BTC Direct Experience 2021: The Crypto Exchange Test
10 Stars
We present our BTC Direct experience. What does the crypto exchange offer in the test, how high are the fees and is the offer secure? You can find the answers in the review.
For a good rating, the crypto exchange has to convince us in many ways. Good customer service, high security standards, transparency, protection against fraud: We take a closer look at all this and more in the following.
Before you gain your own experience with BTC Direct, read on and find out whether it is worth it.
The crypto exchange BTC Direct is based in the Netherlands and was founded in 2013. The company employs more than 30 permanent staff. The offer: buy and sell cryptocurrencies.
The promise: Above all, BTC Direct wants to function easily, quickly and securely for its customers and convince with its customer service.
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Incl. wallet
Buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the wallet
Paypal, credit card and instant bank transfer
Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
BTC Direct advantages and disadvantages
On the BTC Direct Exchange you can buy cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin for as little as 10 euros per order. You need your own wallet for this. BTC Direct offers dedicated customer support that can answer many basic questions about the company. The site is available in nine different languages.
BTC Direct is not a broker and does not offer any financial instruments. If you are looking for CFDs, forex options or securities trading at BTC Direct, you are in the wrong place. In our tests, brokers are held to different standards than exchanges. BTC Direct is exclusively about buying and trading cryptocurrencies directly.
Brokers usually offer additional services such as trading tools, apps and training materials, and are authorised by government authorities. This is inherently not the case for crypto exchanges.
Step by step guide BTC Direct
From BTC Direct login to your first investment: we'll guide you through the BTC Direct registration process in three easy steps.
Step 1: Sign up
On the BTC Direct Exchange, you must first register before you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies. First of all, you only need to enter your email address. After you have received an activation link, you can proceed with the registration (in our case, the relevant email arrived only after one hour).
Check your spam folder if you don't see the email in your inbox. After clicking on the activation link, you will be asked to confirm your phone number.
Again, you will receive a code without which you cannot proceed. Immediately afterwards, the verification process continues. You can find the BTC Direct login here.
Step 2: Verification
After you have confirmed your phone number with the code sent to you by SMS, you will be asked to verify yourself. To do this, you will need to upload an ID document to the site as well as a selfie in which you are clearly recognisable with the document.
Unlike other crypto exchanges, you can only use your BTC Direct login after you have completed this step. You then have to wait a while for BTC Direct to confirm your verification. In our test, it worked in under ten minutes.
Step 3: Buy cryptocurrency
After your verification, your daily limit for purchases is 2,500 euros. You can increase this limit by entering more information. Now type in how many coins of which currency you want to buy at BTC Direct.
If you want to pay by credit card, you must first make a video call to confirm that you are the owner of your credit card.
For the other options, it works immediately. The order screen will show you the individual transaction fees for each payment method. Choose one and confirm your purchase.
Once you've done that, all you need now is your crypto wallet address. Enter it, accept the terms of use and follow the further instructions to complete your first purchase with BTC Direct.
Our recommendation: Buy cryptos with eToro
Incl. wallet
Buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the wallet
Paypal, credit card and instant bank transfer
Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
BTC Direct Review - the offer
You can only buy a small selection of cryptocurrencies on BTC Direct. BTC Direct is a crypto exchange, not a broker. Accordingly, financial instruments such as CFDs, forex or stock options are not available here. BTCDirect offers the following cryptocurrencies:
Cryptocurrencies
BTC Direct: Fees & Charges
There are different fees for buying and selling on BTC Direct, depending on which cryptocurrency is involved. The fees are already included in the price shown on the website for the currencies.
For buying bitcoin, a fee of 2 per cent of the bitcoin price is charged, while only 1 per cent is charged for selling. For the other four cryptocurrencies you can buy with BTC Direct, there is a 3 percent fee for buying and a 2 percent fee for selling.
In addition, BTC Direct charges fees on the various payment methods. These can vary. For a bank transfer, for example, BTC Direct charges fees of 2.50 euros. The respective fee is clearly displayed before each payment.
There is a discount for large orders. Anyone who wants to buy cryptocurrencies for more than 25,000 euros can submit a request for a manual transaction and will then receive further information. Registering on the website, using your account and upgrading your account is completely free.
currency | purchase | sale |
|---|---|---|
Bitcoin | 2% | 1% |
Ethereum | 3% | 2% |
Ripple | 3% | 2% |
Litecoin | 3% | 2% |
Bitcoin Cash | 3% | 2% |
If you don't use your account for a long time, many CFD brokers charge a so-called inactivity fee. This is not the case for crypto exchanges like BTC Direct: Here, fees are only charged when you buy or sell cryptocurrencies.
BTC Direct: Payment methods
You can make your purchases at BTC Direct using various payment methods, from which you can freely choose the one you prefer. It is important that you always have your own wallet ready to which you can transfer your purchased coins - because on BTC Direct you cannot store Bitcoin & Co. in your account.
On BTC Direct, you have a total of seven payment methods at your disposal: Payments by credit card (Visa and Mastercard), instant bank transfer and SEPA are among them, as well as Giropay and some payment methods that are only available in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, BTC Direct does not support payments with Paypal.
Credit cards
Paypal
Instant bank transfer
Skrill
Neteller
Paysafecard
Bank transfer
Other
If you are looking for a broker that accepts Paypal, you will find an excellent BTC Direct alternative for buying as well as trading cryptocurrencies in our Exchanges comparison test winner eToro.
