Magnr

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Magnr is a cryptocurrency exchange aggregator based in the UK. It was established in 2013. According to its own data, as of June 2017 it has had a trading volume of US $125,853,764. The platform accepts clients worldwide.

Magnr offers two types of services: trading and savings. The trading can be leveraged or spot in Bitcoin against the USD, on three major crypto exchanges: ItBit, Bitstamp and Bitfinex. The leverage can be 1:2, 1:5, 1:10 and a minimum deposit of $5 or  0.001 BTC.

The savings account pays 1.28% annual compound interest on sums between 0.1 BTC (minimum) and 100 BTC (maximum). Balances lower than the minimum threshold don’t get interest on them, while accounts with more coins than the upper limit will profit only from the first hundred Bitcoins.

Magnr Advantages

- Convenient Service. Magnr’s platforms allows trading on three of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges with a single registration and through a single interface. There are other platforms, like CoinSwitch, who act as aggregators, but Magnr’s platform appears more reliable and has a lot of features.

- Robust Platform. Magnr’s trading platform is quite close to what traders see and can use on “traditional” platforms like MetaTrader. It has charting and analysis tools, stop loss and sell limit options, trading history, order book. The charts are provided by TradingView.

- Leverage. Magnr is one of the relatively few crypto exchanges that offer leveraged trading. Even better, Magnr offers leveraged trading on exchanges that do not support this option themselves, which makes it quite convenient for traders. There are other crypto exchanges, like Kraken, CexIo and Quoinex, who offer leveraged trading on cryptocurrencies, but their leverage is actually lower. 

- Simple Registration and identification. The account registration process on Magnr is extremely simple and straightforward. One needs just an e-mail address. There are no identification requirements, either. This means that the client can remain completely anonymous and is spared the cumbersome and sometimes quite slow KYC procedures employed by some exchanges.

- Savings account. Magnr offers an interest-paying savings account for Bitcoins. To our best knowledge, this is the only platform to offer such option. According to Magnr’s site, the interest is compound, is awarded daily and paid out at the end of each month. Currently the annual interest is 1.28%, but will be changed at the end of 2017.

There are no penalty fees charged for withdrawals. The withdrawal fee 0.2% of the overall send value.  It is only for withdrawals from the savings account. Magnr also says it does not use funds from clients’ savings accounts for leverage trading on Magnr Trading. Savings deposits are segregated, managed and stored using offline cold storage facilities.

- Good Security. Like most crypto exchanges, Magnr also uses two-factor authentication, which can be easily activated upon registration, or at a later stage. Additionally, the exchange says it has never run hot-wallet infrastructure where private-keys are held on online servers. Funds are kept in offline cold storage with multiple signatories. Withdrawals from the cold storage are monitored and processed with a human-audit and manual handling and for this reason can take up to 24 hours, or even more. But security is more important than convenience when money is involved.
 
Magnr Disadvantages

- High Trading fees. Magnr’s trading fees are actually quite hefty, particularly on the leveraged trading account. There are exchanges who offer leveraged trading for a lower fee, like CexIo, Okex and Coincheck, for example. The three exchanges featured in Magnr’s platform also charge lower commissions.

In addition to the trading commissions, Magnr charges a 0.3% Daily Funding Fee for leveraged trading. It is required to maintain live open positions after a 24 hour open duration, and at each 24 hour rolling period.

- Payment options. The only deposit and withdrawal option, supported by Magnr, is in Bitcoin. There is no option for fiat currencies, which means that if the client wants to cash in in “real money”, he must withdraw the bitcoin to another wallet and convert it into a fiat currency. Or pay somewhere in Bitcoins (not many places to spend your Bitcoin yet). There is a small consolation in the fact that at least the deposits and withdrawals do not come with an additional fee.

- Small Portfolio. Magnr supports only trading in Bitcoin. Sure, it is the largest by market cap, but there are other cryptocurrencies who are interesting to traders. Another platform, offering similar services – CoinSwitch, for instance, has over a hundred alt-coins and more than 5000 pairs.

- No Regulation. The lack of presence of regulation of cryptocurrency exchanges is relative. Most countries have not come up with specific rules and requirements for such platforms yet, so they operate in the grey area. Exceptions are Japan, which is applying regulation requirements similar to those for forex brokers and other financial services providers and China, which banned the crypto exchanges altogether.
 
Conclusion

Magnr is a British cryptocurrency exchange. The best thing about Magnr is that if offers leveraged trading on several exchanges with one registration. On top of that, the exchanges themselves do not have this feature. Another thing to really like about Magnr is the simple and straightforward process and the anonymity – mostly because it saves time and hassle. Yet another major advantage of Magnr is the trading platform – it has charting and analysis, as well as order options, which are not seen very often at the platforms of most exchanges.

The main disadvantage of Magnr in our opinion, are the fees, particularly the ones for leveraged trading. It is true that when combined, they are not that high, but there are exchanges with lower fees. The lack of payments in fiat currencies or at least withdrawals is also not a good thing.