QuadrigaCX Review: How I Did My First Ethereum Trade 💸 (And Why I Chose This Platform)
Update: I have completed the verification with QuadrigaCS and here is how I did it. I have also updated this post in the parts about the verification and withdrawals. As you may know already, I bought Ethereum a while ago. This year, Ethereum did a head-spinning rise and despite my plans on keeping it as a long-term investment, I decided to capitalize on it right away.
How did I do that? What trading platform did I choose and why? Will I declare the gains in my 2018 taxes? This post will cover these questions.
Choosing trading platform
TLDR; QuadrigaCX vs Coinbase vs Coinsquare comparison table
I chose QuadrigaCX and below, you will read why I came to this decision as well as my Quadriga review.
I ended up making choices between three cryptocurrency trading platforms. Here’s the summary table I came up that can help you to choose which one is better in your case whether you trade Ethereum or Bitcoin:
* – does not take into account network transaction fees
Fiat or fiat money is currency that has been established as money by government regulation, according to Wikipedia. For example, both US dollar and Canadian dollar are fiat money.
Now, here’s explanation why QuadrigaCX was the best solution for me.
I had a few constraints for the cryptocoin trading platform:
the platform has to be able to work with the Canadian banking system and Canadian residents 🍁 I decided to go with CAD rather than with USD because:
Sam (my partner in life ❤ and in crime who started all this journey with cryptocurrencies and by accident convinced me to join him) had also to sell his ethers and he does not have a US account; as the previous experience showed, it is better to stick together to facilitate solving technical problems since two brains are always better than one
in the end, I needed CAD anyway since I planned to invest money through my regular channels tied to the Canadian investment services
optionally, it should be able to trade Ethereum
After a brief search of the internet, I came up with the following list :
Coinbase
Coinsquare
QuadrigaCX
Why not Coinbase?
It’s very simple: Coinbase does not support the conversion of digital currency into Canadian dollars 👎. Having a US bank account would not help here: They required their customers to be US residents and I am a Canadian one.
In general, Coinbase supports Canada; however, the Canada support is limited to only buying and not selling. Here is what I get when I go to to the Sell tab:
Coinsquare: Still no
In January 2018, Coinsquare ⏹ did allow Canadian residents to do trading… However, they did not and still do not trade Ethereum to CAD and even do not allow to do funding with ETH.
These constraints could be overcome by converting Ethreum to Bitcoin and do the operations with Bitcoins. Converting Ethreum to Bitcoin could be done in two ways:
by doing a coin exchange;
trading ETH to BTC.
For trading ETH to BTC, I would need to find a separate platform since Coinsquare does not support funding with Ethereum. But if I do find a different platform, what’s the point in sticking to Coinsquare?…
For doing a coin exchange, I found CoinSwitch. It is a platform for exchange platforms and allows you to have all other cryptocoin exchange platforms at a glance to see which one is more suitable for your case. For example, I could have converted Ethereum to Bitcoin. It could have been a viable solution… but… (there is always a but!)
But Coinsquare fees can sometimes be somewhere in the area of ridiculousness. As for cryptocurrency withdrawals, the fees are flat and if you withdraw small amounts, this may lead to steep charges up to 20% 😮😮😮 of your total amount. Withdrawing fiat money is not free either. This reason alone was already very good for me to reject Coinsquare right on the spot 👎.
QuadrigaCX: Bingo!
After looking at QuadrigaCX, the last option on my list, I realized it was a perfect solution for me:
👍 It works with Canadian residents 👍 The platform has the full support of Ethereum including funding and trading 👍 QuadrigaCX fees are lower than Coinsquare 😉 (I guess it is not super hard to have lower fees than Coinsquare)
If you want to use it for your trading needs, you can register here (an affiliate link).
QuadrigaCX review: Step-by-step trading guide
So, QuadrigaCX it is! Let’s see how you can start using this trading platform. (BTW, if you are curious where the name came from and how t̶h̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶l̶ it is pronounced, check here.)
(BTW, if you are curious where the name came from and how t̶h̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶l̶ it is pronounced, check here.)
Supported currencies 💱
QuadrigaCX supports the following fiat currencies (real money issued by a government, for example, US dollars):
USD
CAD
As of cryptocurrencies, the following ones are supported:
The next step is to wait for 24h before you can do any operation (trading, withdrawal, etc) on your account. It is required each time you do a major change to your account or when you just open it.
