In this ever-evolving crypto industry, there are many exchanges that have been developed and gained substantial followings. In this CoinDCX review, I will be looking at one of these exchanges, putting it under a critical lens. My aim is to examine what makes the CoinDCX exchange so enticing for some users, and whether it's worthy of the community it has built.
In particular, there are a few very important questions I'll aim to answer in this CoinDCX review, with some being as basic as simply asking, “What is CoinDCX?”, and going all the way up to more complex ones such as, “Is CoinDCX safe?” and “Is there CoinDCX USA support?”.
When it comes to examining exchanges that are lesser-known, people naturally will compare them to top-performing platforms in the industry, such as Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken. This is because such exchanges function as benchmarks for what you can expect from a service like this. However, it's also important to remember that just because an exchange is not a household name, does not mean that it is worse.
Verdict at a Glance: CoinDCX is an Indian-focused crypto exchange and ecosystem that excels at offering robust trading dashboards for its spot, margin, and futures activity. Its VC funding channel and OTC portal are impressive, although its leverage range is lacking, and it's unclear what regions can actually interact with it. Besides, being Indian-focused, it only supports INR for instant purchases.
Pros
- Zero fees for INR deposits and withdrawals
- Registered with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU)
- VC funding channel
- Instant purchases
Cons
- INR is the only supported fiat currency
- Limited leverage capabilities
Table of Contents
- 1. What is CoinDCX?
- 2. CoinDCX Review: PROS
- 2.1. Security is the Top Priority
- 2.2. Spot, Margin, and Futures Trading
- 2.3. Instant Purchases
- 2.4. OTC Trading Desk
- 2.5. VC Funding Channel
- 3. CoinDCX Review: CONS
- 3.1. USA Support is Open-Ended and Ambiguous
- 3.2. Margin and Futures Leverage is Low
- 4. CoinDCX Pricing
- 5. How to Sign Up to CoinDCX?
- 6. Conclusions
What is CoinDCX?
Before I jump into my CoinDCX review, let’s take a look at what is CoinDCX. If I were to start the review before giving a primer on the platform itself, this would feel like a futile exercise.
CoinDCX is a crypto exchange and ecosystem, founded in 2018 by Sumit Gupta and Neeraj Khandelwal. Both co-founders are graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology, located in Bombay (it's a highly prestigious engineering university in the country).
Sumit Gupta currently takes on the role of the CEO at CoinDCX, and holds a strong belief that cryptocurrency should be a tool used for financial independence. He has a background in Electrical Engineering, and has worked as a software engineer at Sony before starting CoinDCX.
Neeraj Khandelwal takes on the role of CTO. He is a trained engineer, using his experience and knowledge to ensure that CoinDCX is operating and functioning as intended and expected. His background is in Computer Science and Engineering. He shares a similar belief to Sumit Gupta, in that he views blockchain tech as a way of changing people's living standards for the better[1].
Together, they have helped turn CoinDCX into India’s first crypto unicorn, which occurred in 2021. For the uninitiated, a unicorn is a privately held startup valued at over $1 billion. This term is often used to highlight the rarity and exceptional success of such companies in the competitive business world.
CoinDCX exchange’s achievements denote its significance in the crypto space and its potential for future growth.
CoinDCX Review: PROS
Now that I have provided a brief overview answering the question of “What is CoinDCX?”, I will be proceeding further with my CoinDCX review and highlighting the positives of the platform.
Security is the Top Priority
The first question that must be addressed in any CoinDCX review is, “Is CoinDCX safe?”. Well, CoinDCX places paramount importance on the security of digital assets and private information stored within its platform, demonstrating a commitment based on four fundamental principles.
Firstly, the platform adopts a proactive approach to defend its systems against a diverse range of threats. This likely involves the implementation of advanced security protocols, encryption methods, and continuous monitoring to promptly identify and neutralize potential risks.
