The Must-Have Exchange Apps for the Second Crypto Bull Run

Despite instability in the trend, it's fair to say that November 2020 is the time of the second crypto bull run. Starting in late October, the BTC price gained over 45% in just 4 weeks growing from $12,910 to $19,390. November 26 saw a drastic 11% downfall that followed whales moving their funds to exchanges. However, the buying sentiment still prevails and experts are foreseeing the further growth of the Bitcoin price. Some consider this decline in price nothing but a buying opportunity. The current bull run is expected to last longer than the one in 2017. The experts and the industry professionals stress that this time the BTC investors pool is more mature since there are institutions and billionaires among the BTC holders — something that wasn't the case in 2017. The time will show if these predictions will come true.

What we know for sure is that every person about to start trading should be aware of the leading exchange apps available on market these days. What do we need to learn about the app before we consider testing it? We should make sure the company representing the app is trustworthy, the app itself is safe and not swarming with bugs, the interface is friendly enough for our trading skills level, the set of supported coins is diverse, the functionality allows to maximize profit, and the fees are fair. A lot of things are worth paying attention to. Moreover, all traders have individual preferences. For instance, some people like to focus on trading in large amounts, while others are ready to perform frequent transactions with numerous altcoins gaining significant overall profit from small trades, etc. Additionally, not all exchange users are traders. Some use exchanges only to buy some BTC and then hold it for months or for years. Below you will see the short reviews about the hottest crypto trading apps relevant as of late 2020.

  1. HitBTC
  2. Changelly Pro
  3. Binance
  4. Voyager

HitBTC

HitBTC is a popular crypto exchange supporting one of the biggest numbers of cryptocurrencies. There are 414 supported coins making up the whopping 936 trading pairs. That's one of the most diverse sets of crypto in the industry to date and the biggest number of trading pairs available for a mobile app. The trading volume is big enough to provide a seamless trading experience while buying and selling most of the big coins — around $1.5 billion. These figures reserve HitBTC a seat among the exchanges with the biggest trading volume rates.

The exchange was founded back in 2013. It is considered that HitBTC made a blueprint for some of the later big exchanges pioneering the sector of centralized crypto exchanges supporting hundreds of coins. HitBTC is truly universal as it can be used by traders, merchants, and institutions. It offers margin trading, an OTC desk, leverage, and other features. Nowadays, the exchange is available in the form of a mobile app (both iOS and Android versions). As for the trading view, HitBTC provides the interface that became commonplace since the exchange's launch: the dashboard contains charts, a candlestick graph with many indicators, and an order book. All the numerous types of orders that are available for a desktop version, are fully presented in the mobile version. It gives mobile app users the tools to make the trading process as flexible and convenient as possible and maximize the profit.

To provide users with more opportunities to earn money and introduce new trading instruments to them, HitBTC holds monthly trading contests. The trader managing to gain the biggest trading volume of a specified coin during a certain time span (usually one or two weeks) receives a prize in crypto worth thousands of dollars. 

Enhanced convenience is provided via the feature of sub-accounts. An account owner can add sub-accounts in order to execute separate trading operations on them. This feature is good for maintaining control over the assets. That's what makes HitBTC a good choice for traders who trade on several markets simultaneously and corporate account owners.

The trading fees on HitBTC are highly competitive. Finding a lower fee rate is a really tough task. The maximum trading fee is 0.09%. Users who trade in large amounts can enjoy fee discounts. Market makers trading whose monthly trading volume is between  20,000 BTC and 50,000 BTC don't pay fees at all! Starting with 50,000 BTC per month, traders receive a bonus for each trade.

The security of the app is achieved via 2-factor authentication that guards the account against those who don't have access to the account owner's certain mobile device. More than that, users can whitelist the wallet addresses that can be used for withdrawals automatically forbidding all the rest. For years, the exchange team was managing to avoid hacks so the platform can be considered safe.

Like with most of the other top crypto trading platforms, most of the complaints from users are associated with the slow work of the support team. Some don't like the fact that the exchange is not regulated and no HitBTC employees are public.

Changelly Pro

Changelly Pro is the most ambitious of the youngest exchanges. The project was launched in 2020 by the long-term successful cryptocurrency industry player participant Changelly. The platform is known as the exchange orders aggregator where users can look for the coins at the best prices available on the other exchanges. Changelly Pro is something different.

Changelly Pro is a custodial crypto exchange that is available in a form of a mobile app (Android and iOS). One of the main goals of the creators was to make it as user-friendly as possible. It means that Changelly Pro has an intuitive interface, provides instant transactions, and charges low commissions (0.1% or lower depending on monthly trade volume).

