Nov 302013
Here are some Cryptsy alternatives that you might find helpful. These are all sites like Cryptsy in that they help you trade altcoins. You can buy or sell your altcoins here. Cryptsy is the largest such exchange and has the most number of currency pairs. However, it still makes sense to look for alternatives to Cryptsy. This is because –
- Diversification: That’s right, you don’t want to put all eggs in one basket. The crypto-currency world is still the Wild West out there. Exchanges have been hacked and money has been lost in the past. If something happens to your beloved exchange, you don’t want to be at ground zero. Cryptsy is pretty good overall, but why take your chances?
- Slow Confirmations: Cryptsy is popular, and when the load on their servers increases, it can be a mess. People have waited for over 48 hours in the past for their deposits to show up. This can be a huge investment loss. Crypto-currencies like MegaCoin have had a history of 400% increases in 48 hours. Do you really want to miss out on such rallies because your deposit wasn’t confirmed?
- Arbitrage Plays: If you have money on several different exchanges, you can involve in some plain old arbitrage plays. These opportunities don’t last very long, and certainly not long enough for you to withdraw money at one exchange and transfer to the other. However, if you are on multiple exchanges, you can find some great deals this way and end up in the green all the time, combining the balances on multiple accounts (my favorite arbitrage play exchange is Bter, since most of its users are on a different timezone than US. More on that later).
- Lower Fees: Certain exchanges can have lower fees than Cryptsy. If your intention is to trade – buy and sell multiple times, then the lower the fees, the better. This is also true if you’re intending to buy a lot of crypto-currency. The fees can add up quick. Also remember that sovereign money is sometimes cheaper, if you can get it on a particular exchange (e.g. Vircurex almost always has a 5-10% discount with respect to USD, although getting your USD there is hard).
- Currency Pair Availability: Not all currency pairs are available on Cryptsy. In addition, if you’re trading with sovereign money, you might be looking for exchanges that accept Euro or Renminbi, for instance.
Now that you have an idea of why it is a good advantage to look at alternatives to Cryptsy, here are some of your best options:
- Bter: My favorite Cryptsy alternative that I discovered when I was buying ProtoShares. There are several things I like about this exchange. It is my go-to place for currency arbitrage, perhaps because being a Chinese exchange, its peak activity is at a different time than Cryptsy. I have done several successful arbitrage trades with this exchange. They also tend to have a wide variety of alt-coins and they are good with adding new alts soon. Protoshares, for example, was added to Bter almost 10 days before Cryptsy. The story repeated with NXT – Bter was the first major exchange to trade Next. The second great thing about them is the low fees, which seems to be a hallmark of Chinese exchanges. The trading volume has dipped now, with the uncertainty in China, but I expect it to pick up soon again.
- btc-e: This is one of the older exchanges that is very popular in Russia and Eastern Europe. It has a good amount of trading activity at most times, but the number of currency pairs are very limited. Also, if you can get your USD or EUR on to this exchange, you can find some of the cheapest rates for buying all alt-coins. They are completely anonymous but have surprised their doubters time and again amidst all the turbulence in this space by being pretty reliable and adding new features like allowing fund withdrawals through Visa and MasterCard.
- MintPal: MintPal was born during the recent ‘exchange boom’ that happened in the altcoin space where many different exchanges started popping up all over the place, and several of them had many security and other issues too. However, MintPal has stood the test of time (well, a few months at least) and seems to be the favorite exchange of many traders and investors now. The site is clean, fast and responsive. You can also vote for your favorite coins to be added to this exchange. It’s fast becoming a favorite Cryptsy alternative for many people in this space.
- Vircurex: *TRADE WITH CAUTION* I used this exchange a while ago to buy my first Litecoins. It has cheap USD/EUR options as well but doesn’t have as many currency pairs as Cryptsy. The main thing I like about this exchange is that it is very responsive and fast, and almost never had any overload issues like Cryptsy seems to have very often. The exchange was hacked recently and had some funds stolen, so some accounts remain frozen. Trade at your own risk!
- Coins-e: This is a new exchange and I’ve not used it as much as the ones mentioned above, but it looks pretty professional and promising. The liquidity is still a bit low, but the flip side of that is, for longer term investors, sometimes the price difference is worth a good buy. A good alternative to have.
