Vaultoro

Vaultoro Review

What is Vaultoro?

Vaultoro is an exchange from the UK with a truly unique offering: exchanging BTC or DASH for gold. It is in our opinion also the most transparent exchange we have ever encountered. We challenge readers of this review to come up with a question that is not answered in Vaultoro’s extremely extensive FAQ.

At Vaultoro, US-investors can also buy gold for Bitcoin or DASH.

Storage of the gold

The gold you purchase at Vaultoro is 99.9% pure gold coming directly from the smelting companies. Vaultoro stores the gold in a high security vaulting facility operated by a company named ProAurum Switzerland. The storage and insurance fee is 0.40% of the relevant gold volume (updated every 15 minutes).

List of holdings

Another thing that is quite unique with this exchange is that it publically displays records over which customers that hold which quantities of gold and Bitcoin, respectively. The trading platform identify their customers with their ID-numbers, such as “32u96naANd”. This is an extract from the list of holdings:

Vaultoro Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself see 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. 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 make sure that it feels right to you. The below is a picture of where you purchase at Vaultoro:

Vaultoro Fees

Vaultoro Trading fees

Every trade has at least two parties: the maker and the taker. The maker is the one who creates a new offer for purchase or sale. That means, an offer that is not previously on the order book. The taker is the person who accepts a previously existing order. 

Vaultoro divides between makers and takers in their fee model. This is how:

As you can see from the above, Vaultoro actually offers so called negative maker fees. This means that the makers get paid to trade. For example: you are a maker. You create a sell order for Bitcoin, where you sell a certain amount of Bitcoin for USD 10,000. A buyer comes along and accepts your order. You were then the maker in this trade (the buyer was the taker). With a -0.05% maker fee, like Vaultoro has, you would not only get USD 10,000, you would also receive an additional 5.00 USD on top of that.

There aren’t that many exchanges that offer negative maker fees. To see them all and compare them against each other, just check out our Exchange List.

As outlined in the picture above, the platform also charges a monthly 0.04% storage fee when you have gold stored with the platform.

Vaultoro Withdrawal fees

Withdrawal of Bitcoin

Vaultoro charges you 0.00015 BTC when you withdraw BTC from the platform. This withdrawal fee is in line with industry average. If you withdraw DASH instead, the withdrawal fee is 0.01 DASH.

Withdrawal of Gold

To start with, you can never withdraw less than 100 grams of physical gold. This is since the physical gold bars start at 100 grams and it would be too impractical for Vaultoro to ship smaller weights. Vaultoro divides the world into 4 zones, as follows: 

Zone 1, Germany, Switzerland, UK.

Zone 2: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Monaco, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland.

Zone 3: USA and Canada (Only with a local US or Canadian gold dealer, no direct delivery).

Zone 4: Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Australia, New Zealand.

The withdrawal, shipment and insurance fee to people in Zone 1 is EUR 130 per 100 gram bar, for people in Zone 2 EUR 175 per 100 gram bar, for people in Zone 3 EUR 190 per 100 gram bar and for people in Zone 4, EUR 220 per 100 gram bar.

Deposit Methods

Vaultoro does not accept any deposits of fiat currency. The service is “gold for BTC” (or DASH) and you consequently need BTC (or DASH) to transact here. This means that new cryptocurrency investors (i.e., investors without any previous holdings of cryptocurrencies) can’t trade here. In order to purchase your first BTC/DASH, you need a so called entry-level exchange, which is an exchange accepting deposits of fiat currency. Find one by using our Exchange Finder!

Vaultoro Security

When you’re running a gold storage operation, security is of course of paramount importance. However, that’s not the security we will focus on in this section. We will focus on the digital security.

Vaultoro states on its website that only a very small percentage of its customers Bitcoins are held in hot wallets. Furthermore, they state that the users of the exchange lock their respective payout addresses by using 2FA (two-factor authentication). Moreover, they match the hot wallets funded by their customers with their own funds in a “publicaly viewable hot wallet”. Finally, they publish the cold and hot wallets for the Bitcoins on its website for public scrutiny.

All in all, we think this is an extremely exciting offering and applaud the team behind Vaultoro for offering a service that is unique and surely will be copied by others.