Exrates.me Exchange Review
Here is a review of the Exrates.me cryptocurrency exchange. If you have recently used this exchange and been happy with it or even, perhaps, frustrated, you can let us know in the comments section below this post.
Exrates.me is a cryptocurrency exchange that offers competitive trading costs at 0.2% per trade and a 0.5% commission for replenishing or refilling orders. The exchange also offers trading for more than 500 pairs and several coins for trading.
As their customer or user of their platform, you get to exchange the most popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether as well as rare cryptocurrencies that are not listed on other exchanges. The platform also lets customers exchange one crypto for another, and fiat for crypto as well as crypto for fiat. Customers are also allowed to deposit/withdraw USD, EUR, RUB, UAH, and IDR.
The exchange, which currently lists around 131 pairs, also offers an average trading leverage of 1:1, meaning you can get to trade more assets than you hold in your wallet in order to increase your returns per trade.
The centralized exchange was launched in April 2016 and is based in Armenia, with representative office locations in China and Switzerland. Their website claims that they have 147,000 traders on database and are managing a 24H trading volume of $145,000,000 and monthly trading volume of $4,129,119,142.
However, some customers using the exchange have previously reported problems with this Jakarta based exchange. Some of the problems include the exchange not allowing users to liquidate their crypto assets. There is also a post on Bitcointalk.org whose writer claims that they have investigated the cryptocurrency and found a number of problems we will list later in this article. Thus this Bitcoin.org post and a few other posts/reviews online do not recommend trading on the exchange.
How trading and other features work on Exrates.me
First of all, the Exrates does not require any sort of KYC to begin trading. Once you sign up and login, you click on your dashboard in order to access trading functionality. The platform will indicate your balance in USD.
On the top menu are ICO, Trading, Refill/Withdraw, History, Orders and Support buttons. Clicking the ICO icon from this menu allows you to access the list of tokens that are in the ICO stage, and you are able to access the trading history and charts for that coin and even buy or place a buy order for that token by setting the amount you want to buy and rate. You simply set the parameters and hit buy to place an order.
Of course you have to load your account or send some tokens in the exchange in order to trade. It is not advisable to use the exchange account as your storage account for crypto assets but obviously you can leave your balance lying there.
Of course, that doesn't sound as latest style because some centralized exchanges not only have advanced security features nowadays but also offer insurance for crypto assets. Again, if you are sure of safety of assets lying there on your balance, doing it can help you avoid multiple transfers of crypto assets to and from the exchange. If they charge for withdrawal, then multiple transfers to and fro won't work for you.
Depositing is done by clicking on the refill/withdraw Icon on the top menu on the dashboard. The exchange will list all the tokens (and you can search for any) in alphabetical order and on your right hand, you can click the relevant buttons to refill/deposit, withdraw (output) or transfer (send to an address) that particular coin or check your historical transactions for that coin. You are also able to view your balances on any given coin.
Deposit minimum depends on the coin and the fee is 0%. You pay by sending the desired amount to an address they indicate.
Clicking "Output" and "Transfer" buttons lets you withdraw the coin, the minimum depending on the coin you want to withdraw.
Clicking on the "history" icon allows you to access your account statement for that crypto including dates.
Interested users can start trading by clicking on the "Trading" button or icon on the top menu. It defaults to BTC/USD markets but you are able to select a pair from the left of the screen. Below the chart for that pair, you are able to place a sell or buy order for that pair by filling in the amount and rates information. You can also place a stop and limit order.
On the top menu are History, Orders, and Support icons or buttons, from where you can view history of your transactions, view your existing and previous orders (time, currency pair, amount, order ID and commission) and get support. Support page is empty for now.
Interface
The exchange works via web and both the new and old interface look presentable. They recently released Exrates 2.0 as an upgrade, which is currently on demo on the website. From the dashboard on this demo, visitors are able to access markets history incuding the volumes for different coins and fiat including BTC, ETH and USD, as well as the last price and amount, and the 24 hour percentage change in price.
Visitors are also able to access trading widget, Graphs as widget for different pairs, the order book including the amount on sale and the price offer. The new platform also offers chating features where one can chat online with others and/or their representative or click on a link to join their Telegram channel. It is a good new interface. The chating features are not available on the old web interface.
The order book is accessible on the default Dashboard page whether you are logged in or not, and users can search for pairs they want to trade from the many pairs listed on the left hand of the screen. (You will find out or discover that this is the page "displayed" when you login after signup and click on "Trading" button from the accounts settings page.)
For instance, searching ETH reveals all the ETH pairs for which you can trade ETH against. Examples include ETH/USD and ETH/BTC. You can view the current rates for which you can buy ETH once the pairs display. For instance, the current USD rate for which I can buy ETH on the platform is shown alongside the ETH/USD pair listing.
