Best Bitcoin Brokers – List of Top BTC Trading Sites 2023
Compare the best Bitcoin trading platforms to find out which ones offer the features you are looking for. Check out the broker features in our top menu to get filtered broker lists.
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- BTC
- USDT
- no minimum
- $80 Bonus
10% Fee Discount Pro:
- No KYC
- Free demo account
- Unknown CEO
- Not for US traders
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- Bitcoin Futures
- Crypto Spot Market Exchanges
- BTC
- Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- no minimum
Certain withdrawal fees Pro:
- Highly trusted
- Low fees
- 80+ altcoins
- Hacked in 2019
- Complicated instruments
- Bitcoin, Altcoin
- Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- Fiat Money, BTC
- no minimum
- Regulated and highly secure
- Demo accounts
- No minimum deposit
- More products could be available
- Low crypto leverage
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- Bitcoin Futures
- BTC, ETH, EOS, XRP
- no minimum
- $10 Welcome Bonus
- Advanced order types
- $50 Welcome Bonus
- Highly transparent
- Not for US traders
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- BTC
- 0.001 BTC
- 50% Welcome Bonus
- No KYC
- Great customer support
- Not for US traders
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- Sport Market
- BTC
- Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- no minimum
- Highly-rated mobile app
- Low fees
- Fiat-to-crypto purchases
- Withdrawal fees for most cryptos
- Minimum withdrawal amounts
- Complex fee structure
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- BTC
- Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- no minimum
Certain fiat transfer fees Pro:
- Best Mobile App
- Anonymous accounts
- No trading fees
- High swap rates
- Low transparency
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- Bitcoin Futures
- BTC
- $1 minimum
10% Fee Discount Pro:
- High leverage
- Highest liquidity
- Market leader
- Mandatory KYC
- Not for US traders
- Cryptocurrency Spot Market Exchange
- Crypto CFD Trading
- BTC
- Altcoins
- no minimum
- Many altcoins
- Altcoin margin trading
- High liquidity
- No advanced orders
- US traders excluded
- Website often slow
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- Sport Market
- BTC, ETH, LTC, XLM, EUR, USD
- High liquidity
- Low trade fees
- 163+ tradeable altcoins
- Many features need upgrading
- Little to no transparency
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Purchase
- Margin Trading
- P2P exchange
- Bitcoin Futures
- Crypto Spot Market Exchanges
- BTC
- Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- no minimum
Spot: Maker -0.005% -0.1% | Taker 0.025% - 0.1% Pro:
- High Security
- Many altcoins
- BTC Futures
- Occasional outages
- Relatively low volume
- Bitcoin, Altcoin
- Margin Trading
- Bitcoin Futures (not in USA)
- Spot Market
- BTC, Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- 1 EUR | 20 USD | 20 CAD | 150 GBP | 15,000 JPY
Certain transfer fees Pro:
- High liquidity
- Margin trading
- Most secure broker
- Deposits can be expensive
- Bitcoin, Altcoin
- Crypto Spot Market Exchanges
- BTC, Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- No fees for crypto transfers
- Supports ~20 cryptocurrencies
- Range of payment options
- Comparably high fees
- No crypto wallet
- No crypto-to-crypto exchange
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- Crypto Spot Market Exchanges
- BTC, Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- $20 minimum
Spot: Maker 0.1% | Taker 0.2%
Certain transfer fees Pro:
- Highly trusted
- Amazing trading interface
- Advanced order types
- Hacked in 2016
- Demanding verification
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- Crypto Spot Market Exchanges
- BTC
- Altcoins
- no minimum
Certain withdrawal fees Pro:
- Altcoin margin trading
- Unique BTMX rewards system
- Only 10x leverage
- Not for US traders
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- Crypto Spot Market Exchange
- BTC
- Altcoins
- no minimum
- Huge amount of altcoins
- 100 Free DOGE
- Not for US traders
- No live chat support
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- BTC, USDT
- 0.0001 BTC minimum
- High leverage
- Simple trading interface
- Major altcoins tradable
- Not for US traders
- Cryptocurrency Spot Market Exchange
- BTC
- Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- 20 $|€ minimum
- Top security
- Unlimited withdrawals
- High volume
- Relatively high fees
- Slow support
- Cryptocurrency Spot Market Exchange
- Bitcoin, Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- 1$; 50RUB; 1EUR minimum
- Many low cap altcoins
- fiat deposits accepted
- excellent support
- Only limit orders
- No stop loss
- Low volume
- Bitcoin, Altcoin Derivatives
- Margin Trading
- BTC
- Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- 10 USD minimum
- 1 USD micro accounts
