In this blog we outline the fees associated with trading on Voltaire, and provide an example transaction against two popular exchanges.

Every exchange has two sets of fees:

i) Trading fees

and

ii) Deposit and withdrawal fees

Trading fees

Voltaire’s Maker and Taker fees

What is a Maker?

A maker is someone who places an order which is not immediately filled. Once placed, a maker order rests in the order book waiting for another order to trade against. The terminology comes from the idea that you are placing an order that ‘makes the market’. A market order can never me a maker order because by definition a market order fills immediately.

What is a Taker?

A taker is someone who places an order that is immediately filled. The idea here is that you are ‘taking’ a price that is currently available on the market. Typically, these trades happen immediately and by their nature you do not see them on the order book.

Note: Sometimes, an order can partially fill. This means part of the order is filled immediately and the remainder enters the order book where it rests. In this case, the parts must be evaluated separately: this order has both maker and taker components.

Withdrawal fees

A fixed fee is applied to all cryptocurrency withdrawals made from Voltaire. This fee is unique and covers the cost of making the transaction at the time the withdrawal is made.

To encourage more Bitcoin Cash transactions, we have made withdrawals and deposits completely free (i.e. Voltaire does not charge you to for any Bitcoin Cash transaction made in or out of your Voltaire exchange wallet). This offering extends to BSV.

Voltaire’s fees on deposits or withdrawals of cryptocurrency are tabulated below:

Voltaire’s Deposit and Withdrawal fees

An example transaction

In this example, we’re going to call our user Satoshi and use the exchanges Coinbase and Binance as the competing examples. Each cost will be cumulative and calculated in USD for ease. The assumed BTC price is $4000 and BCH is $189.

Satoshi creates an account on Voltaire and deposits BTC.

Cost so far on Voltaire: $0

Cost so far on Coinbase: Don’t know, it’s confusing and unclear (this probably means there is a cost attached) — let’s call this X.

Cost so far on Binance: $0

Satoshi then places a limit order to purchase 1 BTC worth of BCH at a price of $4000.

Cost so far on Voltaire: $4

Cost so far on Coinbase: $59.6 + 0.005% + X. (1.49% of total transaction if above a $200 value). Coinbase also quote you a price 0.005% above their actual market price.

Cost so far on Binance: $4

Satoshi now withdraws BCH from the exchange to another wallet.

Total cost on Voltaire: $4

Total cost on Coinbase: Between $59.6 and ?. Unfortunately, as we don’t have any funds on Coinbase we are unable to work out the cost. If anyone would like to share with us the cost we will update this article.

Total cost on Binance: $5.88

Conclusion

It’s clear and easy to understand the fees on Voltaire. We are among the cheapest in the industry and commit to making our fees even lower once we hit 200 BTC daily trading volume for 30 consecutive days. And again, when we hit 400 BTC for the same time.

We are among the cheapest in the industry and commit to making our fees even lower once we hit 200 BTC daily trading volume for 30 consecutive days. And again, when we hit 400 BTC for the same time. Coinbase is unnecessarily convoluted and charges several fees. This reminds us of the legacy financial institutions that make fee schedules hard to understand and hidden away in small print.

Binance are transparent about their fees and cheap to use. They are also one of the largest exchanges in the world, and therefore remain competitive by having low fees. We like Binance.

For more information, you can see the full description on our support page here.