Our recommendation: Buy cryptos with eToro
Incl. wallet
Buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the wallet
Paypal, credit card and instant bank transfer
Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
BTC Direct: Licence and security
When buying cryptocurrencies, buyers are their own bank. This means that you are primarily responsible for the security of your Bitcoin or Altcoins yourself. This starts with choosing the right wallet and ends with proper documentation and safekeeping of important data.
But you also have to be careful when using crypto exchanges. You should always check whether you are on the official site of the user. With so-called phishing, fraudsters redirect you to exact replicas of the exchange portals and collect your login data.
In addition, you should always use two-factor authentication (2FA). This gives you additional protection against unauthorised access to your account, and it doesn't cost you any effort either. BTC Direct offers you a guide with valuable security tips to help you protect yourself effectively against fraud.
BTC Direct Regulation: No Review by Regulatory Authorities
Cryptocurrencies are still not controlled by the European regulatory authorities. This naturally increases the risk involved in investing in these currencies. Unlike crypto exchanges like BTC Direct, however, reputable brokers are very much controlled by the authorities.
This is because you usually don't buy cryptocurrencies directly from them, but speculate on their price movements using established financial instruments.
Unfortunately, the BTC Direct FAQ does not provide us with any detailed information about the server performance and other security-relevant factors of the website, or at least we search for them in vain.
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Incl. wallet
Buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the wallet
Paypal, credit card and instant bank transfer
Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
BTC Direct: Customer Service, Contact & Support
Another important criterion when choosing your online exchange is good support. You are investing your savings: it is important that you do not blindly rely on everything going well.
Because you are primarily responsible for the security of your investments when buying cryptocurrencies, good support for a crypto exchange like BTC Direct is not quite as important as when trading via an online broker. Nevertheless, the BTC Direct support is included in our evaluation.
All information available on the website.
In translation, the FAQ is also fully usable, which gives you quick answers to the most frequently asked questions. If that's not enough, you can contact the BTC Direct support team by phone or live chat.
Alternatively, BTC Direct also offers a contact form, which was not available during our test due to an error.
Employees use translation software
Instead, they used translation software for our dialogue. Experience shows that these tools are not yet good enough today to rule out misunderstandings in automatic translation. It will therefore be better to speak to the support staff in English.
If you don't speak English, you will have to rely on the help of a knowledgeable friend or acquaintance for more complex cases. This could be better. The live chat is open seven days a week. On weekdays it is available from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., on weekends from noon to 5 p.m..
The FAQ is clearly laid out and helps us out of a tight spot quickly and easily with many questions. The collection of articles addresses many conceivable problems in detail.
In addition, BTC Direct provides us with guides in which various wallets are presented or BTC Direct discusses cases of fraud and how to protect yourself from them. By the way, you can also find such a guide about scams under "Bitcoin Scams".
The BTC Direct App
Let's get it straight from the start: A BTC Direct app does not yet exist. It will probably stay that way, because an app would not bring any particular advantages compared to using the exchange via the browser (and optionally also on the smartphone).
The situation is different when it comes to trading: Especially traders who have to react as quickly as possible to the smallest price movements can no longer do without good apps nowadays.
The lack of a BTC Direct app therefore has no influence on our rating of the crypto exchange.
BTC Direct: The conclusion
For our review, we looked into BTC Direct and had a good experience with the crypto exchange. We were particularly pleased with how easily and quickly we were able to set up our profile and verify ourselves.
This often takes days or even weeks with other, larger exchanges - with BTC Direct, we waited a while until we received an activation link by email, but we got our verification confirmed in less than ten minutes. Respect!
Although there are order limits for new customers at BTC Direct, they are quite generous. With the just activated account, you can immediately place orders of up to 2,500 euros. That is more than with some competitors.
If that is not enough, you can also activate higher limits relatively quickly. This works conveniently and intuitively. Also nice: BTC Direct shows you the fees that are incurred for your transactions depending on the payment method directly and transparently in the order screen.
What is not so positive is the very small range of cryptocurrencies that can be traded on BTC Direct. Only five different coins are available for purchase. This is only enough if you want to invest exclusively in the largest existing cryptocurrencies. If you want to bet on less popular currencies, you have to turn to another platform.
We recommend our test winner eToro as an alternative to BTC Direct. We also noticed that the contact form was not available during our test. Hopefully this is only a temporary problem. All in all, our rating for the crypto exchange BTC Direct is good, but we recommend eToro instead of BTCDirect.
Our recommendation: Buy cryptos with eToro
Incl. wallet
Buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the wallet
Paypal, credit card and instant bank transfer
Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
FAQ
The provider is a crypto exchange where cryptocurrencies can be bought and sold.
In our test, BTC Direct was convincing. The trading possibilities and the good customer support attract mainly European customers, most of whom are satisfied with the provider.
The amount you invest should depend on your own liquidity, the cryptocurrency you choose and your own risk tolerance. In general, you should never invest money that you actually need elsewhere, as profits can never be guaranteed.
Here, too, the platform is convincing. Withdrawals are processed very quickly and are in your account within a few minutes to 2 working days, depending on the selected withdrawal method.
You should always know what you are investing in. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, so you should first get to know your chosen coin in detail. If you have the necessary know-how, as well as the occasional bit of luck, then nothing stands in the way of early profits.