These are my top Cryptsy alternatives that I’ve personally used. What about you?
Photo Credit: Mike Baird
12 Responses to “Cryptsy Alternatives: Buying and Selling Altcoins”
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Thanks for the info man!
You can search for a particular cryptocurrency and find an exchange that trades it hxxp://tradeli.st/search
That actually works very well, thanks for this tool! Is this a static database that you update or do you dynamically hook into the list of exchanges to check if they are trading a particular altcoin?
I’ve tried coins-e but it seems a total scam. They are having their “liquidity drive”, where they claim to give interest on coins if you have open orders. No interest came in, contacted them in several ways, then found out they’ve been scamming people by taking their coins. They never responded. Fortunately I got all my coins out again.
In brief: Don’t use coins-e.
I’ve been getting my Free BTC from the Coins-E.com liquidity drive are you sure you followed all the rules?
Liquidity Drive: Inviting market makers
A measure to increase liquidity in the exchange that will enable better pricing.
Earn bonus on your deposits:
As a measure to encourage order placement on the exchange, starting December 5, we will be paying a nominal bonus at a rate of 0.03% every day on your deposits on select coins. Your funds will not be locked, and can be withdrawn at any time.
This is a 15 day promotion and the bonus payments will be stopped from December 21 2013.
Terms
The offer applies to the following coins only: Bitcoin(BTC), Litecoin(LTC), Primecoin(XPM), Peercoin(PPC), Anoncoin(ANC), Protoshares(PTS), Megacoin(MEC)
You should have executed at least one order or have at least one open order in the corresponding market. i.e to earn the bonus on MEC, you should either have executed an order on the MEC vs BTC or you should have a open sell order in the corresponding market.
This is a 15 day promotion and the bonus payments will be stopped from December 21 2013.
Minimum deposit to qualify for the promotion
Bitcoin Litecoin Primecoin Peercoin Anoncoin Protoshares Megacoin
0.5 BTC 10 LTC 20 XPM 20 PPC 20 ANC 20 PTS 20 MEC
FAQ
How much will I earn?
The bonus will be paid at a rate 0.03% per day, i.e if you hold 1 BTC in your account, everyday you will be credited with a bonus of 0.0003 BTC. if you hold 50 LTC in your account, everyday you will be credited with a bonus of 0.015 LTC.
When do I get paid?
The bonus will automatically credited to your account balance every day. You can use this page to see how much you have been earned.
Do I have to lock in my deposits?
No, your funds will not be locked, and can be withdrawn at any time. Note that if you withdraw you will not earn a bonus from that period.
What should I do to earn an interest?
Your account balance should be greater than 0.5 BTC or 10 LTC to qualify.
You should executed at least one order or have at least one open order in the corresponding market.
When does this offer expire?
This is a 15 day promotion and the bonus payments will be stopped from December 21 2013.
Totally followed their rules, contacted them twice on the website to ask what’s up, once through twitter. A reply from them would have helped a lot but I never got one.
I was planning to add coins-e to the list as they seem to have interesting features and APIs. Did you ever hear back from them at all? What did they say?
They got back to me 10 days later, just 5 days before the end of their “drive”. This is what they wrote:
“Please go through the link below. If you still may feel that you have issues, reopen this ticket.”
That’s it. I followed their bloody rules but never got any bonus. This and the reports about people losing their coins made me transfer my coins out of their system again. If they intend to be serious about their business they should reply this type of concerns within max. 2 working days, ideally within 10 hours.
Hey thanks for the useful info and letting us know about the Cryptsy. Informative and helpful post for all the newbie’s who have some interest in currency trading, exchange etc. All your provided information is clearing many questions that were in people’s mind.
I can tell you Coinbase is a scam. I think Crypsy might actually be legit, about 90 percent of the exchanges are scams.
This funny to see. Coinbase one of the largest strongest most trusted exchanges…..Cryptsy got “hacked” and closed it’s doors and didnt refund anyone
Why do you say Coinbase is a scam? I’ve made dozens of purchases, sales, and cashouts totaling over $50k USD without a single hiccup.