Utorg

Utorg Review

What is Utorg?

Utorg is a crypto platform registered in Estonia that has been operational since 2019. This platform's offering is easy to describe: you can buy BTC, ETH or LTC with VISA or MasterCard in a fast and secure manner. According to information on the platform's website, it will soon also be possible to sell BTC, ETH and LTC.

The platform is available in 2 different languages, English and Russian.

About The Team

According to information on the website:

"The management Team of Utorg OÜ has an impressive longstanding experience in distributed ledger technologies, smart contracts, cyber-security, finance, banking, credit card processing, cryptocurrency market and e-commerce services. It helps us to satisfy the most challenging client needs."

Utorg Advantages

As main advantages with the platform, the platform itself states, among other things, that it has no hidden fees; what you see is what you pay. Transparent pricing is something we always welcome here at Cryptowisser.com. They also promote the speed of their service and that their services are secured with the 3-D Secure transaction technology.

Utorg 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.

Utorg's purchase interface gives you the option to insert the exact amount of fiat currency that you wish to spend or the amount of BTC, ETH or LTC you wish to buy. 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 it is:

Deposit Methods and US-investors

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.

Utorg 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.

Deposit Methods

As mentioned above, you can purchase crypto with both VISA and MasterCard here, with the protection of 3-D Secure. Wire transfers are also possible, making Utorg a full-on entry-level exchange.

Utorg Fees

Utorg Trading fees

This particular platform is more a cryptocurrency store than a cryptocurrency exchange. We are unsure whether they sell BTC, ETH and LTC from their own inventory, or if they are a window into another exchange where the trades are executed back-end. We have asked the exchange about this and we are currently awaiting their response.

Utorg emphasizes a lot that they don't charge any fees (service fee: 0.00%).

However, at Cryptowisser.com, we also look at the prices offered when listing fees for a "crypto shop" like this. If the service fee is 0.00%, but the price offered is 5.00% higher than the market price at the time, then we feel that it is more appropriate to list 5.00% as the fee.

When testing a handful of different offers at Utorg on the date of first writing this review (3 September 2021), we found that the prices offered by Utorg on average were 10.00% higher than the market price at the time (as presented by Coinmarketcap.com). Accordingly, we have listed 10.00% as the fee here, in spite of the "service fee" being 0.00%. 10.00% is a very high mark-up. Sure, the card issuer's fees (VISA's or MasterCard's fees) are likely a part of these 10.00%, but the 10.00% mark-up it is still something to take into account before purchasing.

Utorg Withdrawal fees

Utorg doesn’t charge any additional fees to withdraw coins. However, there are always network fees involved with transferring crypto, which is why we have listed the network fees under the withdrawal fee section of this exchange.