CoinDCX also focuses on preventing any misuse of its internal mechanisms, indicating stringent access controls and monitoring practices. This approach ensures that only authorized individuals have access to critical systems, mitigating the risk of unauthorized activities.
Moreover, recognizing the potential vulnerabilities associated with human errors, CoinDCX prioritizes minimizing such occurrences. This may involve the implementation of automated systems, double-check procedures, and ongoing training to enhance the overall reliability of operations.
Lastly, CoinDCX maintains a steadfast stance against data fraud, emphasizing the significance of data integrity and security. Robust measures are likely in place to detect and prevent fraudulent activities, ensuring the protection of user data and assets.
In essence, CoinDCX's holistic approach to security signifies a comprehensive strategy to address potential threats across various dimensions, so it could most likely be said that CoinDCX is safe.
Spot, Margin, and Futures Trading
For many crypto exchanges, spot trading functions as its primary product, as it is the most basic and simplistic method of investing in any market. With the exception of exchanges that focus on a specific trading niche (such as perpetuals or derivatives), this is typically the best place to begin looking at a platform when performing an overall assessment.
This is what I’ll do in my CoinDCX review as well, because the company offers spot trading to its user base. Upon inspection, I found it to be a highly competent feature, providing a full dashboard with all the bells and whistles you would expect from a crypto exchange.
Users can choose from a wide range of coins and tokens to trade, as well as look at real-time chart stats, whilst overlaying it with various indicators and customizing its look and feel.
In fact, when it comes to the chart, in particular, the CoinDCX exchange uses TradingView to facilitate this. For those who are new to trading and might not know, TradingView is arguably the leading standard for chart representation, not just in the crypto market but in the stock and precious metal sectors as well.
This is the case because it offers highly customizable elements that allow seasoned traders to change the look and feel of their charts to suit their needs in highly precise ways.
Experienced traders, especially day traders, tend to look for certain statistics and data and often prefer to view it in a specific way. TradingView excels at providing this capability. For example, with the help of TradingView on CoinDCX, you can look at any chart with such indicators as Ichimoku Clouds[2], Williams Alligators, and TRIX.
Understanding what these three indicators are is not necessary for this CoinDCX review – what is more important is to recognize that these are niche, advanced, and highly specialized tools that tend to only be used by very well-versed traders.
It's a clear way of showing how much TradingView values the perspectives of traders, and therefore, it shows just how important they are to CoinDCX.
The company additionally offers margin trading, going up to 6x leverage and boasting a selection of over 250 cryptocurrencies available for margin trading, showcasing the substantial liquidity pools supporting the exchange. While the crypto support is self-explanatory, 6x leverage means that you can amplify your trading positions sixfold, allowing for potentially higher profits.
Basically, this would strengthen your positions whilst you would only be investing a fraction of the amount you would typically need when performing spot trades. The margin trading dashboard and tools are practically identical to spot trading, including TradingView availability.
Along with spot and margin trading, CoinDCX also has futures trading capabilities. This trading method provides them with up to 15x leverage on their trades, which is significantly higher than via margin. It's exciting news for people who are open to risk, and comfortable working with more intense leverages as a means of maximizing profits.
The platform prides itself on its ability to provide quick order matching, meaning that buyers and sellers can be connected to each other through the CoinDCX exchange with ease, and without too much waiting around. This supposedly also functions even when the market is going through turbulent and stagnant times where it can be tough to get orders processed.
Having speedy matchmaking is especially important when it comes to futures trades because these contracts have a set expiration date. Delays in matching orders can lead to missed opportunities, price slippages, or potentially entering a position too late, exposing traders to unfavorable market conditions.
In the fast-paced world of futures trading, even minor delays can significantly impact profitability and strategic execution.
The platform also boasts of its wide variety of contracts available. For instance, it offers vanilla, inverse, and perpetuals contracts. All of these have elements that can be customized and edited to suit the trader’s needs best. Along with this, there are risk mitigation protocols in place that are designed to help traders from harming their financial positions too much.
