AvaTrade – Five different Cryptocurrencies on leverages up to 20:1

AvaTrade offers margin trading of bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, ripple and dash on MetaTrader 4 or their own proprietary platform. Margin requirements are amongst the lowest in the market, so if you are looking for a broker offering the chance for big positions at relatively low cost, look at Ava.

Their spreads can get a tad high, but swap rates – their interest on overnight positions – are relatively low, and the range of cryptos available for leveraged trading is best in market. There is also a welcome bonus that can get traders up to $10k free – and though not the easiest to clear, the bonus comes free of any small print impacting ability to deposit, withdraw, or trade as you would like. So it is all upside.

Opening an Account

You can open a demo account, which allows new customers 21 days to play around with $100k in virtual money in order to get accustomed to the platform. All that is required is an email and password to open a demo account. In order to get start trading cryptocurrency with avatrade for real money, you’ll need to fill in some biographical details and outline your trading experience. When asked your preferred trading platform, pick either AvaTradeAct or the MT4 platform, they are the two offering crypto. You can easily open up multiple platform accounts after registering, so this isn’t critical.

Next, give some background on your finances, occupation, and declare you are not a citizen of the USA (Are you a US Citizen? Evolve.Markets is your best bet for bitcoin CFDs, and 1broker is your spot if you want to trade mainstream instruments with bitcoin).

Depositing and Withdrawing

You will then be provided with your username, and prodded to deposit, which may be done using visa or mastercard or via bank wire. You will need to upload a government ID and utility bill to unlock the credit card depositing option, no doubt to protect against chargeback. Minimum deposit is $€£100 on credit or debit card, while wire transfers can be made from $500.

AVATrade Welcome Bonus

Ava entices new users to take the plunge and pull out there credit cards with a bonus equaling 20% of the deposit amount. The bonus is valid for deposits above $200, and is limited to a total amount of $10,000. In order to cash out the bonus, users are required to turnover $10,000 for every $1 in bonus – or $10 per lot trade – which is a hefty sum, but as many users are working with 200:1 leverages, it is not as unbridgeable as it might first appear. Alas, for the cryptocurrency enthusiasts among us, limited to a 20:1 leverage, this hill might be a bit difficult to climb.

Regardless, it is free money. Deposit amounts and earnings may be withdrawn regardless of the bonus status, and so it is all upside if you manage to hit turnover requirements.

Protip – as the bonus is all or nothing, it might be worth finger in the airing your projected turnover within the next 12 months, determining the amount of bonus that would clear, and then making your first deposit accordingly. Turnover from subsequent deposits count towards the wagering requirement, and so this might be your best chance to maximize bonus equity.

Cryptocurrency Trading with AvaTrade

AvaTrade offers a number of different platforms, and you can have numerous demo or real accounts. Each trade account has an associated user ID that can be found on your “my account” page, and your master password is the same across all platform accounts.

If you need to trade web-based, the AvatradeACT is your solution. Two platforms are available for download, the AvaTrader and the MetaTrader 4. We review the AvaTrade ACT below.

Crypto CFDs on the AvaTradeACT Platform

To customize the AvaTrader platform for cryptocurrency tranding, click on the “instrument catalog” in the navigation panel at the top of the page, highlight your chosen cryptos and click “subscribe”. This will add them all to the dealing rates table on the left-hand side of the screen, scroll down to the bottom to view. Right click on the instrument to get a chart view center screen, as well as to open the trade slip with a click of “Individual deal rate window”. Then click on buy or sell.

Trade amounts are defined in bitcoin rather than lots, so if you buy amount 1, you are getting 1 bitcoin. The trader range option allows you to set the number of pips in either direction you are willing to take your position; this is useful in a fast moving markets where execution might slightly lag. Click on the “set pre-determined stop/loss” to set stop loss, take profit, or trailing stop instructions. This can also be done after the trade is executed from the open positions summary below.

We bought one bitcoin at 2333.95, and our p/l is at -$20.16, which was the spread at the time of our order. Don’t get alarmed by the P/L line, which is reflected in pips, with each pip equaling a penny. Click on the account information tab to check on the health of your overall portfolio.

We are playing around here with a demo account, so there is approximately $100k in the account. The used margin is only $116.67, or exactly 5% of the just-opened position.

The equity level percentage shows the current situation of your account equity vis a vis a margin call. Most people will not open a position using $116 margin on a $100k account, and so the equity level percentage would be quite a bit less than 85,500% above margin call. AvaTrader, and MetaTrader as well, will execute a margin call when the overall account equity – balance plus p/l – hits 10% of the usd margin amount. In this case, at $11.60.

In the event of a margin call, AvaTrade ACT will liquidate all of your positions; MT4 will close the largest losing position first, and continuing until your account equity is at least 10% of your used margin. Check out the leverage and margin amounts below by crypto.

Thoughts on platform

So what, if any, are the advantages to using the AvaTrade platform over MT4 for cryptocurrency trading?

The only real advantage we see in using Avatrade is their complementary offer of the signal providers Zulutrade and Mirrortrader. If you are interested in following specific signal providers through one of these two platforms, or even automating your trading, these might be of interest.

However, MT4 offers much better weekend trading functionality. While cryptocurrency trading is limited on both platforms over the weekends, MT4 allow traders to interact with existing open positions simply forbidding the opening new ones; Ava does not allow any interaction with open positions, meaning your only option in a bad market is to maintain margin requirements. It is thus probably best to close AvaTrade positions on Friday before end of trading.

You will also most likely prefer the UI of metatrader, (and the the logic a bit more difficult with Avatrade – (explain how the margin thing there is weird). So long story short: If you are coming to this for the first time and don’t have your own, specific reason for using AvaTrade, we recommend trading with Avatrade via MT4.

Fee table – Fees are Constant Across MetaTrader and AvaTradeACT

Note that the minimum spread is also the most likely you will encounter.

Mobile

Android and iOS applications are available for both MT4 and AvaTrade ACT, with full functionality.

Might look elsewhere if:

You can get your hands on some actual bitcoin.

Bitcoin holders have a world of trading options at their little crypto fingertips.  Bitmex is a bitcoin-only Futures and Spot derivative exchange offering low fees, massive liquidity, and a transparent price index.   There are plenty of options available – check out our top bitcoin derivatives platforms to do a bit of price comparison.

Bottom Line

AvaTrade is a trustworthy broker with over a decade of experience in the market. Generally speaking, the one gripe traders have with Ava are their spreads, which are a bit higher than average in the Forex markets; as it pertains to Cryptocurrencies, this difference is not as pronounced. Additionally, their crypto swap rates are among the lowest out there, which should compensate.