LocalCryptos

LocalCryptos Review

What is LocalCryptos?

LocalCryptos is an Australian crypto exchange operated by the company LocalEthereum Pty Ltd, based in Richmond. It has been active since 2017.

At LocalCryptos, people from different countries can exchange their local currency to Ethereum (but the exchange does not support any other crypto). The site allows users to post ads where they state exchange rate and payment methods for buying or selling Ethereum. You reply to these ads and agree to transact with the person you have replied to. The seller puts the relevant ETH in an escrow account, and when the parties have transacted and the seller has confirmed payment to LocalCryptos, then LocalCryptos releases the ETH from the escrow to the buyer. They now also support BTC, where the transactions are carried out in the same manner. The escrow solution is executed using an open source Ethereum smart contract. This solution by LocalCryptos allows the exchange to safely escrow the cryptos of any user without taking control of it.

In many ways, LocalCryptos is like an online store or an Ebay for cryptocurrencies. Investors at the exchange post different “ads”, where they offer a price quote for a specific cryptocurrency. This ad can be for both buying or selling or either one of those actions. If you as another buyer/seller thinks the offer is good, you can just take it.

The platform’s mission is to be quick, friendly and safe. This sounds very good to us, even though we are not entirely sure how a trading platform is “friendly”.

Different Languages

The exchange site is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, French, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, Japanese, Portuguese, and Malay.

Dark Mode

On 3 March 2021, the platform also announced a new "Dark Mode"-feature.

Price Alerts

At this platform, you can also enable price alerts. This means that when you have created an alert for a certain crypto, you receive a message via email when that crypto falls below or goes above a certain predetermined price level. This can surely be helpful for certain traders and we are positive to features like this. You snooze you lose, but with this feature it doesn’t have to be that way.

US-investors

LocalCryptos does not restrict citizens or residents from any jurisdiction from trading at the platform. Accordingly, US-investors are also permitted here.

LocalCryptos 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 crypto and order history. LocalCryptos, however, is as mentioned above not really an exchange per se. It is more like an Ebay for cryptos. At this place, you can scan through a number of different sale/purchase ads that have been posted by other users of the platform. You can sort by payment method, location, popularity etc, to find a seller/buyer that you want to transact with. The below is a picture of the list where you can find different offers at LocalCryptos:

LocalCryptos Fees

LocalCryptos Trading fees

Considering the above business model, the distinction between parties on the exchange is not taker and maker, it’s rather more like person advertising and person responding to advertisement. The person doing the advertisement is charged 0.25% fee for every completed trade. The person responding to the advertisement needs to pay 0.75% in trading fees.

If comparing 0.75% to normal trading fees, it is very high. 0.25%, however (as it is for the person posting the advertisement) is in line with industry average. The industry average is arguably around 0.25% both ways. However, there are dissimilarities between LocalCryptos and other normal exchanges somewhat explaining the higher fee. We recommend investors using LocalCryptos to consider themselves whether this fee is fair or not.

LocalCryptos Withdrawal fees

This Australian peer-to-peer exchange charges a withdrawal fee amounting to only the network fee when you withdraw crypto. This fee is below the industry average and is an advantage against the majority of other exchanges in the market.

Deposit Methods

At this place, you can purchase advertised cryptos through both wire transfer and credit cards. Actually, you can pay through more than 30 different payment methods. For instance, you can purchase crypto through PayPal here. That is not very common on the market, even though there is a clear demand for that payment method. Some of the available payment methods are set out in this picture:

The above can be especially helpful for newer crypto investors. It also makes this exchange an “entry-level exchange”, meaning an exchange where a new crypto investor can enter the market.

LocalCryptos Security

LocalCryptos highlights on its website that you are  in control of your private keys, that you are in control of your privacy and that you can use the platform by simply logging in on a number of preferred Ethereum wallets. This is quite common practice though, but still good to hear:

All in all, the security seems good at LocalCryptos based on what we have looked at.