Giottus

Giottus Review

What is Giottus?

Giottus is a cryptocurrency exchange from India that launched in April 2018. It offers trading in the following cryptos: BTC, ETH, LTC, XRP, USDT, TUSD, LINK, USDC, PAX, MATIC, XLM, EOS and BCH.

Giottus Advantages

The platform outlines a number of different things as benefits with the Giottus platform. Among other things, they mention that they have a capable trading engine and that they have fiat on ramps (at least for the Indian Rupee). They also state on their website that they have "one of the lowest trading fees in India" and that they have "high liquidity". Sure, their fees are in the low range for Indian exchanges but we can't say that we agree that their liquidity is high.

Trading Volume

When we first prepared this review on 7 September 2020, the platform's 24-hour trading volume according to Coinmarketcap was USD 610,102. On the date of last updating this review (2 December 2021), this trading volume was approximately USD 124 million. The growth in liquidity by roughly 50% is a good sign. However, in terms of absolute values, Giottus has a lot more ground to cover before reaching a trading volume that can be considered an advantage to its traders.

Giottus Referral Program

Giottus also has a referral program. Through the program, you can invite your friends to start an account at the exchange. If they accept, and do start such an account, you will receive a reward from the exchange. This reward will be given to you in MATIC-tokens. You will receive 100% of your invitee's trading fees during the first week of trading, 90% during week 2, 80% during week 3, 70% during week 4 and 60% for all time thereafter. An interesting structure in our opinion.

Giottus Fees

Giottus 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 this platform, takers pay 0.20% per trade. Makers pay nothing (0.00%) per trade. According to the largest and most recent empirical study on crypto exchange trading fees, the average spot trading taker fee is currently 0.2294% and the average spot trading maker fee is currently 0.1854%.

Compared to those average trading fees, Giottus' taker fees are below the industry average, and the maker fees are substantially below the industry average.

Giottus Withdrawal fees

Giottus charges a withdrawal fee of 0.0006 BTC per BTC-withdrawal. This fee is quite exactly in line with the global industry average. The current global industry average is 0.000643 BTC per BTC-withdrawal according to this report.

Giottus 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 Giottus:

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.

Deposit Methods and US-investors

Deposit Methods

In addition to depositing cryptocurrency to the platform, Giottus also lets you deposit fiat currency. However, only through wire transfer of INR (not credit or debit card or wire transfer of any other fiat currency). If you need an exchange accepting credit or debit card deposits, or if you need to deposit any other fiat currency than the INR, just use our Exchange Filters and you'll find one in no time at all.

Seeing as fiat currency deposits are at all possible at this trading platform, Giottus qualifies as an “entry-level exchange”, meaning an exchange where new crypto investors can start their journey into the exciting crypto world.

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.

It is unclear whether Giottus permits US investors or not. We have read their Terms and Conditions and have not found an explicit prohibition of US investors. We urge any US investors to form their own opinion on the permissibility of their trading at Giottus though.