Paxful

Paxful Review

What is Paxful?

Paxful is a cryptocurrency exchange based in USA. It has been active since 2015. More specifically, Paxful is a peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace. Simply select your preferred payment method and type in how many bitcoins you need. Nothing more, nothing less. However, you can buy Bitcoin using a record-breaking number of different payment methods. You can pay with over 300 different payment methods (PayPal included). According to information on Paxful’s website on the date of last updating this review (19 July 2019), more than 950,000 Bitcoins have been sold/bought via Paxful. This is a very impressive feature of this peer-to-peer marketplace.

US-investors

As Paxful is based in USA, US-investors should be able to trade here. In any event, as always, US-investors should do their own independent assessment of any problems arising from their residency or citizenship.

Paxful Advantages

Paxful promotes three things as their main advantages: easy purchases, safety and security, and instant live chat. That it is easy to buy crypto here is naturally very helpful. In particular for the newer crypto investors. Safety and security is equally important for all different crypto traders out there, so this is indeed an advantage if it’s true. The instant live chat feature is likely most important to the newer cryptocurrency investor. All in all, Paxful feels more designed towards the unexperienced crypto trader than the more seasoned ones.

Paxful 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. Paxful focuses on speed and simplicity, rather than having all the charting tools that many other exchanges offer. At Paxful, the purchase view is much simpler and more intuitive than at a “normal” centralized exchange. The below is a picture of the standard interface at the Paxful-platform:

Partnership with BitMart

On 21 February 2019, Paxful and Bitmart announced that they are entering into a joint partnership. The main purpose of the partnership is to increase both scalability and liquidity of both platforms. This partnership will make it possible for users to make payments on the BitMart-platform via the Paxful-system. This functionality will push BitMart a big step forward in what the companies call the “peer-to-peer financial revolution”.

Paxful Fees

The fees at this exchange consist of deposit fees, service fees and withdrawal fees.

Deposit fees vary dependent upon how you deposit.

Service fees are 1.00% per trade, but it is only paid by the seller. Buyers can trade free of charge.

Withdrawal fees are fixed at 0.0005 BTC for BTC-withdrawals.

Paxful Trading fees

This exchange primarily charges one fee, being the “service fee”. The service fee is paid by the seller and amounts to 1.00%. This is higher than the ordinary trading fees for regular exchanges being around 0.25%. But a user should remember that the service is also a bit different. The buyer doesn’t pay any fees at all.

Paxful Withdrawal fees

Paxful charges different withdrawal fees dependent upon how much you withdraw. For BTC-withdrawals between USD 0.00-9.99, the withdrawal fee is 0.00008 BTC. This is very low. For withdrawals between USD 10-19.99, the withdrawal fee is 0.00016 BTC. This is also very low. Finally, for withdrawals exceeding USD 20, the withdrawal fee is 0.0004 BTC. This fee, their highest fee, is actually also below the industry average (industry average being 0.00064 BTC according to our empirical study performed in January 2021) and constitutes an advantage compared to many other exchanges.

Deposit Methods

As mentioned above, Paxful is probably also the exchange in the world with the most available deposit methods. This must be their crown jewel (their deposit method availability). We applaud this offering by Paxful and can only hope that other exchanges will follow suit.