With the latest controversy regarding cryptocurrency exchanges faking volume I decided to look into some data that exchanges can't so easily manipulate, and that is trading pairs.

Before we go any further lets quickly discuss what a trading pair is.

Basically, a trading pair is a trade between two different cryptocurrencies. For example, most exchanges allow or trading of multiple alt-coins with either ETH or BTC. Each possible trade is considered a pair.

In a recent survey from Encrypvbit See the Survey Here in which over 1,108 cryptocurrency enthusiasts voiced their opinions on the biggest problems that they see with currently available exchanges, 22% complained about a lack of crypto pairs hindering good quality trading options. Also, 36% mentioned a lack of liquidity as a concern.

From this data, we can see that a reasonable percentage of cryptocurrency holders would like to see more available pairs and it goes without saying that they will want to do this on an exchange that they can trust.

So in reverse order lets take a look at the three biggest exchanges for trading pairs;

3rd Place HITBC

As expected we have one of the larger Exchanges in third place with 928 Trading Pairs [at today's date 10/02/2018]

HITBC is one of the older and more established exchanges, trading since 2013.

They are a fairly conventional exchange with nothing to really stand out between them and the other major players. What they lack in innovation they make up for in trading pairs.

They have a large number of coins listed on their exchange and all coins can be paired with BCT and ETH along with limited pairings with Stable Coins DAI, USDT, TUSD, and EURS. It's this wide variety of base pairings is what gives them such a large amount of trading pairs.

Recently they announced that they have launched EOS based pairings with XRP, Litecoin, Monero, Dash and Bytecoin. This is great news for EOS holders adding more liquidity to the token. This will be an incentive for crypto holders to use HITBC who will have the advantage over the other big exchanges who only offer pairings between the large-cap coins such as BTC and ETH.

Website

https://hitbtc.com/

Twitter

https://twitter.com/hitbtc

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/hit.btc

Telegram

https://t.me/HitBTCnews

2nd Place Cryptopia



This New Zealand based exchange launched in 2014 came out of the blue with an impressive 1759 trading pairs [at today's date 10/02/2018]

Cryptopia has a huge number of coins listed on their exchange which helped get them the 2nd place position in this article.

The exchange also has some unusual pairings as well as BCT, LTC, USDT pairings they also have their own NZed [NZDT] stable coin which is tethered to the New Zealand dollar, they also offer DOGE paired with all other coins on their exchange.

From humble beginnings of a two-man setup, they now have over 100 staff in offices all over the world including a 24-hour support team based in their London office.

They are very active on social media with regular new listings.

CEO Alan Booth in a recent interview stated;

"Before trading volume, it is important to have security, safety, a good trading platform"

There is an excellent interview with him here;

https://coincentral.com/interview-cryptopia-alan-booth/

Website

https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/

Twitter

https://twitter.com/Cryptopia_NZ

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/cryptopiaexchange

1st Place Bancor

I must admit first place really came to a surprise to me. When it comes to sheer amount of trading pairs, Bancor leaves all other exchanges standing.

Recently Bancor confirmed that they now have over 7,000 pairs available on their Liquidity Network.

Bancor held their ICO in June 2017 and have gone from strength to strength since then with over $1.5 Billion in token swaps.

Their exchange not only offers the largest amount of trading pairs its unique smart contract concept enables instant swaps.

Bancor co-founder Galia Benartzi recently used the analogy of a vending machine for an easy way to understand the process;

"It's little bit like a vending machine that has inventory of all the tokens that you want inside of it, you tell it which token you want and you can pay with any token that is available in the machine.

The vending machine will always accept your Wax and dispense Storm if that's what you want. The thing that changes is the price.

The way that it works is that the inventory that the vending machine knows that it has is what it uses to tell you what that price should be. If it hasn't a lot of wax in inventory the price is going to be more expensive, if it has a lot of storm in inventory that price is going to be cheaper so it's very transparent.

It's very predictable the more people that buy wax the more the price will climb up the more people sell storm the more the price will go down.”

Bancor will be offering cross-chain pairings between EOS and ETH in the near future, which will further increase their number of coin parings.

Website

https://www.bancor.network/

Twitter

https://twitter.com/bancor

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/bancor/

Telegram

https://t.me/bancor

Conclusion and Looking to the Future

Thanks for reading, anything you find that might be erroneous please let me know, the data for trading pairs differed from website to website so it is a rough estimate and is likely to have changed since I wrote this article.

It might be a wishful dream but I look forward to a fiat free future with thousands and thousands of coins all with a different utility.

Envisage an age where you lease a driverless Tesla car for a week using TeslaCoin, you stop at an electric charging station at a random house in your neighborhood the owner wants to be paid in CandyCoin. Using smart contracts the transaction is safe, anonymous and automated with little to zero input from you. An automated AI system knows when you are running low on one coin or need more of another and swaps them for you at the best price straight from your wallet to your favorite exchange. How amazing would that be!

More coins and more liquidity will be the future of Crypto.