Background

Established in 2014, Coinmate is one of the leading exchanges in the cryptocurrency space. The company is based in London but directs its business operations at the Eastern Europe cryptocurrency market. Its estimated daily turnover is around $818,957; this conveniently places the company on the list of the top 10 euro dominated exchanges.

Coinmate, which was created by 2 economics graduates from Prague, has proved itself as the ideal cryptocurrency exchange for investors who are contemplating to invest in Bitcoin with euros. The company provides its clients with a low cost and hassles free way to acquire Bitcoin. As noted earlier, this exchange has been operating since 2014, and we weren’t able to find any records of a severe security breach, causing loss of funds.

Coinmate’s main selling point is apparently the EUR and CZK support. Besides, the digital assets offering is also not only limited to Bitcoin. A number of altcoins such as Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash are also available. The SOFORT and SEPA systems can be used to fund CoinMate trading accounts, with Czech domestic banks transfers and MoneyPolo also being provided.

Account Verification

Coinmate has three levels of account verifications, for the basic account, the verified account, and the highest VIP account.

Users are required to provide the following information for the basic account:

• Name
• Date of Birth
• Telephone Number

The following additional details are required from users to attain the verified account level:

• Government-issued photo ID
• Utility Bills or Bank statements which indicate user’s residential address

While most crypto exchanges only require you to upload a scanned copy of these documents, Coinmate takes it a step further by requiring you to make a video call showing you taking a snapshot of the different documents. Institutional traders are required to upload the articles of incorporation and business account. The information required for the VIP account is the same as the one required for verified account except that users need to fill in an additional questionnaire.

Regarding security on the exchange side, 95% of the funds are stored offline in cold storage. Also, the customers’ passwords are encrypted before they are saved on the exchange servers. Other security measures in place on Coinmate included SSL, firewalls, and Cloudflare. On the customer’s side, Coinmate provides the 2FA (2-Factor Authentication) security for them. Withdrawals transactions also need email validation before they are executed.

Trading Platform

Regarding the trading platform, Coinmate offers its clients a proprietary web-based platform. The trading platform is rendered in two interfaces, an advanced trading mode, and a “Quick Buy/Sell” mode. The “Quick Buy/Sell” interface is basically a market order page that reveals the best available price from the order book. All you have to do is to input the amount to trade and click “confirm,” and the transaction will be executed. This simplified trading interface was undoubtedly designed to serve those who are new to cryptocurrency trading.

Besides the simple trading interface, the exchange also offers a more advanced trading platform for highly experienced cryptocurrency traders or those who wish to trade digital assets more professionally. The advanced trading interface supports limit orders and market orders, and also comes with an expanded trading chart.

While Coinmate does not offer its trading platform on any dedicated mobile app, the web-based platform has already been designed and optimized to support the small screens of smartphones and other mobile devices when accessed through a web browser.

On the Coinmate trading platform, users can trade with four different digital currency pairs:

• BTC/EUR
• BTC/CZK
• LTC/BTC
• BCH/BTC

How to Buy Bitcoin with Coinmate

Once you set up your Coinmate account, you can immediately start to deposit bitcoin into the account and trade it on the exchange.

To fund your account, got to the Finance page and click on the “deposit” button. After clicking deposit, you will get a unique bitcoin address. The next step is to go to your bitcoin wallet and enter the amount of bitcoin you would like to deposit and input the bitcoin address.

After this has been submitted to the network, it will automatically be credited to your Coinmate account once the transaction has been validated twice. You can then start to trade your bitcoin on Coinmate.

Coinmate Fees

Regarding trading fees on Coinmate, the exchange uses the Maker/Taker model to boost liquidity on its platform. The maker’s fee is 0.05%, and the taker’s fee is 0.35%. The following fees are applicable for withdrawals and deposits:

Deposit and Withdrawal

You have many ways to fund your account on Coinmate. However, your account verification levels will determine the methods that are however to you. The first level of verification, as noted earlier, is for the basic account.

To open a basic account, all you need to do is provide a password and email address. However, before you can start trading, you will also be required to provide your name, date of birth and phone number. Your choices of depositing funds with the basic account are OkCoin, MoneyPolo, Vouchers.

The options for depositing funds for verified and VIP accounts include OkCoin, MoneyPolo, Vouchers, SEPA, Sofort and standard wires. While there are no restrictions on who can sign up with Coinmate, the cryptocurrency exchange currently does not accept US residents.

Customer Support

Coinmate’s customer support can only be reached via email. The response is reasonably fast with some hours lead time.

Is Coinmate Safe?

Overall, if you are a European based crypto trader, then Coinmate is the ideal exchange that will meet your cryptocurrency trading needs. Coinmate offers low funds transfer and trading fees with high liquidity for the EUR trades.

However, on the downside, the choices of digital assets offered are somewhat limited with just a few crypto pairs. Also, the security doesn’t seem to be overly efficient with only 2FA authentication security provided to the customers. Nevertheless, Coinmate is ideal for novice cryptocurrency traders as their trading platform is very straightforward to use.