Stock Trading - Entry 35
My take on two regulated blockchain exchanges I learned to trust
What follows are my initial deep dives in two blockchain exchanges and what is fuelling my comfort level. I am not dispensing financial advice.
Netcoins
Their list of coins is available here. Surprisingly, they only have three I can stake (as at the time of publishing) and they are listed here. What irritated me a little, was I need to use the app to do staking, I can't do that via a web browser.
As at the time of publishing this article, their fee structure is pretty simple and is described here. It's half of a percent per transaction (for buying or selling blockchain tokens). No funding fees (duh, why make it difficult). But there is a fee to withdraw dollars, specifically, anything less than $25K. That means I will need to pay $50 to pull out or I stay in it to make serious gains to avoid that paltry fee. I can also withdraw m blockchain tokens (for a small fee) without converting them to cash first so I can send them either to another exchange or to a crypto-wallet (be it your own crypto-wallet, a scammer's crypto-wallet, or a chosen recipient's crypto-wallet). See how certain tokens allow these transactions to happen?
The catch is, as of February 2025, they still do not offer blockchain-to-blockchain transactions. I have to sell for cash first and then by the other blockchain token. This functionality is on their to-do list. In the meantime, I have to know what I want to buy and hold when using this exchange.
The one thing I was impressed by with Netcoins was the ability to earn free Bitcoin. Not via staking or mining, but by rewards earned through a prepaid credit card. I actually signed up for that to earn free Bitcoin on a particular type of purchase. You see, when I donate to charities, that is money I give away and I have always been a bit bugged at earning cashback when using a regular credit card. I mean, I am giving that money away, I don't want it back! So, I look at rewards from donations as ones I can easily do without. Given the blockchain sphere is the wild west where I need to be prepared to lose almost everything, I am ok with gaining some free Bitcoin on those transactions.
I have been using it for almost a month now and I have to say my mindset towards spending has shifted closer to the Gordon Ramsey approach of spending the money you already have, not the money you will have. If I don't have dollars in my Netcoins account, I cannot use it to buy anything. It's a slightly different mindset, so I will pay attention to it and see how that sits with me over time.
Click here to get $25 free dollars to trade on Netcoins and if you really want, you can get their free prepaid credit card as well.
BitBuy
While I am impressed by BitBuy's array of blockchain tokens that can or cannot be staked, I am miffed by two policies in place when I signed up in early 2025. First, my initial deposit was held for three days. I could still buy and sell them, but if I wanted to withdraw cash or blockchain tokens (which I did), I had to wait three calendar days (72 hours). That policy was definitely not written by someone born after the year 2000!
Second, was the spread. Bitbuy doesn't really charge transaction fees, but the spread (the difference between the buy and sell price) is pretty high, which means the transaction fee is embedded in the price at which you are buying or selling. Compared to Netcoins, I find it high.
Bitbuy does offer $0 or very low cash funding and withdrawal fees as at the time of publishing this article. Right away, that means I can pull out of Netcoins by sending my tokens to BitBuy to sell if I want to dodge the $50 withdrawal fee plus the half-percent transaction fee for selling on Netcoins. But then I have to factor in the cost of the BitBuy spread and tansfer fees (not for all coins, but some) compared to that combo of fees. It's an option, I will leave it at that.
The other thing I noticed was the difference in staking rewards - which is something I want to max out on. As at the time of publishing this article, Bitbuy does have more tokens that can be staked, but Netcoins offers slightly better rewards on the ones it offers. Newsflash #22: Different blockchain exchanges offer different staking rewards. That said, both BitBuy and Netcoins take a whopping 30% of staking rewards (as of the date of publishing this article)!!
A Word on having Reserves to Protect my Tokens
When I see 30% fees, I see blockchain exchanges trying to make up for something they couldn't by doing something else, like fractional reserves where banks could turn around and invest a portion of your deposits for their own gain. High fees seems to suggest that blockchain exchanges have a reserve of blockchain tokens, much like banks do with cash and other things, but unlike banks, blockchain exchanges can't use them and need to charge high fees to at least cover operating costs. With it being impossible to know how much of which blockchain one will need every micro-second, well, transactions still need to be honoured.
I am pretty sure the TSX does not need to do this. To me, the TSX facilitates transactions in a single currency for things already there (that are listed for sale). Blockchain exchanges need reserves to cover those transactions, otherwise they eventually go bankrupt like FTX. Having less than 100% of deposits on hand opens one up to risk and too much risk (e.g. the FTX fiasco) results in regulations.
See, that's why I stick with at least a little regulation in markets and exchanges. Sure, how people approach putting and taking things off the market is still very wild-west-like in the blockchain sphere, ensuring transactions is a cornerstone I refuse to do without. Newsflash #22: Blockchains in and of themselves don't ensure conversions, only changes in ownership. Personally, I will not settle for fractional reserves for blockchain tokens.
So, how do these two exchanges stack up when it comes to their reserves? Pretty damn good. Here are the links for Netcoins' proof of reserves as well as Bitbuy's proof of reserves. Basically 100%. I can live with that, so I signed up with both.
So now I need to decide on which tokens to buy for me to stake, which tokens to buy simply to sell at a higher price later, and which exchange (Netcoins or Bitbuy) to use for each. To find out what my initial portfolio was and where I staked which coins, subscribe for free below to become notified right when I publish those articles. Alternatively, you can bookmark this page that contains a list of all my entries in my stock and blockchain trading journey I publish on Vocal Media.
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Richard Soulliere
Bursting with ideas, honing them to peek your interest.
Enjoyes blending non-fiction into whatever I am writing.
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