Coinsquare

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Coinsquare is based in Toronto. This is heavily advertised as a positive factor, as Canada is obviously a developed country with a sound financial and regulatory environment.

The focus on Canadian customers is further underlined by the fact the company offers trading against the CAD. While this is a major currency, followed closely by a lot of forex traders, it is by no means widely used out of the country, as the US dollar for instance. That being said the Base currency of your Coinsquare account can be: CAD, USD, EUR, GBP, AUD or BTC.

Trading in some exotic forms of metals trading is also available at Coinsquare.

A 95% cold storage policy is implied at Coinsquare. This is a solid measure, which guarantees a very high level of security. So far Coinsquare has not been involved in a major hacking scandal.

There are relatively few reviews on Coinsquare, but a decent portion of them are negative. While the service is easy to use, some users apparently didn’t understand the fee structure completely. Furthermore, there are some very serious claims regarding price manipulation.

Another interesting, but not crucial point is that this is one of the few exchanges, which exclusively states it doesn’t provide services to residents of New York. Of course, this is due to the 2015 BitLicence, which attempts to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges in the Big Apple.

Coinsquare has also started offering “Wealth” services to those who place very big orders. There are three “account types”, based on the size of each transfer you make, starting from $25,000. The benefits gained feature lower bank transfer fees, OTC trading and more.

Trading conditions

Trading instruments (cryptocurrencies)

When building a portfolio at Coinsquare one can include several assets, including some which are even more unusual than cryptocurrencies.

The digital assets include: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Dash, Dogecoin, Litecoin.

The fiat currencies available are: CAD, USD, EUR, GBP, AUD.

Additionally they allow trading in gold and silver Bars, as well as silver coins. These are traded differently than the spot pairs XAU/USD and XAG/USD, which forex traders are probably familiar with. We are not certain if the instruments offered by Coinsquare are only financial or feature physical delivery of the coins and bars upon request.

Minimum initial deposit

The minimum initial deposit at Coinsquare is $100. Given the Canadian focus of this company, we are not sure if this is measured in USD or CAD. This is a reasonable level of an initial investment, which is also required by a lot of forex brokers, like FxPro.

While one of the payment methods at Coinsquare has a lower minimum deposit, $100 is needed in order to confirm your bank account, which you will need in order to make a withdrawal.

Leverage

Coinsquare does not currently support margin trading. This is expected, as the company is targeting beginners and allowing the creation of a more long-term portfolio. Other crypto-exchanges do offer margin trading for some coins.

Fees

The fee structure at Coinsquare Is transparent. The costs of making transaction on Coinsquare are in-line with the rest of the industry. They charge 0.10% for market makers (the traders who passively provide liquidity to the exchange) and 0.20% for market takers – the ones buying or selling directly at the best possible price. Nowadays some exchanges, like GDAX charge 0.25%.

Additionally a QuickTrade feature is available. It has slightly higher fees, which can go up to 0.4%, depending on the asset class.

Trading platform
 
Coinsquare offers a web-based interface, as well as a mobile app. We chose the word interface, as their offering represents what a long term investor will use to look at her assets instead of an actual trading platform, like MetaTrader4 (MT4), for instance. That being said, it does its job pretty well.

The section which requires account verification features a pie-chart of your holdings, once you have any. Charting in this section is very basic with little room for technical analysis.

Methods of payment

Coinsquare accepts a lot of Canad-specific payment systems, as well as Bank Transfers. They provide a lot of details on the fees and speed of each option.

Conclusion

Coinsquare is a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange. The company offers a gateway to Bitcoin and other similar assets, with a great emphasis on the domestic market. They provide solid security features and appear to be a safe company to deal with, while trading veterans will find their entire offering a bit too basic. On the other hand, we found a plethora of negative user reviews about this exchange. Even though, you always have to take these with a grain of salt, some of them include fierce acusations.