When it comes to the dashboard, it is very similar to that of the spot and margin interfaces. In fact, so similar that there are only some small subtle differences that are visible, therefore it is important that traders are careful not to make mistakes and perform the wrong trades than what they intended.
The good side of this is that it means futures trades also have full TradingView customizations that can be applied.
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Instant Purchases
Now, moving further, it's worth noting that one of the best tools for beginners in the trading world is the ability to perform instant buys and sells. Not every platform offers a service like this, but CoinDCX definitely does. Users can buy and sell BTC, ETH, XRP, and a huge range of other altcoins with the Indian Rupee (INR).
This is fantastic for complete newcomers who want to jump into the market, but might struggle with using fully-fledged dashboards.
What makes instant purchases so enticing is that they are simplified to the highest degree. While seasoned traders might want a complex dashboard with many features and customizations available, new traders typically want something that is more direct and streamlined.
This is the case because it allows for actions to take place in a quicker way (as there is less clutter to distract), and so that mistakes cannot be made by using the wrong settings.
Oftentimes, you can figure out how much a company cares about complete beginners by whether they include a feature like this or not. Some exchanges are more focused on veteran traders, so they do not bother building instant buying tools.
While there is nothing wrong with this, as these platforms often cater to a different niche, it is good to know what a platform is aiming for demographic-wise before jumping into it, so you can see if you fit into their goals and intentions.
OTC Trading Desk
One more important feature to highlight in my CoinDCX review is that the company offers a service designed specifically for large-scale trades. This is different from its trading dashboards that I’ve already mentioned, as it's a dedicated tool for deposits, withdrawals, and investments that equate to $20,000 or higher.
It essentially is an OTC (over-the-counter) trading portal that boasts higher liquidity than any other product on the CoinDCX ecosystem. OTC trades are where large quantities of a cryptocurrency or other assets are bought or sold directly between two parties, without the oversight of a formalized exchange.
These trades are typically favored by institutional investors or high-net-worth individuals who wish to transact large amounts without causing significant price fluctuations in the open market.
Along with this, OTC trades offer more privacy and can often be executed quicker and with potentially better pricing than on traditional exchanges, given the lack of order book constraints. This aspect of privacy and improved pricing is a focal point of the service, as it works as a huge encouragement for institutional players.
This service comes with a dedicated team of individuals who help facilitate the activity. It means that customer service is at the highest level that CoinDCX offers. The company also points out that they lock in prices and quotes when trades begin, which helps to minimize slippage and other subsequent risks.
The team explains that, when it comes to high-value trades, if the price somebody aims for is within 0.2% of the bid and ask price, the order gets executed.
If the price falls outside of this boundary, however, it gets executed using its specialized swap for liquidity service. The company further notes that the maximum volume for such trades is 100,000 USDT for INR and USDT trades.
OTC Desk is a tool praised in many user CoinDCX reviews, as it shows that the company is versatile and that they are interested in working with high-level and institutional traders. In other words, it adds a level of legitimacy to the project, as it shows they can handle such activity.
VC Funding Channel
Lastly, a tool that is not so common to find in a crypto ecosystem is one that helps fund smaller projects and companies. However, it shows that the team is interested in growing their community and network, as well as further expanding the potential of the entire crypto market.
One example of this would be Binance's Launchpad, which helps certain tokens get off their feet, as well as their Lab for experimental blockchain tech to get developed.
However, this is a CoinDCX review, so what is the case with the platform in question? Well, I see that the company has its own VC funding channel, which helps startups develop their products and add to the blockchain and Web3 space. The goal is to aid developers and founders in building revolutionary tools that will positively affect people’s lives.
This should come as no surprise, considering how Neeraj Khandelwal believes that blockchain tech is life-changing and transformative, and Sumit Gupta sees the potential for this industry to bring about financial independence.
