Dogecoin Exchanges
This post is aimed at helping new users of Dogecoin to interact with and select reputable (in my research and opinion at least) exchanges.
First of all, what is an "exchange"? Simply put this is a place where a user can trade their cryptocurrency, either to a different cryptocurrency or to a fiat currency (often done as a means to "cash out" their assets. The exchange is a third party company for want of a better word, which facilitates the exchange of coins/assets between two parties (you and someone else), they do this by providing the platform to do so and acting as an intermediary. There are various fees associated with any transaction that you complete on an exchange and this varies from exchange to exchange.
Read on for a list of some well know cryptocurrency exchanges which are integrated with dogecoin, I will try and provide some information about fees for each of these exchanges along with eligibility requirements including whether some are usable in the US for example and specifically New York who are even more strict about exchanges compliance with local law.
Kraken
Kraken (https://www.kraken.com/) is a US based cryptocurrency exchange service that has an in depth platform which allows various types of trading including margin trading and over the counter (OTC) exchanges. This is a relatively "old" player in the cryptosphere having been founded in 2011. Further information about the history of the exchange can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken_(company)
At the time of writing Kraken supports approximately 50 cryptocurrency assets (you can count them!) which can be found here:
https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000678446-Cryptocurrencies-available-on-Kraken
In recent times, there have been some issues (as with other exchanges I have used) due to heavy loads on the site causing the API to struggle to return the value of your assets.
At the time of writing you can see the following "trading pairs" for XDG (dogecoin) on Kraken:
This indicates that you can trade between dogecoin and either US dollars, Euros or Bitcoin. The simple transaction screen looks like this:
You will be asked to "confirm" after clicking the big red button by choosing the "Submit Order" button. The trade will then be made once a user (or multiple users) puts in a buy for the same amount.
Information about fees for Kraken can be found here:
https://www.kraken.com/features/fee-schedule
At the time of writing, Kraken is available in Europe, US (including NYC) and much of the rest of the world.
Binance/Binance.US
The other one, the alternative to Kraken for an exchange that can be used by the majority of the world to swap coins (including Doge) for other coins and fiat currency and "cash out" if you don't blow it all on the latest new coin that is about to dump to zero. This works in pretty much the same way as Kraken in that there is a simple sign up process, it has it's own "wallets" for about a million different cryptocurrencies and a usually robust/up online cryptoexchange for most of the coins that you can think of.
In terms of Dogecoin trading pairs, there are currently seven different trading pairs as seen here:
Fees for using Binance can be found here: https://www.binance.com/en/fee/schedule
Binance is available in most countries, though US users will need to ensure that they use the specific website (https://www.binance.us/en/home) in order to avoid any issues with account closures (however at the time of writing, it is still not available to users in NYC - https://www.coindesk.com/binance-says-banks-can-now-use-its-stablecoin-after-new-york-regulatory-approval).
Coinbase/Coinbase Pro
Yet another of the other "big players" when it comes to Cryptocurrency exchanges (regulated ones at least). Coinbase has been knocking about since 2012. It works in much the same way as Coinbase in terms of the way the process works (by matching your sells/buys with another sell/buy order and executing an exchange and taking a fee). A list of the fees can be found here: https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/pricing-and-fees/fees
It's worth noting that there is a version called Coinbase Pro which has fewer fees. (details can be found here: https://help.coinbase.com/en/pro/trading-and-funding/trading-rules-and-fees/fees)
Most of the "exchanging" on Coinbase takes place through the Coinbase Pro interface - found here: https://pro.coinbase.com/ (you can log in with the same details as your normal Coinbase account).
At this point there is no way to exchange/buy or sell Dogecoin on Coinbase or Coinbase Pro as there are no trading pairs, however you are able to store Dogecoin on their wallet (integrated with their exchange) and the coin may be available for exchange in the future. (https://blog.coinbase.com/announcing-dogecoin-doge-support-on-coinbase-wallet-5f1163be0493)
Summary
Take all of this with a pinch of salt, I have just outlined some of the more well known exchanges but as always it's best to do your own research. For transparency, there are no referral links to any of the above exchanges, I also haven't heard of any outright verifiable scams associated with any of the above. There have been examples where users have complained about not being able to access their funds temporarily when all of these exchanges are experiencing high volumes (usually because of a new "All Time High" in Bitcoin). Please as always, do your own research and remember that crypto investment is nothing more than gambling.
You will also notice that there is one glaring omission of an exchange on this list that will have been in the news a lot lately "Robinhood", that's because it's a stock trading platform and not a cryptocurrency platform. It offers a representation of cryptocurrencies that you can trade, but not the actual coins, you can't send your coins to a wallet from Robinhood, therefore you never real owned the coins.
To the Moon, such wow. Or something.