The default Dashboard screen provides data and information for BTC/USD pair. However, on clicking a given pair on the left of the screen, the platform will reveal market history details for that pair including TradingView charts for which you can customize indicators, chart type (candles, bars, area, baseline, line and Hallow Candles graphs) and duration for which to chart a trend for the given pair (1 hr, 4hrs, 12hr, 1 to 3 days).
Other information displayed for the particular coin include the trading volume on the exchange, the start and last trade price for the day, and price change in percentage. You can also click to compare a given coin's market data with another coin. For instance ETH and BTC.
Down the page, you are able to place an order for the given pair you selected, by filling a form indicating amount to sell or buy and price and the platform will calculate the commission or fees you should pay. You can also place a stop-limit order. Plus, below this form, you are able to view all the sell and buy orders as well as all trades executed previously including amount, date and rate at which the trade was filled.
One is also able to view industry news and Tweets from the company. From the bottom right hand corner, one can access the login/registration/password recovery menu. On login, the user is able to access settings, which are currently not enabled.
On visiting the old website interface, one can easily access the order book, some basic charts, online chat, company news and trading history window.
It is easy to monitor trading volumes and access charts from TradingView for any given pair right from the dashboard. From the dashboard, one can also easily view the sell and buy orders for different coins as well as the trades for each coin and the time they were carried out and the volume traded.
The website offers support in three languages; English, China and Indonesia. There is also a web chat support available in English, Russian, Chinese, Indonesian and Korean languages. You are also able to view the exchange's latest tweets on the Exrates.me page as well as access links to their WeChat.
The sign up is pretty simple. You click on the registration lin at the top right of the screen and then provide an email address, then they send you a confirmation link. You then set a password and login but they will send a pin code to your email to gain access. They then ask you to read some safety/security precautions and tick and then request you to enable the Google 2FA authentication for login, withdrawal and transfer, which you can skip. It takes about a minute to complete. The 2FA authentication is hard to do, however, if you do not know the relevant code.
From the profile, you can change passwords, set/change nickname, upload files, set timing for the current login session, and adjust API settings and set permissions/delete the Alias.
Coin listing
Coin and ICO listing will cost 3 BTC and will involve filling and sending an application online with a turnaround of 24 hours as claimed. The coin approved for listing will then provide technical data and fulfill other preconditions set out in their technical terms page including link to smart contracts for the coin to be listed if it is an ERC token and links to binary files for Ubuntu or git-hub repository for Bitcoin-based coins.
Once this is done and the details are alright, the coin owner will sign a listing agreement with the service after which the listing is done and announced. They claim that Cashaa coin, which was listed on the platform on date 25 May last year, improved its trading volume from around $30,000 to around $385,000 on listing.
Security
The exchange claims that they employ 2-factor authentication and a financial password to confirm financial transactions. However, there have been some claims equivalent to hacking or loss of crypto assets by some clients who are afterwards unable to access their cryptocurrency assets.
Who are its leaders?
Based in Armenia, the exchange is operated by Exrates Ltd, which is registered in the Republic of Armenia.
Despite the many negative claims regarding this exchange, the exchange does not hide its leaders' profiles. On this page, you can find the contacts of its Head of Sale and Sales Specialists, including their emails and Telegram and Twitter accounts. The exchange says on the website that it has a representative office location in China and Switzerland, with their location address and email contacts given on this page. The latest website on demo also offers online chat.
They also have a support department which can be contacted at [email protected]. One can also send an email by filling a web form and sending the form. However, they do not offer online support.
Disadvantages of Exrates.me exchange
The exchange does not offer an e-wallet for its clients, which is not mandatory for an exchange, but a convenient solution.
Problems reported with the Exrates.me exchange
The biggest problem with this exchange is that there are too many complains and negative review online about it probably because it offers little information or there is just too much poor presentation.
A Bitcoin.org post claims that the exchange manipulates its trading volume, but that's easy to confirm from this link at Coinmarketcap. The exchange has a 24 hour trading volume of $169,181,324 USD. That's nearly the same 24 hour volume of $145,000,000 shown on their website.
The post claims that the trades are manually manipulated by the exchange and it is not possible to execute any trades although some customers have offered reviews elsewhere saying they were able to trade. The post further claims that the transactions take more time to process, deposits get lost with no explanations, the exchange has fake likes on Twitter, exchange gives fake/scam announcements, the exchange has a virtually non-existent trade engine and everything seems done by hand.
Other claims include 0.5% as charges as exchange fee and 0.5% as merchant fee when withdrawing from the wallet, hacking or changing of wallet addresses, excessive delays in processing transactions, customers not being able to access their assets (for instance someone claim they stole his 30XMR), fake orders, high listing fee of 3 BTC, some customers not receiving verification codes at sign up.
All of these claims were posted around July last year although the team claims they have improved.
Different users also report some problems with the exchange including account blocking for suspicious activity after transferring their crypto assets into the exchange, with the support not replying to messages. It is obviously a bad move to move to store crypto on an unpopular exchange.
You can read more reviews, most of which are negative, on this site.
