Shankar Iyer
As we at Cryptowisser.com have the world’s largest Exchange List and the world’s largest Derivatives Exchange List, where all information on fees is updated on a monthly basis, we feel that it is our duty towards the members of the crypto community to publish a study of what actually is the average crypto spot trading fee and the average crypto contracts trading fee. Consequently, we have created this report.
Q1 2022 Fees Report: Summary
This particular report is our seventh full-blown empirical study. Compared to the previous report, for Q4 2021 published in February 2022, we note that:
- The average spot trading taker fee has marginally increased to 0.2323% in Q1 2022 (0.2318% in the previous quarter), whereas the average spot trading maker fee has dropped to 0.1875% in Q1 2022 vis-à-vis 0.1904% in the previous quarter.
- The average contracts trading taker fee for Q1 2022 has risen to 0.0594% (compared to 0.0591% in the previous quarter), and the average contracts trading maker fee has increased to 0.0242% (0.0229% in Q4 2021).
- The average BTC-withdrawal fee has dropped from 0.0005072 BTC per BTC-withdrawal in the last quarter to 0.0004723 BTC per BTC-withdrawal in the first quarter of 2022. This development can be attributed to an increase in the number of exchanges charging ‘No fees’ in our data set as well as a drop in the number of exchanges charging withdrawal fees above the network fees. This has an impact on bringing down the average withdrawal fee.
Average Spot Trading Fee
In our Exchange List, taker and maker fees are listed for 333 different spot trading exchanges. The taker fees range from nothing (there are 14 exchanges that have 0.00% as their taker fee) to 1.99% (American exchange Gemini). The maker fees range from -0.25% (SINEGY Marketplace), meaning that you get paid 0.25% of the order value if you are the maker, to 1.99% (again, American exchange Gemini...).
The market average spot trading fee is 0.2323% for takers and 0.1875% for makers.*
The following bar chart shows the allocation of fees between the spot trading exchanges in the study:
Average Contracts Trading Fee
Out of the 40 exchanges offering contracts trading in the exchange list where we could determine what taker and maker fees they charged, the taker fees ranged from 0.10% (DragonEx, Bitop and Bigomex) down to the vastly more competitive 0.04% (three exchanges: MCS, Mexo and BTSE Exchange).
Maker fees range from 0.10% (Bitop), down to -0.025% (two exchanges: Phemex and C-Trade).
The market average contracts trading fee is 0.0594% for takers and 0.0242% for makers.
The following bar chart shows the allocation of fees between the contracts trading exchanges in the study for the first quarter of 2022 in comparison to the previous quarter (top showing taker fees, bottom showing maker fees):
Average BTC-withdrawal Fee
Out of the 271 exchanges we have been able to retrieve fixed BTC-withdrawal fees from, the withdrawal fees range from 0 (13 different exchanges) to 0.005 BTC (Coinsbank). 0.005 BTC is a really hefty withdrawal fee and corresponds to USD 197.93 on the date of publishing this report (22 April 2022).
Many exchanges don’t charge any fees at all, but when you withdraw from these exchanges, you still have to pay the network fees to the miners in the network. Accordingly, we have inputted the network fee (updated monthly) in our database as the withdrawal fee for such exchanges. The network fee on the date we compiled the data for the report (03 April 2022) was 0.000047 BTC per BTC withdrawal.
The average BTC-withdrawal fee is 0.0004723 BTC per BTC-withdrawal.**
The following bar chart shows the allocation of BTC-withdrawal fees in the study:
Concluding Thoughts
The results from the report are somewhat inconclusive and we see no obvious trends.
Withdrawal fees in this report have however dropped approx. 5.54%, down to 0.0004723 per BTC-withdrawal (from 0.0005 BTC). This is in large part can be explained by the rise in the number of exchanges charging ‘Zero fees’ in our data set (13 exchanges in the current quarter v/s 10 in the last quarter) as well as a drop in the number of exchanges charging withdrawal fees above the network fees (i.e. 203 in Q1 2022 vis-à-vis 212 for Q4 2021)
This report is the seventh report in Cryptowisser.com’s crypto trading fee report series, and the next report will be prepared and published at the beginning of Q3 2022.
* The following types of exchanges have been excluded from the calculations of spot trading fees, contracts trading fees and withdrawal fees:
(i) exchanges not offering spot trading, such as crypto stores, or market places where users can post ads for selling Bitcoins etc.,
(ii) exchanges where we have not been able to find unambiguous data on the relevant trading fees, and
(iii) exchanges that were not in operation on 31 March 2022.
Furthermore, the trading fees used for the calculation are always excluding any and all discounts based on trading volume or holdings of an exchange’s native token etc.
** The following groups of withdrawal fees have been excluded from the calculations:
(i) percentage-based withdrawal fees; and
(ii) hybrid models (where one part of the withdrawal fee is percentage-based and another part of the withdrawal fee is a fixed cryptocurrency amount).
