Crypto adoption is increasing at a rapid pace within retail and institutional investors. Institutional investors are mostly agnostic to exchange and transaction fees alike due to the large blocks of trade that they execute for their portfolio. In contrast, retail investors are extremely cautious about the fees they need to pay on the trades they execute. They are always on the lookout for exchanges and services which offer them better deals for the transactional fees thus decreasing their fixed expenses. Here are the cryptocurrency exchanges with the lowest fees in the world that every investor should consider while trading in crypto:
KuCoin
KuCoin is a cryptocurrency exchange that caters to more than 5 million users globally. They are known to offer some of the best trading and withdrawal rates for altcoins. They have a fee structure that’s dynamic and incentivises holders of the KuCoin (KCS) token. The KCS token is the native token of the exchange. It is a profit-sharing token that allows investors to derive value from the collaboration. It gives holders a 20% lesser fee as compared to non holders.
The basic fees are 0.1% for both maker and taker. The trading fee structure for KCS holders is based on two factors, the amount of KCS the trader holds over the last 30 days and the trader’s KuCoin trading volumes in the same duration. A similar structure applies to both the spot and futures markets. While deposits on the exchange are free, there is a proportional withdrawal fee attached to all cryptocurrencies, apart from the NEO token, which traders can withdraw free of charge.
Once KuCoin’s decentralised trading solution is launched, the KuCoin will be used as a native, utility and governance token for the ecosystem. It will be the key that allows users to unlock a plethora of benefits in the KuCoin ecosystem.
Crypto.com
Crypto.com is a digital asset platform based in the United States which caters to more than 1 million customers. Crypto.com offers a time based fees structure which incentivises new investors in the cryptocurrency community. The platform charges no fees to users for the first 90 days on the platform after registration. They additionally offer 2% bonus interest rate on deposits from users made by them within 30 days of joining the platform.
They also offer upto 50% reduction in trading fees for customers already existing on the platform. The website and application both allow users to buy Bitcoin using their credit cards at 0% fees. Users of the crypto.com app can instantly send assets to each other with no additional fees involved.
ZKSwap
ZKSwap is a token swap protocol. It is the first ZK Rollups based on layer 2 Decentralized Exchange (DEX) using an Automated Market Maker (AMM) model. It was officially launched on the Ethereum Mainnet on February 16. In just over a month, the ZKSwap platform reached $1 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL), with $913 million in liquidity and $931 million in transactions. Through the AMM Model, the platform offers zero gas fees and high transaction throughput.
All the transactions executed on layer 2 have zero gas fees including sending, swapping, and liquidity transactions. The protocol charges 0.3% of the layer 2 swap transactions as the transaction fee. Within this 0.3% fees, 0.25% fees is allocated to the liquidity providers and the remaining 0.05% is used as the protocol fee. The protocol fee is used to buy back ZKS tokens. The ZKS token is the protocol token of ZKSwap.
Such exchanges and DeFi protocols are making it easier for new retail investors to gain exposure to cryptocurrency assets at little or no fees. With the markets growing at such a rapid pace, innovative and cost efficient solutions as such are the way forward to bring more crypto traders to the helm and compete for market share with giant exchanges like Coinbase, Binance and Kraken.
Phemex
Phemex is a cryptocurrency trading exchange that was founded in 2019 by a set of nine ex-Morgan Stanley executives. The exchange currently supports traders from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. The trading platform’s fee structure is made in a way to benefit it’s ‘Premium Users’. This premium service is offered to new users on the platform for free for 7 days. This free period can be extended if the user refers a contact who signs up to the platform.
Once this period ends, users can purchase a premium membership starting at around $0.19 a day. Monthly memberships are for $9.99, three month memberships cost $19.99 and a yearly subscription costs $69.99. This membership allows users to trade cryptocurrencies without any fees in the spot markets. This membership is a real asset to high volume investors and cryptocurrency day traders as for them it is a very small price to pay for buying and selling crypto without any trading fees or commission paid to the exchange. Additionally, the exchange allows 100x leverage for derivatives trading with BTC & USD contract settlement.