- Many payment methods
- Experienced broker
- Also Traditional CFDs
- Support not 24/7
- High fees
- Only basic order types
- Bitcoin, Altcoins
- Margin Trading
- Bitcoin Futures
- BTC
- Altcoins
- USD
- no minimum
Transfer fees may occur Pro:
- High liquidity
- Advanced order types
- High withdrawal limit
- Leverage not yet for USA
- No more Futures
- Cryptocurrency Spot Market Exchange
- BTC
- Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- no minimum
- Anonymous accounts
- More than 50 altcoins
- Relatively low fees
- Demanding verification
- Lack of a mobile app
- Slow withdrawals
- Cryptocurrency Spot Market Exchange
- BTC
- Altcoins
- No minimum
- Good Liquidity
- Many smaller coins tradable
- Bad support
- Cryptocurrency Spot Market Exchange
- Margin trading
- YEN, USD, EUR
- 0.001 BTC minimum for margin trades
- High liquidity Bitcoin exchange
- 6 Altcoins supported
- Phone support only in Japanese
- Sketchy FAQ
- Cryptocurrency Spot Market Exchange
- BTC
- Altcoins
- no minimum
- Fast verification
- Good support
- High trading fees
- Liquidity sometimes low
- Bitcoin Futures
- Derivatives
- BTC
- 0.001 BTC
Certain withdrawal fees Pro:
- European Vanilla options
- Fast trading
- Low fees
- ID verification mandatory
- Liquidity issues
- Bitcoin, Altcoin
- Spot Market Exchanges
- BTC
- Altcoins
- Fiat Money
- No minimum
- Good liquidity
- High volume
- Competitive fees
- No margin trading
- Bad for privacy lovers
- Weak support
- Bitcoin, Altcoin
- Spot Market Exchange
- BTC, Altcoins
- Fiat Money
Certain transfer fees Pro:
- very trusted
- no leverage
- relatively high trading fees
Contents:
*MetaTrader:
MetaTrader 5 is the most popular trading app for Android and iOS. It can be used to trade on a lot of major exchanges. There are even brokers without their own trading engine who only use MetaTrader as their trading platform. Overall MetaTader has a pretty good reputation, especially for beginners it works well. Super pros might see some downsides, but for a beginners it’s anyway a useful tool to stay trading online even when you are on the go.
How To Choose The Right BTC Broker Platform?
Trading Bitcoin is a great way to make some extra cash or to enhance the amount of Bitcoins you own, if you manage to trade overall profitably. Buy low, sell high and then reinvest the gained cash for an even bigger amount of Bitcoins at a point when the price has decreased again.
But how to choose the right trading platform? There are many and more solutions to choose from around the Internet. Traders can look for certain features that can help the decision which platform suits best their needs.
Bitcoin trading platforms are those sites where users can take advantage of to the changes in the cryptocurrency prices to make profits. This works either by directly buying Bitcoins or through certificates which value is linked to the digital currency (CFD trading).
Types of Trading Platforms
Two Most Significant Differences Between Crypto Brokers
Not all cryptocurrency brokers are created equal, actually all of them are more or less different. As a rule of thumb, you will be able to pick from CFD based exchange, or a platform on which you will be trading an underlying asset (actually buying or selling Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency).
CFD Crypto Brokers
By deciding to trade on a CFD platform, you are not buying the asset itself but only speculate on the price difference. A CFD is a contract between you and the broker, which comes with some significant advantages. First of all, by using CFD, you will be able to hold both long or short positions, enabling you to benefit from every price change.
What is more, CFDs allow you to use leverage, which can significantly boost your return on investment or magnify losses. The most common type of CFD are perpetual contracts, as we find on BitMEX, PrimeBit, PrimeXBT, ByBit, DueDex and a range of other BTC brokers.
The majority of those CFD crypto brokers operate on bitcoin deposits. So even if in the trading instrument of your choice BTC is not involved, the margin of your trade will be taken from your BTC deposit. Think of this as collateral that will back every transaction you are performing on a given platform, instead of a fit currency deposit.
For example, if you decide to go long on BTCUSD, part of your deposit will be used to facilitate the trade. After closing it, the difference in price will be added or taken out of your initial deposit. The majority of the CFD-based exchanges will also allow you to trade different altcoins (against BTC or USD), always based on the same BTC deposit.
Couple of such brokers also allow certain altcoin deposits, mainly Ether, Tether or Litecoin. And few even allow fiat money deposits, such as SimpleFX or BitFinex. In order to be allowed to make fiat deposits you always need to verify your account first (by photo ID and maybe some other documents).
