Capital.com Exchange

Capital.com is an online cryptocurrency exchange platform launched in the U.K. in 2016.

The exchange allows users to buy, sell, trade, mine, and even lend supported cryptocurrencies online with no intermediary by matching traders’ orders and price quotations.

The exchange was launched by a team of expert software developers coupled with senior bankers.

Capital.com exchange is known for its proprietary market-clearing transaction processing, aiming to enhance market efficiency and how user orders are filled to offer commission-free trading.

Traders’ fees include market price spread and overnight leverage when trading derivatives and options.

Capital.com is genuinely a global online exchange whereby it is available to users from around the globe, except for Taiwan, Belgium, the U.S., and a handful of island nations.

What separates Capital.com from its competitors is that it is regulated and holds trading licenses from renowned regulatory bodies, including the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC), the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus (NBRB).

The regulatory licenses put users at ease against anonymity and the risk of losing funds; major investors also back the exchange to ensure deep liquidity and prosperity against market fluctuations.

The exchange currently supports more than 250 cryptocurrencies for trading and more than 600 cryptocurrencies within the wallet for storage.

Furthermore, the exchange is committed to securing user funds, whereby Capital.com offers practical risk management tools, including protection against negative balances, free demo accounts, and instant price alerts.

Is Capital.com Exchange Limited To Expert Traders?

Capital.com is a simple-to-use crypto-trading platform that grants access to any user, whether a novice or an expert trader who passes the KYC requirements.

The user-friendly platform of the exchange provides users with intuitive and easy-to-navigate coupled with educational resources and step-by-step guides.

Capital.com also offers online courses whereby new traders can get acquainted with the concepts of leverage and CFD trading to test throughout the demo accounts.

As for expert traders, Capital.com also provides highly attractive products with access to over 70 technical indicators and up to 1:30 leverage.

In addition, the development of the micro-service hosting system to avoid downtime and ensure efficient and swift order clearing, coupled with AI-powered trade analysis to enhance market insight.

Pros & Cons Of Capital.com

Pros:

  • 0% commissions added with no hidden fees
  • 24/7 customer support coupled with educational guides
  • Competitive spreads with fast order execution
  • Negative Balance Protection
  • Regulated by the CySEC, NBRB, FSA, FCA, and ASIC

Cons:

  • A separate live account is needed for each fiat currency that needs to be supported
  • Lack of an exhaustive cryptocurrency list when compared to leading competitors
  • No referral program to benefit from extra rewards
  • Higher-end credit and debit deposit and withdrawal fees
  • Leverage for clients adhering to FCA/CySEC is restricted to 1:30

Our Take On Capital.com

Capital.com creates the best of both worlds by being straightforward with an intuitive interface on one side and providing advanced trading options and complex charting options for more advanced traders.

The exchange offers relatively low trading fees with zero commissions compared to competitors while offering a vast collection of cryptocurrencies to trade.

Albeit, the primary advantages of the exchange are limited in the U.S. and a handful of countries.

The exchange enables its users to trade the popular markets through its derivatives, such as contracts for differences (CFD), capitalizing on its artificial intelligence (AI), which enhances the trading experience and order clearance.

The regulatory licenses of the exchange have been cleared to enhance users’ funds’ security and protect against negative balances.

The exchange offers three varying trading suits, including MetaTrader, an in-house proprietary trading app, and the TradingView web platform known for its powerful charting.

Our take is that the Capital.com exchange is an excellent first step towards indulging in the world of cryptocurrency.

However, as more experienced traders develop advanced skill sets, a migration towards decentralized exchanges is encouraged.

Decentralized exchanges feature anonymity and offer on-chain trading through interacting with the blockchain, as opposed to off-chain trading, which is not backed entirely by the blockchain but instead handled by the centralized exchange internally.

Capital.com Fees

Capital.com is keen to compete amongst the saturated centralized exchanges medium by offering the lowest fees.

The exchange provides its brokerage services and online platform for free, aside from third-party fees. Capital.com provides:

  • Zero signup fees.
  • Zero inactivity fees.
  • Zero deposit and withdrawal fees.
  • Zero trade fees.
  • Zero quote fees.
  • Zero commissions.

The exchange is compensated for its services through the difference between the buy and sell prices, also known as the spread.

