Guardarian

Guardarian Review

What is Guardarian?

Guardarian is a crypto platform registered in Estonia that has been active since 2017.

Many Supported Cryptocurrencies

Guardarian has over 300 cryptos you can buy. Many of the more exotic altcoins are supported here as well. There are of course two sides of the same coin here. On a positive note, a large number of supported cryptos means that even the most exotic altcoin trader can stay at this platform and will not have to look elsewhere to cater for all his/her specific trading needs. On the flip side, however, this might also mean that there could be more scam coins available for trading here. Exchanges with a smaller number of supported cryptos generally only support the bigger crypto projects, which have all been subject to numerous due diligence processes and that are – in most cases – properly vetted. A newly launched altcoin has not been subject to the same scrutiny.

Available Services

The platform has a number of different services for its users:

Guardarian Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself determine which trading view that suits you the best. What the views normally have in common is that they all show the order book or at least part of the order book, a price chart of the chosen cryptocurrency and order history. They normally also have buy and sell-boxes. Before you choose an exchange, try to have a look at the trading view so that you can ascertain that it feels right to you.

Guardarian's purchase interface gives you the option to insert the exact amount of fiat currency (a large number of different fiat currencies) that you wish to spend or the amount of crypto you wish to buy/sell. This purchase interface makes it very easy to understand if you’re new to crypto, yet it might not offer all the advanced buy/sell features more experienced traders look for. Here’s how it looks:

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.

Guardarian does allow US-investors to use all the features of its exchange. You can currently use their services in 41 states of the USA, however they do have plans of expanding to other states in the future. You can see the list of supported states here.

Guardarian Fees

Guardarian Trading fees

This particular platform is more a cryptocurrency store than a cryptocurrency exchange. They sell cryptocurrency from their own inventory, and do not facilitate transfers from one Guardarian-user to another. Accordingly, it is difficult to compare the fees charged by Guardarian with the industry average trading fee at a regular centralized exchange (being 0.221% for takers and 0.177% for makers, according to this report). It is even more difficult to compare considering that Guardarian has a fixed fiat currency fee (!) and not a percentage based fee for any trades made here.

Guardarian charges EUR 2.49 if you convert EUR to BTC, and EUR 3.49 if you convert BTC to EUR. This is a very interesting fee model and it is extremely competitive if you make large trades. For any trades worth more than EUR 1,150 (when converting EUR to BTC), or EUR 1,550 (when converting BTC to EUR), the fees charged by Guardarian are below industry average as set out in the abovementioned report. Accordingly, the fixed fee model is very consumer friendly for larger trades, and less so for smaller trades.

Guardarian Withdrawal fees

Guardarian has a flat service fee of EUR 2.49. They only allow to exchange crypto-to-fiat-to-crypto to wallets, we do not ourselves hold any cryptocurrencies. This means that there are no real withdrawal fees to compare with at this specific platform. 

Deposit Methods

Guardarian lets you deposit assets to the exchange in many different ways. These include SEPA and SWIFT transfers, credit and debit card transactions and more. Seeing as fiat currency deposits are possible at this trading platform, the platform qualifies as an “entry-level exchange”, making it possible for new cryptocurrency investors to take their first steps into the cryptocurrency world here.