Virtuse Exchange

Virtuse Exchange Review

What is Virtuse Exchange?

Virtuse Exchange is a Europe-based crypto exchange with offices in Singapore that was born in May 2019.

Supported Cryptocurrencies

The platform supports trading in most of the largest cryptos out there: BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC, XMR, USDT, GUSD, PAX, PAXG and the exchange's own native token, the VIRTU. Due to compliance reasons, the exchange has discontinued offerings of their tokenized commodities that they previously had. 

Virtuse Exchange Liquidity

When we previously updated our review (5 January 2021), the platform's 24-hour trading volume was approximately USD 7.6 million. The trading volume has increased 3x times since then. On the date of last updating this review (2 December 2021) the volume was approximately USD 32 million, according to Coinmarketcap. 

VEX Basic and VEX Pro

The exchange has substantially enhanced its user interface over the last year. Virtuse offers two platforms: one intuitive, VEX Basic, platform and VEX Pro platform for seasoned traders that enables charting tools, Stop loss and Take profit orders. Virtuse has also introduced the new recurring trades feature. Users have the convenience to set automatic trades on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Exchange also recently integrated new fiat gateway where users can purchase crypto with over 20 local currencies, using credit card or SEPA payments.

Virtuse Exchange Mobile Support

Most crypto traders feel that desktop give the best conditions for their trading. The computer has a bigger screen, and on bigger screens, more of the crucial information that most traders base their trading decisions on can be viewed at the same time. The trading chart will also be easier to display. However, not all crypto investors require desktops for their trading. Some prefer to do their crypto trading via their mobile phone. If you are one of those traders, you’ll be happy to learn that Virtuse Exchange’s trading platform is also mobile compatible. You can download it to/from both the AppStore and Google Play:

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.

It is unclear whether Virtuse Exchange permits US investors or not. We have read their Terms and Conditions and have not found an explicit prohibition of US investors. We urge any US investors to form their own opinion on the permissibility of their trading at Virtuse Exchange though.

OTC-desk

Let’s say that you hold a very large amount of a certain cryptocurrency. You want to sell that amount. Should you do that on a regular trading platform like everyone else? Maybe not. One of many reasons for executing large trades outside of the normal market place is that large trades may affect the market price of the relevant crypto. Another reason, which is connected to the foregoing, is that the order book might be too thin to execute the relevant trade. A solution to these problems is what we call OTC-trading (Over The Counter).

Virtuse Exchange offers, or will within a very short period of time offer, OTC-trading, which might be helpful to all the “whales” out there (and maybe also to all the “dolphins”).

Virtuse Exchange Trading View

Every trading platform has a trading view. The trading view is the part of the exchange’s website where you can see the price chart of a certain cryptocurrency and what its current price is. There are normally also buy and sell boxes, where you can place orders with respect to the relevant crypto, and, at most platforms, you will also be able to see the order history (i.e., previous transactions involving the relevant crypto). Everything in the same view on your desktop. There are of course also variations to what we have now described. This is the trading view at Virtuse Exchange:

It is up to you – and only you – to decide if the above trading view is suitable to you. Finally, there are usually many different ways in which you can change the settings to tailor the trading view after your very own preferences.

Virtuse Exchange Fees

Virtuse Exchange Trading fees

Every time you place an order, the exchange charges you a trading fee. The trading fee is normally a percentage of the value of the trade order. Many exchanges divide between takers and makers. Takers are the one who “take” an existing order from the order book.

Virtuse Exchange charges what we call flat fees, meaning that both the takers and the makers pay the same fee: 0.15%. These taker fees are quite in line with the industry average for centralized exchanges. Industry average has historically been around 0.20-0.25% but we now see new industry averages being around 0.10%-0.15%. Regardless of your data point for comparisons, Virtuse Exchange trading fees are roughly in line with industry average.

Virtuse Exchange Withdrawal fees

Virtuse Exchange charges a withdrawal fee of 0.0015 BTC per BTC-withdrawal. This fee is actually a bit above the global industry average BTC-withdrawal fee. The current global industry average is slightly above 0.0006 BTC per BTC-withdrawal so Virtuse Exchange is roughly 150% above average here (not very competitive). 

Deposit Methods

Virtuse Exchange previously didn't accept any other deposit method than cryptos, so new investors were restricted from trading here. Today, however, it is possible to deposit funds through both wire transfer and credit/debit card. This makes this exchange a so called "entry-level exchange", where a new crypto trader can take its first steps into the exciting world of cryptocurrency.

Virtuse Wealth Management

Available to Virtuse Wealth Management subscribers only, the exchange publishes a weekly Virtuse Report that includes 10-15 crypto, commodity, stock recommendations and portfolio allocation tips for private clients. Something else that is available to private clients is the Private Twitter channel which contains charts of perspective trades, trade recommendations and alerts.

Concluding Summary

The following features are what the exchange itself highlights as the summarizing features of the Virtuse platform:

• Launched in: May 2019;
• Team: Self-funded;
• Fiat on/off-ramp: EUR, USD, GBP, CZK, PLN, and CHF, and 20 local currencies by bank transfer and credit card;
• KYC/AML: real-time analytics and risk management of all transactions by Coinfirm;
• Enhanced platforms: one for the first time and one for seasoned traders; 
• Native token: VIRTU;
• Custody: 5% of assets are secured in the hardware storage by the Gemini Custody;
• Speacial Features: Wealth management, zero fees (for VIRTU holders), Recurring trades, Stop Loss, and Take Profit orders, advanced charting;
• Virtuse News: blog with 15,000 subscribers worldwide, regularly pubshed articles at Hackernoon and major Medium publications;
• Licenses: compliant with EU laws and regulations, such as GDPR and AMLD5; and
• Geographical focus: EU, Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, South America.