Our take
4 out of 5 stars
Did you know that from 2012 to May 2020, Bitcoin gained in value by 193,639.36%? In the process, it outperformed many other commodities, including gold. The most popular digital currency, Bitcoin, dominates more than 68.7% of the market.
This veritable "digital gold" continues to drive the demand for cryptos, and it has earned legitimacy even as analysts continue to project it could reach heights of $100,000 or even $146,000 soon.
Our OKCoin review will evaluate one of the most popular exchanges on the market today in light of these fantastic foretellings. We'll take a look at its pros and cons and whether it's the right platform to help you get in on the Bitcoin action (and more).
Keep reading for our full analysis of OKCoin and whether you should consider it the place to buy and sell cryptocurrency.
What Is OKCoin Exchange?
Established in 2013 by Star Xu in Beijing, China, OKCoin Exchange is a digital asset trading platform. The company consists of two large organizational units, OKCoin China and OKCoin International.
OKCoin China serves Chinese residents, facilitating RMB transactions. OKCoin International conducts operations in USD transactions and represents a global company providing services to traders worldwide.
For this article's purposes, we'll focus on OKCoin International, which will be referred to simply as OKCoin or OKCoin Exchange.
OKCoin Exchange offers fiat trading with the most popular cryptocurrencies, including:
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Ethereum Classic (ETC)
- Litecoin (LTC)
This service is available to both individuals and professionals. OKCoin Exchange's mission remains to create a reliable, efficient, and safe platform that nixes any trading barriers worldwide. The company's mantra dovetails nicely with this mission: "Everyone is a trader."
The company places a premium on customer experience and satisfaction. To achieve these ends, OKCoin's team makes transparency, reliability, and support vital features. They also offer services and products custom-tailored to client needs.
Services and Products Custom-Tailored to Customers
What do these services and products entail? They include an intuitive mobile app that permits users to access the platform. Even newbies will find it a cinch to use.
And for more advanced traders? They'll gain access to a variety of trade types with OKCoin Exchange. These include features such as:
- Margin trading
- Trailing stop orders
- And more
But the many benefits of using OKCoin don't end there. You can also rest assured your funds are safe with the exchange. Let's take a closer look at the company's precautions to keep customer funds safe and secure.
OKCoin Exchange: Safety and Security
How does OKCoin Exchange keep customer assets safe? The company relies on special security procedures, including anti-fraud technology.
In 2019, the exchange announced the investment of an undisclosed amount in the crypto custody provider Prime Trust. Other participants in the funding round with Prime Trust and OKCoin included Novablock Ventures, Xsquared Ventures, and Blockchain Partners.
Prime Trust acts as OKCoin's fiat gateway, and the exchange also announced in 2019 the addition of a new payment channel permitting customers to deposit funds directly into Prime Trust with no fees.
That said, withdrawals from Prime Trust come with a hefty $35 fee per transaction. Who is Prime Trust? This Nevada-based financial company entered the crypto custody arena in July of 2018, offering custody services for any token (including ether) issued under the ERC-20 standard on the Ethereum blockchain.
OKCoin Exchange and Prime Trust also announced the launch of its stable coin known as OKcash (OKUSD). Today, there are 78 million OKUSD in existence, a figure similar to Litecoin's 105 million coins.
Some rank it as the most undervalued currency out there with the potential to skyrocket. It will be worth watching this coin's trajectory shortly, although to say it's been volatile over the last handful of years is an understatement.
2020 and Arrest of a Founder
Although OKCoin started in China, it has since made a move to the United States and is an American-based entity headquartered in San Francisco. As a result, you can rest assured its safety and security measures always comply with US regulatory and cybersecurity standards.
This geographic reality proved immensely helpful in October 2020 when its founder, Star Xu (a.k.a. Mingxing Xu), got arrested in China on fraud charges.
The charges came on the heels of a group of investors who claimed they'd incurred major losses due to a system crash on the platform. The kicker? They claimed that Xu's other crypto exchange, OKEx, had orchestrated the crash.
After 24 hours, authorities released Xu after he cooperated in the investigation of his accusers' accusations. According to the management team out of San Francisco, they announced that Xu's ongoing investigation would have no impact on OKCoin's business operations, which means OKCoin and OKEx were barely phased by the incident.
Despite these events, the exchange handled $19.7 million in trading in the 24 hours following the announcement of the arrest. What's more, OKEx, its' crypto-to-crypto entity, ranked the 11th largest exchange in the world by adjusted trading volume. Today, it trades at more than $2.3 billion during any given 24 hours period.
OKCoin Exchange: Ease of Use
How user-friendly is OKCoin Exchange? It's one of the most user-friendly interfaces out there, with all of the tools you need divided up into three necessary tabs of information.
What do the three tabs include? They're organized as follows:
- Sign up and/or sign in button
- Basic information (e.g., section to add funds, trading chart, and frequently asked questions (FAQs)
- Data on current rates for purchasing or selling crypto coins
After you've signed up for an account through the exchange, you'll gain access to the full range of options offered.
OkCoin Exchange: Tools and Features
What does this full range of tools and features look like? They include options like:
- Spot cryptocurrency trading
- Trading futures on digital assets (you'll go to the OKEx subdomain)
- Tokens (special digital tokens working as internal currency units for payments or participation in offers)
- Credit leveraging margin trading (up to 500 000 USD with day rate 0.1%)
Despite these far-ranging choices, the OKCoin exchange proves simple to learn, navigate, and use. Information is distributed in the upper menu and side tool panels, too.
