Hey folks, a strategy that’s recognized to be a generally pretty good safeguard against price volatility is to Dollar Cost Average (DCA). In a nutshell, the theory behind DCAing is that by making routine daily purchases, over the long term you won’t have to worry about whether or not you’ve missed buying the dip or the bottom.

If you’re deciding what exchange you should be DCAing your funds into, no matter wherever you go there will be a premium on purchasing your $BTC with fiat. In other words, just as there’s trading fees on almost all DeFi exchanges, there is always a cost of doing business to change your fiat into $BTC, whether it’s through advertised fees or hidden paywalls.

Additionally DCAing — just as it’s stated in the name — can mean a great number of purchases depending on how long you decide to DCA for. Even though an exchange may only scalp 1 or 2% per trade, on a $100 dollars that might not seem a lot, but on hundreds of purchases of $100 dollars this can add up quite fast.

Therefore, I thought it important to sort out which exchanges offer better rates, and the following are a list of 10 different exchanges that I analyzed in order to determine which exchange was giving the lowest/highest premium.

Before diving in, a few things to note about this list and how I calculated these rates:

1. “True $BTC Market Price” was taken straight from TradingView,
2. Sorry to be reiterative, but these are for $BTC purchases with fiat only. There are other on-ramps (e.g., Metamask or Uniswap where you can purchase $ETH but not $BTC).
3. All these rates involve fiat purchases via US banks (as opposed to Credit Card, SEPA, etc.). If you decide to use a credit card for instance, different fees may apply.
4. For the most part, there are no flat fees— they scale upwards either by tier or by a set percentage based on your deposit. In other words, if there’s a 2.99% fee, this generally applies the same whether it’s a $100 dollar purchase or a $1000 dollar one.
5. All these spot checks for were for $100, which I assume is at least somewhat in the range of where a lot of people might DCA. There are some platforms that have a minimum and/or maximum purchase requirement.
6. For most of these exchanges, I did several different spot checks to see whether or not they would fluctuate, especially for the low-premium ones. What I found is that the rates really didn’t differ that much (maybe by 0.01 or 0.02 percent in some cases).

Alright time for the exchanges. In no particular order…

Gemini: 3.523%

True $BTC Market Price: 22397.13
Gemini Quoted Buy Price: 22520.94
Fees for a $100 purchase: $2.99
Amount paid in $USD: $100
$BTC Amount purchased: 0.00430754
True value of $BTC purchased: $96.47
Premium Paid: 3.523%

Crypto.com: 3.699%

True $BTC Market Price: 22412.02
Quoted Buy Price: 22595.29
Fees: $2.99
Amount paid in $USD: $102.99
$BTC Amount purchased: .0044257
True value of $BTC purchased: $99.18
Premium paid: 3.699%

Juno Finance: 1.425%

True $BTC Market Price: 22423.34
Quoted Buy Price: 22747.59
Fees: $0
Amount paid in $USD: $100
$BTC Amount purchased: .00439607
True value of $BTC purchased: $98.57
Premium paid: 1.425%

Coinbase: 3.478%

True $BTC Market Price: 22432.80
Quoted Buy Price: 22546.31
Fees: $2.99
Amount paid in $USD: $100
$BTC Amount purchased: .0043027
True value of $BTC purchased in $USD: $96.52
Premium paid: 3.478%

Fees are scaled (as opposed to flat), meaning that the fees will increase in proportion to your purchase size

Binance.us: 1.993%

True $BTC Market Price: 22428.65
Quoted Buy Price: 22884.78
Fees: $0
Amount paid in $USD: $100
$BTC Amount purchased: .00436971
True value of $BTC purchased in $USD: $98.00
Premium paid: 1.993%

Kraken: 2.002%

True $BTC Market Price: 22480.83
Quoted Buy Price: 22488.20
Fees: $1.97
Amount paid in $USD: $100
$BTC Amount purchased: .00435916
True value of $BTC purchased in $USD: $97.99
Premium paid: 2.002%

Robinhood: 0.359%

True $BTC Market Price: 22424.70
Quoted Buy Price: 22505.64
Fees: $0
Amount paid in $USD: $100
$BTC Amount purchased: .00444333
True value of $BTC purchased in $USD: $99.64
Premium paid: 0.359%

OkCoin: 0.448%

True $BTC Market Price: 22434.92
Quoted Buy Price: 22536.02
Fees: $0
Amount paid in $USD: $100
$BTC Amount purchased: .00443734
True value of $BTC purchased in $USD: $99.55
Premium paid: 0.448%

Bybit — 0.798%

True $BTC Market Price: 22429.68
Quoted Buy Price: 22610.23
Fees: $0
Amount paid in $USD: $100
$BTC Amount purchased: .00442277
True value of $BTC purchased in $USD: $99.20
Premium paid: 0.798%

KuCoin — 1.280%

True $BTC Market Price: 22436.15
Quoted Buy Price: 22727.27
Fees: $0
Amount paid in $USD: $100
$BTC Amount purchased: .0044
True value of $BTC purchased in $USD: $98.71
Premium paid: 1.280%

TLDR; Conclusion

First a quick recap, but this time with the 10 exchanges ranked in order:

1. Robinhood: 0.359%
2. OkCoin: 0.448%
3. Bybit — 0.798%
4. KuCoin — 1.280%
5. Juno Finance: 1.425%
6. Binance.us: 1.993%
7. Kraken: 2.002%
8. Coinbase: 3.478%
9. Gemini: 3.523%
10. Crypto.com: 3.699%

Out of the 10 exchanges that I checked, I was surprised to find that the two with the lowest premiums were probably ones that were smaller and less-used by the crypto-community as a whole — Robinhood (0.359%) and OkCoin (0.448%). Conversely I was even more surprised that more crypto-popular platforms, such as Coinbase, had premiums of more than 3%.

Does this mean I’m recommending one exchange over the other? Not really for there’s pros and cons for using each one. For instance, there’s probably a lot more institutional trust with Coinbase than there is for OkCoin, and even with a 3.478% premium I’m guessing that because of that trust, there’s many people that are willing to pay it.

All that being said, regardless of how you much you may trust any particular exchange, if 2022 has taught us anything please remember that exchanges should really only be used as a means to on-ramp or off-ramp your crypto. Anything else that you could possibly want to do, you could do via self-custody of your own wallet.

If you’ve felt that I’ve missed out on any big/popular exchanges that offer fantastic rates for on-ramping your $BTC, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below so that I can go check them out. If you’re thinking about trying out one of these exchanges yourself, please consider supporting this blog and using one of the following referral links:

Gemini: 3.523% Crypto.com: 3.699% Juno Finance: 1.425% Coinbase: 3.478% Binance.us: 1.993% Robinhood: 0.359% OkCoin: 0.448% KuCoin — 1.280%

Otherwise, thanks for taking the time to read this and be sure to follow me on twitter (https://twitter.com/CryptosWith) to get all my latest updates. Also, looking for a gift for your Crypto-loving/hating friend? Give them a REKT journal to cheer them up!

Disclaimer: And as a final reminder, this is not financial advice and this is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please as always, do your own research and find what investments are best for you, especially when it comes to leverage. Cheers everyone!