C-Trade

C-Trade Review

What is C-Trade?

C-Trade is a cryptocurrency exchange registered in the Seychelles. It has been active since 2020.

This exchange is a so called derivatives exchange, meaning that they focus on derivatives trading. The platform does however support spot trading as well, so if that's your preference, this platform can still be for you. A derivative is an instrument priced based on the value of another asset (normally stocks, bonds, commodities etc). In the cryptocurrency world, derivatives accordingly derive its values from the prices of specific cryptocurrencies.

You can engage in derivatives trading connected to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Binance Coin and Bitcoin Cash here.

Affiliate Program

C-Trade also has an affiliate program. Through this program, you can earn up to 40% commissions on C-Trade's trading fees generated from the futures and spot trading of your referrals. 40% is an attractive commission level relative to the industry standards. 

You can sign up to the affiliate program here.

Leveraged Trading

C-Trade also offers leveraged trading to its users. They only offer perpetuals (i.e., futures without expiry dates), and no futures with expiry dates. The maximum leverage level for their perpetuals is 150x. A word of caution might be useful for someone contemplating leveraged trading. Leveraged trading can lead to massive returns but – on the contrary – also to equally massive losses.

For instance, let’s say that you have 100 USD in your trading account and you bet this amount on BTC going long (i.e., going up in value). If BTC then increases in value with 10%, you would have earned 10 USD. If you had used 100x leverage, your initial 100 USD position becomes a 10,000 USD position so you instead earn an extra 1,000 USD (990 USD more than if you had not leveraged your deal). However, the more leverage you use, the smaller the distance to your liquidation price becomes. This means that if the price of BTC moves in the opposite direction (goes down for this example), then it only needs to go down a very small percentage for you to lose the entire 100 USD you started with. Again, the more leverage you use, the smaller the opposite price movement needs to be for you to lose your investment. So, as you might imagine, the balance between risk and reward in leveraged deals is quite fine-tuned (there are no risk free profits).

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 C-Trades’s trading platform is also available as an app for iPhone and Android users.

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.

C-Trade does not allow US-investors on its exchange. So if you’re from the US and would like to engage in crypto trading, you will have to look elsewhere. Luckily for you, if you go to the Exchange List and use our exchange filters, you can sort the exchanges based on whether or not they accept US-investors.

C-Trade 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 C-Trade (when not signed in):

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.

C-Trade Fees

C-Trade 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. Many exchanges divide 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.

At C-Trade, takers are charged 0.075% per order. When it comes to the makers, their fee is -0.025%. This essentially means that each maker get paid to trade. To clarify, let’s say that you are the maker in an order where you purchase cryptocurrency for USD 1,000. This means that instead of paying USD 1,000, you will only have to pay USD 997.50. This is a very competitive trait indeed.

According to the most extensive industry report ever prepared on contract trading average fees, the global average contracts trading taker fee and maker fee was 0.0591% for takers and 0.0215% for makers. Accordingly, C-Trade is slightly above average when it comes to its taker fees but substantially below average with respect to maker fees. All in all, the fees here are attractive.

C-Trade Withdrawal fees

There are exchanges out there that charge low trading fees but then hit you on your way out with high withdrawal fees. This exchange, however, only charges the network fees when you do a transaction. 

According to the latest empirical study that we have performed on Cryptowisser.com, the global industry BTC-withdrawal fee is 0.00053 BTC per withdrawal. The network fees vary from day to day but are typically lower than the global industry average BTC-withdrawal fee.

Consequently, the withdrawal fees you need to worry about when withdrawing from C-Trade are relatively low and consumer friendly.

Deposit Methods

In order to trade here, you must have cryptocurrency to begin with. The only asset class you can deposit to C-Trade is cryptocurrency. However, if you really like C-Trade but you don’t have any crypto yet, you can easily start an account with an exchange that has “fiat on-ramps” (an exchange where you can deposit regular cash), buy crypto there, and then transfer it from such exchange to this exchange. Use our Exchange Filters to easily see which platforms that allow wire transfer or credit card deposits.