There, you'll find all of the necessary data for traders, including a trading chart (in two colour schemes, light or dark). You get to select the design.
You'll also find tracking marks of trends, indicator lists, and common factors. Besides these features, you'll see offers for cryptocurrency purchases or sales (e.g., limit and market orders) and additional analytical data that proves highly useful.
The mobile version of the exchange was designed for smartphones, both iOS and Android, which stands out in terms of overall navigability. Best of all, if you get stumped on an aspect of how the platform operates, sending a message to customer support via email or telephone is simple.
That's a significant perk when you consider how some exchanges make your hunt for contact information. You can also use these venues to send the company suggestions for further enhancement of the customer experience.
How to Make Deposits and Withdrawals
When OKCoin began, all the transactions took place in Bitcoin. Today, four additional digital currencies are available for trading. They include:
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Ethereum Classic (ETC)
- Litecoin (LTC)
- Bitcoin Cash (BTC)
What about their fiat currency offerings? We're focusing on the international OKCoin Exchange, which accepts the US dollar (USD) in.
Before you can start trading through the platform, you must select an account type. Your options include corporate or private.
Once you've made this selection, it's time to fund your wallet. How do you do this? To add funds to your account, you must first navigate the verification process. Verification is divided into two steps.
First, you must confirm your phone number through SMS. You'll also need to give your first name, last name, nationality, and the passport information when prompted. Why does the exchange need this information? To ensure that withdraws of any kind to your crypto wallets are valid and secure.
Second, you must withdraw funds through a bank transaction and then increase the capital volumes for withdrawal or deposit.
What if you want to activate such options? You'll need to confirm your passport data, email address, provide your driver's license number, and give other detailed information about the account before the transaction can be completed.
Adding funds to the account usually takes between one and three days. That said, delays do sometimes occur. Fortunately, these are the exception instead of the rule, but you should be aware of them and avoid making deposits on a tight turnaround.
OKCoin Exchange: Customer Reviews
What else do you need to know about the exchange? We must take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to customer feedback regarding the platform.
Considered a leader in crypto trading, OKCoin exchange certainly has a reputation for providing effective international exchanges. On a daily basis, trade values easily reach more than 20,000 BTC. Considering BTC continues to hover around $50,000 per coin, that's a hefty sum 24/7/365.
Crypto enthusiasts worldwide use the service, and most customers appreciate its ease of use, varied features and products, and high level of security. These three reasons alone have garnered the company countless positive reviews online. But we're not here to cast OKCoin Exchange solely in the tint of rose-coloured glasses.
OKCoin Exchange: Areas for Improvement
Instead, we also feel it's important to take a look at the negative feedback that's been received by the exchange. For starters, OKCoin Exchange claims to be an international platform, yet it only supports three languages:
- Chinese
- Hongkongese
- English
Users definitely want to see this list of languages expand over time. As it currently stands, the language barrier represents a significant problem when using the exchange.
Like the limited language offerings, some users also find the small set of cryptocurrencies available on the platform offputting. OKCoin's supported currencies appear downright meagre next to the constantly expanding crypto lists of its competitors.
Some consumers also lament the exchange's rigorous two-step verification procedure, which is mandatory. You can't start trading until you complete it, and the process does prove more time-consuming than with other platforms. Especially if you're used to going the DeFi route.
Even after you make it through the first level of verification, you won't be able to add fiat currency to your account until you endure the second round. The company asks for plenty of information, and this can feel invasive at times.
That said, the thorough way the company vets investors is also important to the high-security standards that it upholds.
Additional Limitations With OkCoin Exchange
What else do you need to know about the exchange? There are a few other noteworthy limitations worth mentioning.
For deposits and withdraws of fiat and digital currencies, only bank transfer and crypto wallets are available. That means you can't add or withdraw funds through e-commerce services or bank cards.
You'll also notice that the list of services for trading is also short. You must bear in mind that OkCoin exchange was designed for token exchange and trading alone.
That said, some will see this as a pro and others as a con. After all, you'll have less to distract you from the exchange's primary function.
Compare with the best alternative exchanges
| Exchange | ||
|---|---|---|
| Nexo | Best overall crypto lending platform. | Go to site → |
| CoinLoan | Best for crypto loan borrowers. | Go to site → |
| YouHodler | Most versatile crypto lending platform. | Go to site → |
| Bit.com | Best crypto derivatives platform. | Go to site → |
| Matrixport | Best for institutional investors. | Go to site → |
| Gemini | Best crypto exchange for U.S. investors. | Go to site → |
| Binance | Best overall crypto exchange. | Go to site → |
| Kraken | Best U.S. crypto exchange for advanced traders. | Go to site → |
OKCoin Review: The Takeaway
If you're looking for a cryptocurrency exchange that offers multiple cryptos for online trading through exchange platforms, then OKCoin might be right for you. As we've discussed in this OKCoin review, it provides traders with many handy trading tools, professional customer support, and educational resources.
That said, the regulatory information about the exchange remains scant on the exchange's current website. And some customers have trouble getting past the meagre choices when it comes to coin offerings and the languages you can access the platform in.
That's why you should carefully weigh this exchange against the competition. Find out more about other cryptocurrency exchanges worth your consideration.