The spread constantly varies based on the instrument and the order book, which is the collection of buy and sell orders at varying price quotes.

Aside from the spread fee, Capital.com charges an overnight fee similar to other centralized exchanges.

Overnight fees refer to the fees that the exchange needs to be compensated for, offering increased purchasing power to trades above the actual account balance.

The overnight fees are constantly varying and can be observed from the information panel on the platform.

Unlike other exchanges, Capital.com does not charge overnight fees on the total notional value but rather only on the portion leveraged above the initial purchasing power that the user has typically before adding any leverage.

One thing to note is that Capital.com does not control third-party fees or network fees.

Third-party fees refer to card transaction clearing services, bank fees, etc.

Network fees refer to the fees involved in transferring cryptocurrencies on-chain to decentralized wallets or other centralized wallets.

Is Capital.com Safe?

Users should feel at ease when dealing with Capital.com regarding the security of funds against exchange bankruptcy or illicit activity, users should feel at ease when dealing with Capital.com, given the high caliber of trading licenses granted by global regulatory bodies.

Capital.com is regulated by the top international financial regulatory bodies, which include:

  • Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK
  • Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in Australia
  • National Bank of the Republic of Belarus in Belarus
  • Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) in Cyprus

Top regulatory bodies impose varying rules on the exchange and provide user fund protection against market adversaries and in case of exchange bankruptcy.

For example, the Financial Conduct Authority covers user deposits for up to £85,000.

Security protection refers to the fact that if Capital.com goes bankrupt, users with deposits under the threshold will receive the total amount of their deposits back.

On top of that, the exchange provides Negative Balance Protection, which means that if market volatility causes the account value to go under zero, then the protective layer will protect users from losing more than what they have deposited, which is a valuable security feature to ensure that users do not get caught under extreme fluctuations.

In terms of blockchain security and protection of user assets against hacking, Capital.com is fully compliant with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards, which refer to protection against data spoofing to protect user information in real time and in backup data storage systems.

In addition, the Capital.com exchange has never been breached before thanks to its secure communication protocols to prevent online attacks.

However, similar to a centralized exchange, Capital.com should only be utilized to benefit from deep liquidity, trading derivative products, and as a bridge between fiat money and cryptocurrencies; users should opt for a decentralized exchange to host the bulk of their funds.

Trading Options

Capital.com exchange offers a wide selection of trading options divided mainly into over-the-counter (OTC) crypto-conversions (spot market) and derivatives products.

Transacting within the futures market, a sub-product of derivatives, features multiple order types, including market orders, limits orders, stop-limit orders, trailing stop orders, and margin trading.

In addition, Capital.com provides two kinds of leverage trading that users can access margin and futures trading.

In 2020, Capital.com began providing spread betting, which refers to a flexible method to speculate on future upward and downward market moves.

Although other methods exist to trade binary movements, the technique is particularly attractive to traders from the U.K., given that spread betting is free from capital gains tax.

The exchange also provides users with one-click trading whereby more than 4,000 market instruments can be accessed from one place whereby.

It removes the need to sign up for various exchanges for each asset class.

Additionally, a unique benefit of Capital.com that sets it apart from competitors is its smart trading app which reveals cognitive biases and relies on an AI-powered trading bias detection system.

The system detects variations based on the user’s trading history.

Banking At Capital.com

Deposit and withdrawal options vary by currency.

For example, USD deposits and withdrawals are only allowed through Bank Transfers utilizing Signet or SWIFT, as opposed to EURO deposits and withdrawals, which permit Visa and Mastercard Bank Cards.

Furthermore, restrictions on currency deposit and withdrawal options and fees are constantly updated.

Thus, users are advised to regularly check the related documentation under the Capital.com website.

Funds can be deposited or withdrawn via a range of international methods, including but not limited to a debit card, credit card, bank wire transfer, Webmoney, Multibanco, Apple Pay, etc.

On a per-deposit basis, the maximum deposit for a standard account is $3,000.

In contrast, Premier accounts have a maximum per deposit of $10,000.

On top of that, Capital.com lacks the offering of Banking-like services, which often include a Crypto Visa Card, crypto loans, and crypto savings accounts.

Additionally, Capital.com has been viewed to lack yield generation products and mining pools integrations that experienced crypto traders often seek.