Cryptocurrency Exchanges
In contrast to CFD brokers, on cryptocurrency exchanges the given assets are exchanged “physically”, if this is a word that can be used at all in the case of cryptocurrency. For example, if you want to trade USD against bitcoin, you will have to deposit USD, and by entering a trade (purchasing BTC), you will become an owner of the asset.
So cryptocurrency exchanges are large marketplaces (e.g. Kraken, CoinBase, etc) where you can buy BTC, for example, to make a deposit on a CFD broker platform like BitMEX, PrimeXBT etc.
While most of that type of exchange focus their operations around the ability to trade different fiat currencies against Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies, some also offer Bitcoin against altcoin trades. In many of them, for a trade to be executed, you need to own and deposit Bitcoin, and pick a trading pair. But again there are platforms accepting fiat deposits as well, e.g. Binance or Bitfinex.
Anonymity
As Bitcoin is a pseudo-anonymous digital currency by nature, it is common that users prefer to keep their profile low and do not want to share any personal details on the Internet. Pseudo-anonymous means that Bitcoin addresses cannot be referred to individuals as long as their name has never been linked to the address.
Before registering at a Bitcoin trading platform it’s worth checking what kind of personal details are needed in order to sign up for the service. Cryptocurrency exchanges where you can buy Bitcoin against fiat money require an ID card with photo for withdrawals. But professional trading (based on contracts for difference) can be done anonymously for example at BitMEX or at PrimeXBT.
An email address is always needed for the sign up process. In order to stay anonymous, one could create an e-mail address only for the usage on the BTC broker sites. Further personal information can make the registration process long, it can even take multiple days, especially if the platform needs to verify the IDs, therefore it’s worth considering that part as well.
This verification process is generally required, as soon as you want to exchange your BTC into cash or the other way round. So if you want to link your bank account or credit card to your trading account, you have to show who you are, of course.
Verification / KYC
If you are not sure if the given exchange/trading platform will require you to submit ID and verify your identity, check if it supports trading fiat deposits, withdrawals, and trading. If it does, the platform must perform ID verification to operate legally. On the other hand, if it’s a purely cryptocurrency-based platform (i.e., BitMEX), you might be able to trade without any identity check. However, the policies of such anonymous bitcoin brokers can change any time, so you shouldn’t be surprised when they ask for an ID one day, too.
Mobile Apps – Ability To Trade On The Go
In the age of smartphones, most Bitcoin trading platforms already have an application for Android or iOS which enables customers to use the services on the go and manage finances from anywhere at any time. If there is no app, the platforms are usually mobile friendly at least.
Or you can mostly use a general trading app such as MetaTrader to manage your trades at a certain Bitcoin Broker platform that doesn’t have an own mobile app.
Generally speaking a BTC broker must pay attention to the usability as clients do not want to spend too much time just exploring the features, all of them should be self-explanatory or familiar from other big sites and branch standards.
Coins and Trading Pairs
BTC/USD is the most widespread currency pair to trade with but some trading platforms offer other Cryptocurrency-to-Fiat currency trading options as well, most commonly ETHUSD and LTCUSD. Sometimes even more high cap altcoins can be traded against fiat money. The available exchange rates are usually depending on the country where the platform operates. EUR, RUB and CNY are the currencies users can choose from besides the US Dollar.
Beside Bitcoin, currently more than a thousand of alternative cryptocurrencies, so called altcoins, exist on the market. As the underlying program behind Bitcoin is open source, anyone can create a new coin on the market.
Each altcoin is more or less a different version of the original Bitcoin blockchain project with some additional or alternative features included in the algorithm. The most important and popular altcoins include Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, Dash, Monero.
As altcoins are becoming more popular in the recent years, more and more platforms started to offer alternative altcoin trading to a certain extend. If altcoins are on the menu, the prices are in most cases expressed in Bitcoin and in USD – that’s why BTC is also called the crypto reserve currency. There are only few places where users can directly exchange altcoins against US Dollar.
Couple of sites also offer the possibility to trade other derivatives on the platform, like Options and Futures. These financial products are tricky and traders should definitely know what they are doing before executing any trades in those areas. Futures are often part of a hedging strategy in times of crises.
Fees
The trading fees are calculated based on the transaction volume just like in the case of ordinary FX trading. Higher volume means lower percentage fees per trade. The average trading fee varies between 0.01-0.5%. Anything outside of this range should warn the prospective traders about possible scams.
Margin Trading Fees
If margin trading is offered, that is always available for an extra fee. Trading on margin means borrowing money to increase the amount of the exposure. Leverage can go up to as high as 200x. This leverage can significantly increase profit at the closure of the trade, but also means higher risk to the trader.
Many platforms have even aligned their trading fees with one another to create kind of an industry standard. In the field of BTC-based CFD brokers (BitMEX etc.) the fees are often the same: Makers even receive a small fee of 0.025% for their trade, so they get a rebate, while takers have to pay a fee of 0.075%.
