total BTC held by SimpleFX in their hot wallet at any time.

HTTPS is enabled in the website, providing encryption to any data traveling from and to the platform. Personal details, including billing information, are held in offline servers.

Emails sent by the company are not encrypted in any way, but they are careful enough to not disclose any sensitive data through this channel.

The SimpleFX mailing system was hacked once in May, 2016, with no balances or account details compromised in the process. Users received two random emails after the hacking with price predictions for BTC and ETH.

User Experience With SimpleFX

A common concern for many users are the high swap rates, something which SimpleFX does not warn explicitly about. Spreads have also been questioned, saying that their values do not seem to match the claimed partnership of SimpleFX with “top liquidity providers”.

The site shows caring about its customers by actively listening to customer requests and suggestions, and providing multiple tutorials and guides to get newcomers started.

Support channels include live chat (24/5), email and ticket system. They are also actively present in some social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google Plus).

Pros

• Anonymous accounts.
• Crypto-friendly.
• Many Payment Methods.
• Big variety of CFDs.
• No fees.

Cons

• High swap rates.
• Low transparency (e.g. cold wallet address, liquidity providers).

Conclusion – Great for Intra-Day Trades

SimpleFX is a good choice for day traders, wanting to take advantage of the market volatility, with no need to verify their identity or pay any fees. It is recommended to open and close positions within the same day, otherwise relatively high overnight fees will occur. We also like that you can trade CFDs of so many other assets on the site, which differs the broker from most competitors. But, as said, long-term positions are charged usurious swap rates, making it unviable for swing traders or position traders.