Capital.com App Experience

Capital.com offers a variety of trading tools with high accessibility to ensure users can stay updated with market data, whereby users can view their portfolio and place trades through the browser, mobile browser, desktop app, iOS app, and Android app.

Capital.com iOS app, which can be downloaded from the Apple Store, rates at 4.8 out of 5.0 stars, as opposed to 4.4s stars for the Android app, which can be downloaded from the Android Store, although sharing the same functionality and user interface as its counterpart.

Links for downloading the respective mobile apps can be found on the official website.

The exchange’s mobile app has been viewed as the leading crypto-trading app in the industry.

Users can perform everything the exchange offers from the mobile app, including but not limited to complex technical analysis, advanced charting, market insights, and research, in addition to swift trading and portfolio management.

The app provides a range of login options, including email and password combination, phone number and password combination, touch ID and face ID login options, Apple login option, and two-factor authentication (2FA) for enhanced security.

In addition, users are asked to complete a slide CAPTCHA to fight against bots clogging the network to ensure a seamless experience for real users.

Capital.com Site Experience

The Capital.com dashboard is extensive but focuses on being straightforward to ensure actions can be taken swiftly by traders.

Users can access the dashboard through a compatible desktop browser simply by logging in to the designated profile.

The dashboard allows users to view portfolio balance by cryptocurrency, chart and import charting tools, access market analysis and trends, review current and past trade history, and engage in cryptocurrency trading.

In addition, users can access deposit and withdrawal options by navigating to the Wallet section and selecting the fiat or cryptocurrency to deposit or withdraw by following the on-screen guide.

Capital.com’s award-winning trading platform is online; users do not have to download any software or portal to their computers.

Users can utilize the clear layout with light colors or the more modern design with dark colors.

The platform is equipped with seamless multi-chart toggling, whereby users can open multiple charts for multiple instruments simultaneously.

In addition, the exchange offers charts that are easy to navigate, whereby users can change the chart structure from candlestick, bar, area, Heikin-Ashi, line charts, etc.

Users can access their accounts from the supported browsers after entering their login details, and the user enables two-factor authentication (2FA).

Compared to prominent competitors, the Capital.com exchange website feels modern and properly designed and is packed with advanced tools.

The platform is both intuitive and provides high-end functionalities.

Registration Process

Users need to register to a free trading account, whereby the account is linked to an email address and a password.

To complete the registration, users need to complete the Know Your Customer (KYC) process.

Once the account is verified, users can fund their accounts using credit cards, debit cards, bank wire transfers, ApplePay, Webmoney, and Giropay.

Capital.com is a centralized exchange and thus requires traders to complete a country-specific KYC application.

In addition to a specific set of the required information, Capital.com may require users to complete a real-time identity verification which involves uploading a selfie and completing a facial recognition task.

The information necessary for KYC registration is:

  • Full name as reflected in identity documents
  • Permanent address
  • Date of birth
  • Nationality
  • Contact information
  • Email address

ID Verification Documents:

  • Government Issued ID-Card
  • Social Security Number
  • Driver’s License
  • Passport
  • Pan Card
  • ID Card

Proof of Residence Documents:

  • Landline telephone bill
  • Bank statement
  • Mortgage statement
  • Government-issued documents
  • Municipal rates & taxes statement
  • Municipality bill for utility services
  • Internet service bill

Capital.com Global Restrictions

In terms of territory access and jurisdictions, Capital.com does not provide its services to users from Taiwan, Belgium, the U.S., and a handful of island nations.

Users should always be wary of the updated banned countries list to ensure that no bans are in place under users’ jurisdiction.

Users are encouraged not to store their entire portfolio within a centralized exchange and utilize decentralized exchanges.

Capital.com Customer Service

The exchange provides a top-notch professional level of customer support, available 24/7 via live chat, email, phone, Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber, and Facebook.

In addition, the exchange focuses on being truly global by employing a customer service team that can communicate with clients in multiple languages, including English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Turkish, and Russian. Below are the key takeaways from the support provided:

  • Basic support across social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
  • Live support chat via telegram channel, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, browser chat, and Viber
  • Telephone support after logging a call request
  • Support for 8 languages, with the list, constantly growing
  • A vast library of support articles and educational guides