Adding funds 💰
You can add funds in form of a cryptocurrency or a fiat currency (real money issued by a government, for example, US dollars).
Adding fiat (real) money
This operation requires your account to be verified prior doing it. Since my goal was to sell and not to buy, I did not add fiat money funds to my account. However, I did initiate the verification just in the case I may need it later.
Fiat money is currency that has been established as money by government regulation, according to Wikipedia. For example, both US dollar and Canadian dollar are fiat money.
There are three ways to do the verification on Quadriga:
Instant Equifax Verification (automatic)
ID & Address Verification (manual)
Digital Proof of Identity by Canada Post (semi-automatic)
Judging by the name, I assumed that Equifax verification involves contacting, well, Equifax. I do not have an account with them (at least, I did not do any steps to open one) but I decided to try the verification anyway. Predictably, it did not go through and failed. The reason it failed stayed unclear to me since there was no error message displayed, just the failed status.
So, I went with ID & Address Verification that requires the manual process on the QuadrigaCX side. I followed this short guide and submitted all the docs required. It is said on the page that the manual verification takes 72 hours… but in my case, it was taking much, much longer. I submitted the docs at the end of January and I am not yet verified. I would recommend you to not bother with this type of verification.
For who cares it all failed because……….
At the end of March 2018, QuadrigaCX implemented a new verification method for Canadians: Digital Proof of Identity by Canada Post. This is how I eventually got verified and it went super smooth and fast. Read about my experience in this post.
Adding cryptocurrency
For adding cryptocurrency funds, no account verification required prior doing the operation. The steps are the same as for transferring funds to another account:
Go to the top menu with the cryptocurrency drop-down menu
Open the one for the coin you want to trade
Choose Fund Account
On the page, you will see your QuadrigaCX online wallet for the cryptocurrency you chose (for me, it is Ethereum)
Scan QR code with your mobile wallet – or copy-paste the address
After confirming the transaction, do not close the page – it will show you the info about your transaction
After 12 confirmations, you should get a green message on the right bottom of the page saying it’s success (I never had a failure):
Now, you should see your balance in the top menu under the QuadrigaCX logo If you do not see it there, it might be a bug in the platform. In this case, wait a bit and if still nothing, contact Quadriga support. They should resolve it for you (from Sam’s experience.)
Quick trading cryptocurrency by selling it immediately
Quadriga offers you a possibility to instantly sell your cryptocurrency based on the current market price.
It means the transaction will happen once you place it for the price which the top buying order offers. The price may fluctuate and if you want to maximize your gains, this may be a sub-optimal way to sell.
Anyway, here are the steps how to sell Ethereum. I am pretty much sure that selling Bitcoins or any other coins would invoke a similar process with an exception that you need to choose a proper cryptocoin to sell.
Go to Dashboard tab
Change on the right top menu ETH to the currency you want
In the middle widget, type in the amount you want to sell or buy
Press the button
Trading cryptocurrency by placing a sell order 🔀
If instead of selling or buying your cryptocoins at the current market price, you want to play the trading game and see if you can get a better price, here are the steps for trading.
Go to Trade tab
Choose what pair you want to trade
Type in your amount and the desired price in either Buy or Sell depending on what you want to do
Press the button
Your order will appear in Open trades section on the same page Here’s my open sell order:
Depending on the other orders, yours should eventually show up in the Top 10 Sell (or Buy) Orders queue Here’s my trade in the Sell queue:
Now you wait until someone will match your order with theirs (Sell with Buy and vice versa). All completed trades appear in on the right side of My Open Orders widget.
It was my first trading experience ever and I have to say it was quite addictive… such a game of minds… I liked the game and because of that, I missed to make more money than I made 🙁 In the end, I sold all Ethereum I had but I did not maximize my gains by selling at the highest point 🙁 I guess it was a good lesson for me!
Withdraw funds
Again, similar to adding funds, you can withdraw both cryptocurrency and fiat money.
Withdraw cryptocoins
The operations are done through your QuadrigaCX wallet:
Go to the top menu to the section with the cryptocoin you want to withdraw
Type your info into the form
Press Submit
Withdraw fiat (real) money
QuadrigaCX offers quite a lot of ways to withdraw fiat money. I use Direct Bank Transfer / EFT because it is free of charge and more or less straightforward.