The VC funding solution seems like the aspect of CoinDCX that highlights exactly why they view cryptocurrency as meaningful and elevates their company into something that is more than a simple exchange.
Did you know?
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CoinDCX Review: CONS
Now that I have examined some of the best elements in my CoinDCX review, let’s dive into the more problematic and limiting aspects of the company. While there is a lot to celebrate, there are some glaring issues that cannot be ignored, too.
USA Support is Open-Ended and Ambiguous
One of the top questions people have when it comes to this company is about whether there is CoinDCX USA support. The answer is sadly not obvious. The platform does not explicitly state whether it is open to the US or not, although after investigating the company, it appears that it is unlikely to be the case.
It might not be abundantly clear when first visiting the CoinDCX exchange, but it tends to lean towards encouraging Indian residents to engage with them. This is visible when you start looking at how the platform handles fiat transactions and deposits – in a nutshell, the company only appears to operate with the Indian Rupee.
There is nothing wrong with this, although the lack of USD, EUR, or other fiat currency support suggests that it is an India-focused exchange.
This does not explicitly mean that there is no CoinDCX USA support, but it does suggest that the platform is not engaged with the needs and desires of US residents. It might be possible to still use the trading tools and services on offer, but users should bear in mind that they will not be considered as significantly as Indian residents are.
Another suggestion that there is no CoinDCX USA support is that users are unable to register to the platform using a US (+1) phone number. The same is true for using a United Kingdom (+44) number. Again, this is not a direct statement saying US members are disallowed, but it does decrease the likelihood that US citizens are supported in any way.
Considering CoinDCX was founded by two people who were born and raised in India, it would not be surprising for the company to focus only on this region. While there are many global exchanges, such as Binance and KuCoin, there are also a lot of exchanges that only cater to certain locations.
Naturally, this will be frustrating to people around the world, but the largest demerit is the fact that CoinDCX does not explicitly state where its boundaries are.
Margin and Futures Leverage is Low
I mentioned earlier in my CoinDCX review that the company has both futures and margin trading available. However, the leverage that the platform offers is relatively low compared to other exchanges on the market. For margin trading, the highest leverage is set to 6x, and futures trading is set to 15x.
While you could say that futures leverage is more than double its margin counterpart, when you compare this to other platforms, both statistics begin to look meager.
For instance, Binance offers futures and margin trading leverage that reaches up to a maximum of 125x. For those wanting to take things one step further, PrimeXBT offers 200x leverage for some of its futures trades. When you compare this to the ranges listed in my CoinDCX review, they pale in comparison.
Low leverages may be exciting for intermediate traders who are getting accustomed to increased risk, but those who are extremely comfortable with the high stakes that come with leverage, might find it deeply stifling.
Sadly, with leverages being capped at 6x or 15x (depending on what type of trade you are performing), this is simply too limiting for it to be enticing for users who love working with tools like this. If somebody intends to work with futures or margin trades exclusively, they will likely be disappointed by what CoinDCX has to offer, and would rather go somewhere that has a much higher range.
Thankfully, this is the sort of issue that could get solved at some point in the future, by simply increasing liquidity and improving risk management protocols. If the company were to collaborate with institutional partners, implement sophisticated algorithms, and adopt more advanced order-matching systems, they could potentially bring their leverage ranges up significantly.
CoinDCX Pricing
To make this a full-fledged CoinDCX review, we must go over its pricing system. So, let's start with trading fees.
There are three types of CoinDCX trading fees that are all based on a maker / taker model:
- Spot trading fees for INR pairs – from 0.5% to 0.04% for both makers and takers;
- Spot trading fees for crypto-to-crypto (C2C) pairs – always 0.2% for both makers and takers;
- Futures fees – from 0.025% to 0.008% for makers and from 0.075% to 0.035% for takers.
