qTrade was founded back in April of 2018. Based out of the United States of America. Though the exchange was only founded in 2018, the team has been involved in the cryptocurrency industry for a number of years. In 2014 they created a profit switching mining pool, later expanding their technology to carry out currency arbitration and conversion for miners.

Their teams foundation in the grassroots stage of crypto shows in qTrades overarching ideology. Their manifesto is very simple: To accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology around the world by reducing the barriers faced by innovative, new, and emerging technology. But can it live up to its promises? This is our qTrade.io Review.

What Differentiates qTrade From The Competition?

qTrade prides themselves on their support of new and emerging projects. qTrade wants to encourage the development of projects built from the ground up. They do this by creating some of the cheapest listing fees in crypto.

Binance, one of the largest and most well known exchanges was quoted giving out a listing fee figure of 400BTC. This parasitic fee is obviously way out of the reach of smaller projects where every penny needs to be put into development.

Without qTrade, coins like NYZO which never did an ICO and doesn’t have any venture capital backing but nonetheless brings something incredibly fresh to the table in terms of technology would never grow. Permenantly stunted by the huge barrier to entry on exchanges.

Instead being replaced by projects with deep pockets and large corporate financial backing, and as we have seen in the past with crypto, these deep pockets do not necessarily translate into quality projects.

Currently the fee for listing on qTrade can vary from from zero to 2 BTC. This is obviously a lot more competitive than their larger exchange counterparts. Giving smaller projects room to breath.

The listing fee is based off a number of basic and preferred criteria. The full list can be found here. But, to summarize. qTrade rewards projects which are original, have new technology, dedicated development teams, and active communities. By having more of these attributes the listing fee goes down. qTrade also frowns upon projects which have large premines or ICOs and takes these factors into account when deciding the listing fee.

They also put an element of control into the users hands by allowing them to vote on which coins they want listed. The vote does not guarantee listing but rather shows the team at qTrade which coins people want listed.

Listing Voting

Security

One of the fundamental questions one must answer when it comes to an exchange is its security. qTrade employs rigorous security techniques and technology. They build their own transactions to allow for easy off-site signing, ensure idempotency, and leverage cold wallet storage for additional safety. On the user side qTrade has the industry standard support for two factor authentication allowing users to add additional security to their account.

Fees

qTrades fee schedule is interesting for a smaller exchange. They offer a maker fee (adding liquidity to the orders) of 0% and a taker fee (taking away liquidity from the orders) of anywhere between 0.5% and 1.5% depending on the asset. A maker fee of 0% essentially means that you can trade for free if you use limit orders. While the high taker fee penalizes people who use market orders and take liquidity from the orderbook. This is overall a good strategy on behalf of qTrade to generate consistent liquidity. One of the problems facing all smaller exchanges. I would suspect qTrade will begin to move their fees towards a more common structure such as the flat 0.1% Binance employs as the exchange grows in size and liquidity.

qTrades withdraw fees are also competitive when compared to their much larger competitors even while lacking the economies of scale.

Withdrawal Fees

Regulation

qTrade is based out of the U.S which has perhaps the most stringent regulatory framework when it comes to crypto.

However, there still remains a large grey area within the U.S jurisdiction. qTrade has gone on record and stated that they are committed to complying with all current and future regulatory law. They have demonstrated their willingness to comply by refusing to list coins which could be deemed as securities under the Howey Test. However, I do feel that being subject to U.S regulation is something that will hold qTrade back. We have seen the flight of volume away from American altcoin exchanges in the past towards exchanges like Binance and Huobi who are regulated in much more lazes-faire jurisdictions.

Being based out of the US also means that KYC is compulsory to withdraw funds

Conclusion

I am optimistic about the future of qTrade and I truly wish for their future success. They are shying away from the predatory corporatism which is rife in the cryptocurrency industry in favor of a more grassroots approach. Something cryptocurrency was founded on. There are a number of issues with qTrade but they are all things that can be overcome, and if they continue on the path they are I have no doubt that they will.