Fiat money is currency that has been established as money by government regulation, according to Wikipedia. For example, both US dollar and Canadian dollar are fiat money.
However, I have experienced some hiccups with this method 😞. When I was selling my Ethereum, Quadriga got problems with their Canadian payment processors:
One of our Canadian processing partner’s has experienced an issue servicing the crypto space due to a higher volume than projected. […] As such, there is now an increase of dollar and transaction volume that has been shifted to our other processor’s payout services, which has slowed the withdrawal payout time frames from 7 business days to 10.
This resulted in a slow processing of withdrawals. Currently, a Direct Bank Transfer / EFT takes 14 business days to complete a withdraw transaction. It means after QuadrigaCX marks it as complete in your Account History, you need to wait another 3 weeks to see the money arrived in your account.
Alos, since March 2018, fiat money withdrawals require verification regardless of the method used. I completed my verification through Canada Post and was able to complete the withdraw after.
Funding and withdrawal history ⛬
If you need to check how your funds were moving in your QuadrigaCX account, you can check your account history ⛬
It is especially useful when the transactions take longer than you expected (for example, as it is happening now for fiat money withdraw.)
Quadriga review: Pros and cons
Here are the pros and cons of Quadriga:
✔ low fees ✔ trades Ethereum directly ✔ available in Canada 🙂
❌ no functionality to save the banking info; so for each withdrawal, you have to carefully re-type your banking info again and again ❌ does not allow Canadians to trade Ethereum to USD ❌ UI could have been more intuitive; at least, I struggled a bit while finding my way through it
Apart from that, the platform has one more con than I mentioned above but I attribute it to growing pains that were caused by the sudden rise in the popularity of cryptocurrencies.
The con is about fiat money withdraw. Currently, it takes 14 business days or about 3 weeks to complete the withdraw process. I find it very slow and I hope Quadriga will find a way to resolve it.
New to Quadriga CX? Test your setup first 👨🔬
If you are new to Quadriga CX (and any other platform) and you want to spend a lot of resources there, my advice is before going all in, test your setup with a small amount of money that does not hurt to lose 👨🔬
In my case, I first transferred 0.075 Ethereum. I sold it, got my cash, and then withdrew it. Until I did the full cycle, I did not move all my Ethereum to Quadriga CX.
it was important for me to know that:
the platform is trustworthy;
I understood the requirements;
I got familiar with the UI (sooo easy to make a mistake and send your precious currency into eternity instead of to your wallet);
my bank is compatible with them (why wouldn’t they be… but who knows)
It does not mean that you won’t get problems when doing real stuff. In my case, the first tiny cash withdrawal went super fast while the second one that was much bigger went much slower.
But still, at least in a case of troubles, you can say with a clear consciousness: I did all I could to prevent it 😤😤😤
(Side note: Who knew my test Ethereum trade would be my best one ever in terms of profit 🤣🤣🤣 I did it when Ethereum was at the peak of the bubble.)
Taxes: Should you report your cryptocurrency gains?
Yes, I will definitely report my gains on my taxes. And you should, too. Both CRA and IRA have a way to know about all the funds your account receives and they are already very well aware of cryptocurrencies. Better to be honest.
In my case, the good news is that I did not do active trading and did only one cycle of purchase-selling. Because of that, it seems that my gains won’t be considered as a business income. Instead, CRA would, probably, treat as an investment revenue. If it is indeed the case, I will have to pay taxes only on the 50% of my profit.
Final words
The world of cryptocurrency is very new and things are changing quickly in it. I have been dealing with this world for 2 months only and I already felt its movements and shifts.
In March 2018, I sold the rest of my Ethereum 🤑🤑🤑 I have one more post to write about how I converted my Ethereum Classic to Ethereum (stay tuned!) and after that, I will be done with cryptocoins – at least, for a while. I do not plan to buy any cryptocurrencies at the moment since it seems to me that they are way too overpriced.
Cryptocurrency trading felt to me like being an interesting activity… But at the moment, I think I got enough crypto in life 🙂 maybe, I will start cryptocurrency passive income in 2019!
So, guys, if you liked my post, do not hesitate to share it on the social media 😉 Also, let me know what you think about the post in the comments below!
Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. I will receive a small fee if you choose to buy after clicking on any of these links. Thank you if you do!
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