eToro

eToro is an online trading platform, operating since 2007. eToro is a multi-asset platform, where you can trade almost anything from commodities, currencies, indexes, and stocks to their latest cryptocurrency addons. The company decided to expand into cryptocurrency back in 2017 and now supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash and many more.

The company was founded in Israel and has offices around the world in countries like Cypress, Sydney, the UK and the US, working locally to attract users.

eToro is well-known for its social trading feature.
What is eToro’s social trading feature all about?

eToro allows its users to see other trader’s activity. For instance, what assets they are trading and when they decide to open and close trades. This can be a great way for beginners to learn from the more experienced.

In addition to manually following others, the platform offers a unique feature, that we haven’t seen anywhere else, allowing traders to automatically copy other trader’s orders, meaning you can sit back and let someone else do the work. A user can follow a number of traders, scouting to find a trader that has been making consistent profits and then choose to copy their exact trades automatically. If a user only wants to invest $1,000, but the trader they want to copy is taking a $100,000 position, the user can copy those trades at one one-hundredth of their original level, matching the level of risk they feel comfortable with. Of course, there is still no guarantee of making money using this feature, but for some this will be very appealing.

There are, however, a few limitations when it comes to CopyTrading. A trader must invest a minimum of $200 and the maximum a trader can invest in a single trade is $500,000. The last limitation refers to the number of traders that can be copied at the same time, which currently stands at 100 traders.

In April 2019 eToro launched a new platform called eToroX, which is a regulated cryptocurrency exchange different from their initial trading platform eTotoX offers users to trade through an order book and make market orders and limit orders.

eToro’s vision is to open the global markets for everyone to trade and invest in a simple and transparent way.

How to get started with eToro?

Visit etoro and sign-up

Create your account

Add funds to your eToro account

Payment methods | eToro 2020
Depositing funds on eToro is easy and there is a wide range of payment methods.
eToro’s payment methods include:

Credit / debit card
Wire transfer
PayPal
Skrill
Neteller

The minimum first-time deposit is $200 and all deposits are automatically converted to USD.

Now that your account is setup and funded, you can start trading.
It’s time to choose a cryptocurrency.

Supported cryptocurrencies | eToro 2020
eToro’s crypto coin list consists of the following:

Bitcoin (BTC) Ethereum (ETH) Ripple (XRP) Litecoin (LTC) Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Dash (DASH) Ethereum Classic (ETC) Cardano (ADA) IOTA (MIOTA) Stellar (XLM) EOS (EOS) NEO (NEO) Zcash (ZEC) Binance Coin (BNB) Tezos (XTZ) Tron (TRX)

Here’s an example of what it would look like to buy bitcoin with eToro

You can choose in advance when you would like to close trades, by using the stop loss and take profit options. This will set parameters, ordering the platform to automatically close trades when reaching either one of the pre-set limits.

Investments on eToro’s platform are in the form of CFDs, meaning traders speculate on the price and do not own the asset itself.

eToro fees | 2020
What are eToro’s fees?

Fees on eToro vairy based on the assets traded. When taking a closer look at their cryptocurrency fees, it can get steep for long term investors.

Bitcoin has the lowest spread of 0.75% when closing positions. This fee is a lot higher than most centralized crypto exchanges.

Other coins with lower trading volumes such as EOS and DASH have a hefty spread of 2.9% and Tezos is 5% which is most likely the highest fee in the industry.

Fees are also applicable when you withdraw funds. The minimum withdrawal amount is $50.
It’s only possible to withdrawn funds in Fiat money and eToro charges a $25 fee for each withdrawal.

In addition, if you haven’t logged into your account within the last 12 months, you will be charged an inactivity fee of $10 per month. So keep logging in and checking up on your investments to keep your account active.

Supported countries | eToro 2020
With eToro, you can buy bitcoin in several supported countries.
Here is a list of the countries eToro offers its services in:

Buy bitcoin in Slovakia, Latvia, Russia, Lithuania, Argentina, Austria, New Zealand, Norway, Jordan, Thailand, Chile, Czech Republic, Sweden, Greece, Venezuela Oman, France, and Mexico, Nigeria, Ukraine, Bahrain, Portugal, India, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Hungary, South Africa, The Netherlands, Canada, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Finland, Iceland, Kuwait, Germany, Malta, Estonia, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Australia, Peru, Poland, Egypt, China, Colombia, Switzerland, Arabia, Singapore, Bulgaria, Malaysia, Liechtenstein, Saudi, United Arab Emirates, Croatia, Italy, Paraguay, UK, Uruguay, Romania, Ireland, Brunei and Qatar,

Does eToro accept US client?

Up until recently eToro was closed for US investors but now is open and available for anyone within these US states.

As of August 2020, eToro is available for US residents to buy bitcoin in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Is eToro regulated? | eToro regulation update 2020
eToro is regulated and or has licening in the following regions:

eToro’s brokering services are provided by eToro (Europe) Ltd. (“eToro Europe”), a registered Cypriot Investment Firm (CIF). The company’s registration number is HE20058. eToro Europe is regulated by the Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission (CySEC) under license number 109/10. In the UK, eToro (UK) Ltd. (“eToro UK”), company registration no. 7973792 is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), under firm reference number 583263. eToro Europe and eToro UK both operate under and comply with the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). In Australia, services and products are provided by eToro AUS Capital Pty Ltd. (“eToro Australia”), ABN 66 612 791 803 is the holder of an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) 491139 issued by the Australian

Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), and regulated under the Corporations Act (Commonwealth). eToro Australia arranges for its clients to be provided services by eToro Europe.

Our Conclusion

What makes eToro worth using are it’s advanced trading options, it’s CopyTrading feature and the ability to leverage money and the fact that it’s all wrapped up in a clean cut interface.
With all these pros, there are a few drawbacks when it comes to trading fees, withdrawal fees and the fact that there isn’t a wide range of cryptocurrencies to choose from, although they do offer the most popular ones.

Lastly trading CFDs can tend to be complex and comes with higher risks of losing money due to leverage. With 75% of retail investor accounts losing money when trading CFDs with this provider. We recommend you understand the ins and outs of CFDs and how they work. This will determine whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing invested capital.

If you are new to trading and looking for a place to start, this might be the platform for you, as you can learn from others, and the platform is easy to operate. Yet if you are an experienced investor looking to trade large amounts of money and long term, you may want to check out one of the following platforms:

Coinbase

CEX.io

Kraken

To learn more about eToro visit their site.