Besides, the CoinDCX fee system is tiered (from regular level to VIP Level 7). Your fee level is determined by your 30-day spot (INR) or futures (USDT) trading volume. As your level increases, some fees decrease. Additionally, you get other benefits from reaching the VIP level (priority customer service, priority INR rails, fiat-to-crypto spot and futures rebates, and so on).
The CoinDCX OTC Desk has a separate trading fee, which is 0.1% of the transaction amount from both – selling and buying.
Now, when it comes to CoinDCX deposit and withdrawal fees, for one, you can only deposit INR, but you can do that for free. The same goes for withdrawing INR – there are no fees. However, when it comes to crypto withdrawals, there are some fees, which depend on the asset in question. For example, there are no fees for ETH withdrawals, but there is a 0.0004 BTC fee for withdrawing BTC. As for crypto deposits, there are no fees.
How to Sign Up to CoinDCX?
Now that I have covered the pros, cons, and fees within my CoinDCX review, let me contextualize all of this by walking you through how to sign up for the platform. This is a relatively simple process, although bear in mind that there is not likely to be any CoinDCX USA support, and so some hiccups could be incurred for certain residents.
Step 1: Go to the CoinDCX homepage and navigate to the top right corner, where you’ll find a small button labeled “Login”. Click on it.
Step 2: This will bring you to a login page. Naturally, for newcomers, it will not be of much importance. However, it does reveal another button that is more relevant to us. At the bottom of the page, there is a section that states, “Not registered yet? Register”. The word “Register” is a link to sign up. Click on it.
Step 3: You can now enter your details, such as your name, email address, and password. If you have a referral code, you can tick the corresponding box as well (although, this is optional). Then, click “Register”.
Step 4: You will be taken to a page asking you to verify your email address. The website will send you an email with a code to enter. Submit it and click “Verify”.
Step 5: The next step is to verify your phone number. However, don't forget that US (+1) numbers, as well as UK (+44) numbers, are not currently accepted. This may be the case for other regions as well.
Once this is done, you will have an account with CoinDCX. So, you can begin exploring the platform. However, you will, of course, need to complete KYC and AML verification before you can undergo actual trades and exchanges.
- Very low trading fees
- Exceptional functionality
- Mobile trading app
- Very competitive trading fees
- An intuitive mobile app
- Up to 100x leverage available
- A very well-known crypto exchange platform
- More than 500 different cryptos available
- Two-factor authentication
- Over 500 different cryptocurrencies available
- Strong security
- Small withdrawal fees
- Fully reserved and transparent
- Multiple tradable asset classes
- Early new token support
- 265 supports cryptocurrencies
- Secure & transparent
- Fully reserved
Conclusions
In this CoinDCX review, I've explored a wide array of areas, including its trading capabilities, funding channels, and leverage tools for certain activities. Some features have been extremely impressive, such as its instant buys and the OTC portal, whereas other areas have been lacking, such as its supposed uncertainty of USA support.
Overall, CoinDCX is a platform that is filled with some strong elements, and some drawbacks that prevent it from being viewed as a top company, such as Binance, Coinbase, or Kraken. The fact that it does not explicitly state which regions it supports, and that it offers a low range of leverage for both margin and futures trading, leaves CoinDCX seeming a little lackluster.
That being said, if you are an Indian resident and you are not interested in high-leverage futures or margin trading, this platform appears to be robust and useful. Follow the walkthrough I've made in my CoinDCX review to try it out for yourself, and see if you agree with the points I’ve made.
The content published on this website is not aimed to give any kind of financial, investment, trading, or any other form of advice. BitDegree.org does not endorse or suggest you to buy, sell or hold any kind of cryptocurrency. Before making financial investment decisions, do consult your financial advisor.
Scientific References
1. W. Al-Saqaf, N. Seidler: 'Blockchain Technology for Social Impact: Opportunities and Challenges Ahead';
2. L. K. J. Shawn, S. Yanyali, J. Savidge: 'Do Ichimoku Cloud Charts Work and Do They Work Better in Japan?'.