What is Cryptoradar?
Cryptoradar is a free service that searches dozens of exchanges at once to find the best prices to buy and sell digital currencies.
Cryptoradar makes cryptocurrency trading thus more transparent and enables you to save money on your trades.
Buy Bitcoin
Bitcoin (BTC) is a worldwide digital currency and digital payment system. Bitcoin works works without a central repository or single administrator. It was invented by an unknown programmer, or a group of programmers, under the name Satoshi Nakamoto and released as open-source software in 2009. Bitcoin transactions take place between users directly, without an intermediary. These transactions are verified by network nodes and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain.
Buy Ethereum
Ethereum (ETH) is an open-source, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract (scripting) functionality. Ethereum provides a cryptocurrency token called "ether", which can be transferred between accounts and used to compensate participant nodes for computations performed. Contrary to Bitcoin, Litecoin or many other cryptocurrencies, the primary use case for Ethereum is not as a payment system, but rather a distributed computing system.
Buy Litecoin
Litecoin (LTC) is an open-source cryptocurrency that is inspired by, and in most regards technically nearly identical to Bitcoin (BTC). Litecoin often rolls out new technologies before they are adopted by Bitcoin and, thus, has some technical improvements over Bitcoin that effectively allow a greater number of transactions to be processed by the network. Litecoin is sometimes referred to as the “silver standard” whilst Bitcoin is referred to the “gold standard”.
Buy Dash
Dash (formerly known as Darkcoin and XCoin) is an open-source cryptocurrency that competes with Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer money transfer system. While being based on Bitcoin, Dash offers several improvements, including instant transactions (InstantSend), private transactions (PrivateSend), and decentralized governance (DGBB). Dash's decentralized governance and budgeting system makes it the second decentralized autonomous organization.
Buy Monero
Monero (XMR) is an open-source cryptocurrency that focuses on privacy, decentralization and scalability. While many other cryptocurrencies are derivatives of Bitcoin, Monero possesses significant algorithmic differences to obfuscate blockchain transactions and hide the transaction amounts. Monero experienced rapid growth in market capitalization and transaction volume during the year 2016 after its adoption on The Pirate Bay.
What are cryptocurrencies?
Cryptocurrencies or digital currencies are digital assets designed to work as a way to exchange value. Digital currencies use cryptography to secure all transactions and to limit the creation of additional units of the currency. The most commonly known crypto currency is Bitcoin, a worldwide digital payment system.
Most digital currencies rely on a technology called blockchain which was first pioneered by Bitcoin. The blockchain is a immutable set of transaction records. This means that every transaction made on the blockchain is saved indefinitely in a publicly available database. As a result, the blockchain enables two parties who never met to make trustful transactions, without the need for an intermediary like a bank or payment processor.
Bitcoin, the first publicly available cryptocurrency, was initially debated and introduced amidst the financial crisis in 2008/2009, as an unknown computer engineer under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto realised the need to fix some of the issues in our current fiat money system, such as government control, censorship and high transaction fees.
As a result, Bitcoin is not controlled by a state, but rather by its users and the parties who secure the networks (nodes & miners). This model makes digital currencies a panic-proof investment and value store that cannot be seized or diluted by a malicious state actor or an intermediary such as a bank.
How can I buy cryptocurrencies?
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are traded at so called exchanges. Exchanges are (usually) websites that allow the exchange of fiat currencies such as Dollars or Euros against digital currencies and often also the exchange of digital currencies among each other.
Besides exchanges, there are so called broker services, which aim to facilitate the buying process for non-experts. These brokers allow the purchase of cryptocurrencies at a pre-defined and fixed price, while prices traded on an exchange oftentimes depend on the potentially volatile market price after order execution. Brokers also often feature more payment solutions and are easier to use for beginners. These broker services come at an increased fee, however.
When trading cryptocurrencies you should look out for the following conditions.
Transaction Fees
Exchanges usually charge a transaction fee between 0.1 and 0.3 percent on every trade made on their platform. The fee may very depending on order volume (larger orders often get discounts) and overall trading volume (lower fees on less busy days).
Contrary, broker services usually charge more or less fixed transaction fees, but at a much higher rate of up to 5 percent. For instance, the most popular broker service, coinbase , charges a 1 percent fee on all trades.
Verification
Most exchanges and broker services require you to verify your identity before you can start depositing fiat currencies like Dollars or Euros. The verification methods vary among different providers, but usually you will be required to upload a copy of your passport (or other identity document) and a valid proof of residence (e.g. a utility bill).
The verification process may vary between 10 minutes (using video conferencing tools) and several days. To give you a better overview of verification times, Cryptoradar conducted a test of verification times and points out the required times in the exchange description.
Deposits
To buy Bitcoin, Ethereum or other currencies you need to deposit money on your exchange. Most exchanges, unfortunately, only offer you the possibility to deposit money using wire transfer, which typically takes a day or two. Broker services, however, often offer additional payment methods such as VISA or MasterCard at an additional payment fee. To facilitate your selection process, Cryptoradar lets you filter exchanges or brokers by offered payment methods.
Security
Security also plays a major role when trading cryptocurrencies, since there have already been major hacks of cryptocurrency exchanges. You can, therefore, use Cryptoradar to filter providers by offered security features such as 2FA, cold storage or multisig wallets. Last but not least, we encourage you to not keep significant amounts of fiat or digital currencies on exchanges as these might be affected in case of an hack.