Coinsquare

Coinsquare Review

What is Coinsquare?

Coinsquare is a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange that has been active since 2014. The land of ice hockey and maple syrup also has a decent number of cryptocurrency exchanges.

Coinsquare Mobile Support

If you are one of those who prefer to do your trading through your phone or your reading tablet, Coinsquare could be a good choice for you. This is because the platform is also available as a mobile application to download on AppStore or Google Play (depending upon whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone).

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.

Coinsquare does not allow any other investors than Canadian investors on its exchange. So if you’re from anywhere else 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. That'll take you a bit further in your hunt for the right exchange at least.

Coinsquare 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. The below is a picture of the trading view at Coinsquare:

Coinsquare Fees

Coinsquare Trading fees

The most important lesson to learn when it comes to picking the best cryptocurrency exchange site is that you must always check the fees.

Coinsquare’s trading fees for takers are 0.20%. This fee is also slightly below the industry average. The industry average is arguably around 0.25%.

The exchange also offers a discount on the above trading fees for makers (i.e., providers of liquidity, the party in a trade that doesn’t take the offer that is already on the order book). The fee for makers is 0.10%. This is naturally a strong competitive edge for the investors who are not interested in picking up existing orders from the order book but rather prefers to “go fishing” with maker-orders.

Coinsquare Withdrawal fees

The exchange also charges a withdrawal fee amounting to 0.0005 BTC when you withdraw BTC. 

The last time an empirical study on withdrawal fees was made, this one, the study concluded that the average BTC-withdrawal fee was 0.00053 BTC per BTC-withdrawal. Accordingly, Coinsquare's BTC-withdrawal fees are slightly below the global industry average.

Deposit Methods

At Coinsquare, you can deposit through both wire transfer and credit cards. This can be helpful especially for newer crypto investors. It is also a nice flexibility to have for any type of investor (new or experienced).

Apparently, you can even deposit fiat currency via Direct Bank Transfer or SEPA-transfer for free at this exchange. This is very competitive. As of 12 January 2021, the platform extended their range of free deposits to also include Interac e-Transfer (from USD 20 to USD 10,000). 

Coinsquare Security

On 14 February 2019 (after the QuadrigaCX-scandal had shocked the market), Coinsquare sent out an email to its users stating that:

• They store over 97.5% of our digital assets in distributed cold storage;
• The exchange not rely on a single individual for security and we have a strict disaster recovery plan;
• They are proud to have banking relationships with a number of Schedule 1 Canadian banks, including one of the Big Five;
• They have completed external independent third-party audits for our 2015, 2016, and 2017 financials; and
• The exchange has developed an industry leading compliance program, including an anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing program, that has been successfully reviewed by an independent third-party.