Some trading platforms decided to remove the trading fees from the fee structure to increase the volume of trading activit, e.g Overbit and SimpleFX. Those platforms only earn a share of the spread (difference between bid and ask price).
Funding Fees for Leveraged Positions
When leverage is used there is an additional fee that can occur – the funding fee. This funding fee origins in the traditional financial markets where it has the purpose to balance the long and short scale and it is only exchanged between all traders holding long or short positions with leverage.
So there is one side that has to pay the fee to the other side, which will receive the fee like a rebate. Who pays who (longs pay shorts or shorts pay longs) depends on the balance between longs and shorts over a certain time interval. A negative funding fee means this side gets paid.
The BTC broker itself isn’t involved and doesn’t get a share from that. This funding fee, however, only gets due when traders hold positions over a certain period of time. There is an exact time stamp each day, or even several times a day ( usually every 8 hours) when the fee has to be paid if positions are being held over the timestamp. If the position is closed right before, then there is no fee. So traders always watch out for those certain hours.
Please keep in mind that you will be able to trade with higher leverage only by using CFD based crypto brokers. The only cryptocurrency exchange offering some leverage is Kraken. By depositing collateral, you will be ready to trade both long and short, up to maximum leverage supported by a given platform.
That being said, using high leverage will significantly increase the risk and might result in a margin call if a price increase or drop would cut off too much of your account balance (margin).
If you let it come to a margin call, your position will be liquidated if you don’t top up your account immediately, leaving you with nothing. Therefore it’s recommended always to avoid liquidations by closing a position beforehand, even with a loss. In this case at least something will remain, even though not much – better than 0 in the case of a liquidation.
Deposit / Withdrawal Fees
There are even some cryptocurrency trading sites that charge withdrawals, whenever the user wants to unload the funds from the accounts. In some rare cases, even the funding of the balance is charged, so it’s worth checking the terms and conditions before sending money to a platform.
BTC Broker Liquidity
Liquidity is one of the most important aspects of trading, and lack of it might lead to some significant losses while entering or trying to close an open position. Lack of liquidity can even lead to gaping, further eating into your gains.
Liquidity affects both CFD based crypto brokers as well as exchanges. Think of them as a meeting point for individuals who want to buy and sell a given asset. A trade can only be performed if two parties agree on a given price. For example, a market becomes illiquid if at a given price there are many sellers, but little to no buyers.
So in this scenario, if you want to close your long position with a market sell order and the order book is thin, you will experience slippage that will significantly impact your gains.
Should you be worried about an exchange being illiquid? It all depends on how big your position is, the order type, how deep is the order book of a given exchange, and does the platform support iceberg orders (large hidden orders divided in smaller chunks). As a rule of thumb, if you stick to major brokers, and unless you are closing positions worth a few million Dollars during a significant price change, you don’t need to worry.
Liquidity can also be impacted by trading bots, enabling much faster execution of the trade. A bot is a software program or a script that uses exchange API to receive information, interacting with it by submitting buy and sell orders. Because a bot can set up a sell order within milliseconds, it significantly impacts some strategies, like scalping.
Security Measures
There are certain measures that can increase the security of a Bitcoin Trading Platform. These sites handle a lot of money, therefore they are subject to hacking attacks all the time. If a platform keeps the majority of the funds in a cold storage wallet and they are applying SSL certification that provides a good base for security. Two-factor-authentication saves customers from unauthorized access to their accounts.
The years of experience behind a platform can be derived from the history of the company and the ownership structure. The more popular an exchange the higher volume it manages, making it a trusted trading platform across the Bitcoin community. Hopefully all exchanges and brokers continually monitor their platform for any unusual activity to protect both their franchise and their customers.
Fear of Hacks
Even though the Bitcoin trading platforms make their best to be up to date with their security measures, from time to time a hacking attack hits the news. Hacked accounts, stolen Bitcoins are left behind the unauthorized access of the exchange’s fund. It is also important to examine, how an exchange coped with such attack in the past as it also shows the way they approach customers.
Bitfinex, after recovering the site from the attack and counted for the loss, offered it’s customers newly issued altcoins in order to cover partially for their losses. Bitfinex did a real great job by creating own platform tokens for the users which had lost money. Read more about their smart solution.
However no matter what types of security measure a Bitcoin trading platform does apply, traders should always follow the golden rules of Bitcoin trading, but first of all, never leave any Bitcoins long term on an exchange. Because: Your private key – your Bitcoin. Not your private key – not your Bitcoin.
Also check out this reddit thread about Bitcoin brokers.