ATAIX

ATAIX Review

What is ATAIX?

ATAIX is a cryptocurrency exchange from Estonia that launched in March 2018. It operates under the following two EU licences:

• Providing services of exchanging a virtual currency against a fiat currency.
• Providing a virtual currency wallet service.

The company operating the platform is called EuroToken OÜ and has its headquarters in Tallinn (Estonia). 

ATAIX Mobile Support

Most crypto traders feel that desktop give the best conditions for their trading. The computer has a bigger screen, and on bigger screens, more of the crucial information that most traders base their trading decisions on can be viewed at the same time. The trading chart will also be easier to display. However, not all crypto investors require desktops for their trading. Some prefer to do their crypto trading via their mobile phone. If you are one of those traders, you’ll be happy to learn that ATAIX’s trading platform is also mobile compatible. You can download it to/from both the AppStore and Google Play:

ATAIX Trading View

Every trading platform has a trading view. The trading view is the part of the exchange’s website where you can see the price chart of a certain cryptocurrency and what its current price is. There are normally also buy and sell boxes, where you can place orders with respect to the relevant crypto, and, at most platforms, you will also be able to see the order history (i.e., previous transactions involving the relevant crypto). Everything in the same view on your desktop. There are of course also variations to what we have now described. This is the trading view at ATAIX:

It is up to you – and only you – to decide if the above trading view is suitable to you. Finally, there are usually many different ways in which you can change the settings to tailor the trading view after your very own preferences.

OTC-desk

Let’s say that you hold a very large amount of a certain cryptocurrency. You want to sell that amount. Should you do that on a regular trading platform like everyone else? Maybe not. One of many reasons for executing large trades outside of the normal market place is that large trades may affect the market price of the relevant crypto. Another reason, which is connected to the foregoing, is that the order book might be too thin to execute the relevant trade. A solution to these problems is what we call OTC-trading (Over The Counter).

ATAIX offers OTC-trading, which might be helpful to all the “whales” out there (and maybe also to all the “dolphins”).

ATAIX Fees

ATAIX Trading fees

Every time you place an order, the exchange charges you a trading fee. The trading fee is normally a percentage of the value of the trade order. Normally, exchanges distinguishes between takers and makers. Takers are the one who “take” an existing order from the order book. Makers are the ones who add orders to the order book, thereby making liquidity at the platform.

ATAIX’s fee for takers is 0.30%. These taker fees are higher than the global industry averages for centralized exchanges. Industry averages have historically been around 0.20-0.25% but we now see new industry averages emerging around 0.10%-0.15%. Regardless of which taker fee you compare against, 0.30% is on the high end.

However, this exchange does not charge any fees for makers, thus promoting the liquidity at the exchange. This is a very strong part of ATAIX's offering and can be really helpful for people interested in not picking up existing orders from the orderbook.

The fees are also discounted if you reach certain monthly trading volumes, as follows:

ATAIX Withdrawal fees

ATAIX charges a withdrawal fee of 0.0008 BTC per BTC-withdrawal. This fee is a bit above the industry average. The current global industry average is arguably around 0.0006 BTC per BTC-withdrawal. On the date of first writing this review (25 August 2020), the difference between ATAIX's BTC-withdrawal fee and the industry average was only around USD 2.30 (0.0002 BTC), so one could of course argue that it's not that big of a difference.

US-investors and Deposit Methods

US-investors

Why do so many exchanges not allow US citizens to open accounts with them? The answer has only three letters. S, E and C (the Securities Exchange Commission). The reason the SEC is so scary is because the US does not allow foreign companies to solicit US investors, unless those foreign companies are also registered in the US (with the SEC). If foreign companies solicit US investors anyway, the SEC can sue them. There are many examples of when the SEC has sued crypto exchanges, one of which being when they sued EtherDelta for operating an unregistered exchange. Another example was when they sued Bitfinex and claimed that the stablecoin Tether (USDT) was misleading investors. It is very likely that more cases will follow.

ATAIX does permit US investors to their trading platform. We urge any US investors to form their own opinion on the permissibility of their trading at ATAIX though.

Deposit Methods

ATAIX lets you deposit assets to the exchange in many different ways, through wire transfer, debit card, and of course also by just depositing existing cryptocurrency assets. Seeing as fiat currency deposits are possible at this trading platform, ATAIX qualifies as an “entry-level exchange”, meaning an exchange where new crypto investors can start their journey into the exciting crypto world.