As of November 2020, the exchange supports over 30 cryptocurrencies. A big advantage of Changelly Pro is that this platform accepts fiat money deposits which make this exchange a hassle-free platform for newcomers in the army of crypto traders. Fiat money deposits are made via Changelly Fiat-to-Crypto Marketplace. The amount of supported deposit methods is high: users can pay with credit/debit cards or via wire transfer using a number of different service providers. There are many types of orders are available for traders on Changelly Pro. It is an important feature, as trading on exchanges with a limited choice of types of orders makes it impossible to reach the max profit. 

It's not surprising that the Changelly Pro app is quite popular considering the fact that it was created by the team of the Changelly instant exchange that turned out to be capable of saving its relevancy in the highly competitive industry for 5 years. Moreover, not all huge exchanges can boast quality mobile apps. Changelly Pro is one of the notable and pleasant exclusions.

Binance

Binance is probably one of the best-known young crypto exchanges. It's a top exchange in terms of the daily trading volume. As of November 2020, the 24h volume is over $8.5 billion while the next exchange has "only" $1.7 billion.

Binance was founded by Changpeng Zhao in China in 2017 but later due to the Chinese government's anti-crypto stance moved its headquarters to the Cayman Islands. The exchange is famous for its large amount of supported currencies. As of today, Binance supports over 250 coins and around 880 pairs. The functionality is quite wide. Binance offers margin trading, numerous types of orders, and has relatively low fees (the maximum trading fee on the platform is 0.1%). Unfortunately, fiat money can't be deposited to Binance directly so users have to buy cryptocurrencies elsewhere or use their debit or credit cards to buy crypto via the OTC trading option.

Apart from the desktop version, the famous exchange exists in the form of a mobile app available both for Android and iOS. Any account created on Binance can be accessed from any type of device.  The app provides an opportunity to trade using the standard order book and candlestick chart. Another available feature is leveraged trading (Perpetual Futures Contracts). The maximum leverage on Binance is 1:125 meaning that a $100 account can make up to $12,500 trades. Such huge leverage is quite rare in the crypto industry. It makes Binance attractive for experienced traders who confidently trade in large amounts. Another nice feature is 5% interest for crypto holders.

Binance is promoting its native coin, Binance Coin or BNB. Users who pay fees in BNB can enjoy discounts. Besides this, the platform regularly offers other benefits for those who hold or trade BNB. That's how the company achieved a high market cap for this currency. Those who trade using Perpetual Future Contracts pay only 0.02% at maximum.

One of the drawbacks of Binance is security. Although the exchange provides enough protection measures, the platform is not regulated and was hacked in 2019. As a result of the security breach, 7,000 BTC were stolen. The reputation of the Binance CEO is questionable itself. According to Forbes, Changpeng Zhao is involved in the corporate structure aimed at deceiving the US regulators for gaining profits from American crypto investors stealthily. However, most of the users are satisfied with the service. The main reason for criticism from users is poor customer support service.

Voyager

Voyager is a young yet ambitious cryptocurrency exchange platform that already made available its mobile versions in several countries. The exchange is praised for its intuitive interface and low trading costs. The exchange was launched in 2018 by Steve Ehrlich who serves as a company CEO now.

The trading interface of Voyager can seem familiar to those who have used online brokers' services. The company behind Voyager strives to fit crypto regulations so using is much safer in terms of the ability to get protection from the government. Creating an account in this app is associated with a KYC (Know-Your-Customer) process which requires the verification of the user's identity. This app is working with the user's bank account letting fiat money safely go to crypto exchange and back. Users can enter the account via Touch ID or Face ID.

As of November 2020, there are over 50 supported cryptocurrencies on Voyager. The list includes BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC, ADA, and other coins. The Marketplace tab provides the list of the coins with available prices. A click on a coin logo opens a graph displaying the coin price's trajectory.

Creating orders is easy. Users specify the amount of crypto they want to buy or sell (in a USD equivalent) and choose the currency. That's how the market order gets created. In the future, Voyager will add other types of orders. Voyager applies limitations on the order size (for example, XRP orders can't be less than $10). These limitations may seem almost negligible, however, they make such trading strategy as scalping less convenient. In some sense, Voyager is the exchanges aggregator as it looks for the best executions for orders on the side exchanges. Trades are fee-free however the platform gets a piece of the trade spread (the ask and bid interval). 

The company has big plans such as widening the set of supported coins, order types, adding new features, and creating an original crypto wallet. Nevertheless, even now Voyager is already received quite well and can be regarded as one of the best trading mobile apps. Probably it can become a strong rival to the well-established crypto exchange Coinbase which has a decent mobile app version, too.