Bitcoin Trading at Markets.com

There are a few things to really appreciate about trading Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency CFDs at markets.com. It is an extremely simple platform for trading, the interface is quite intuitive and should be easy to get the hang of, even for novice CFD traders.  For the more experienced traders, Markets.com has integrated with metatrader 4, also accessible across platforms.  And finally, markets.com offers accounts in multiple currencies and using many local deposit options.  If you are a day trader looking to trade bitcoin volatility, markets.com is an excellent solution.

Opening an Account at Markets.com

New users can access the markets.com demo account platform after inputting just an email and password. Complete your registration here or skip it and start tooling around with the demo account, accessible with 10k in practice funds.

You can collect that free cash at any point simply by completing the registration, which is more or less standard for financial products – standard biographical (name, address and telephone), income and savings data, trading experience, and then some silly questions about CFDs (if you buy starbucks and it goes down, do you earn or lose money?). You will then be offered a choice of account leverage ratios – 1:300, 1:200, and 1:50 – as it pertains to cryptocurrency trading, the leverage is the same regardless of your choice.

Once this is done, the account will be opened!

Depositing and Withdrawing at Markets.com

You may deposit immediately after completing the registration process described above. Users must fully verify their account, which requires photocopies of a driver’s license / passport and a recent proof of residence, prior to making a withdrawal.

*Markets.com charges no fees on deposits and withdrawals. Please note that markets.com will reimburse VIP customers – as well as customers depositing over $2,500 – for any external transaction fees incurred.

Markets.com Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Trading

Check out the leverages and trading specifics below.  We exclude the crypto vs euro pairs because they carry wider spreads, and when you are long or short bitcoin it is likely against fiat in general in my opinion, not specifically euro or usd.

Markets.com has built a simple trading platform accessible from the web or online. They have integrated metatrader 4 as well, available for download under your settings, located in the upper right-hand corner. We limit our review here to the markets.com platform.You might notice that the minimum required contract is 1 – whether for bitcoin, which costs around $16k, or for XRP, which costs less than 20 cents. We are unsure whether this is by design, but it would make sense to support mini-bitcoin contracts for those that don’t want to put up a minimum $400 per contract. If you are looking for mini bitcoin contracts, check out avafx.

We were pleasantly surprised with the markets.com web trading platform as a matter of fact, which is quite intuitively designed and easy to operate. The cryptos are located under the currencies header, which is accessible from the instrument menu. There are 11 different pairs – including the somewhat redundant bitcoin and ethereum pairs against both EUR and USD. These crypto pairs find themselves squeezed between more than 2,000 indices, currencies, stocks and commodities – though we confine our review to cryptocurrency trading on markets.com.

Once you’ve clicked on Crypto, they will populate under the trade tab in the center of the window, above the chart. For more information on each pair, click the information icon, which shows maintenance requirements, leverages, and overnight interest levels. Simply click on sell or buy to open the trade slip.

A lovely trade slip, we are sure you will agree. Stop loss and take profits are easily configured, And you can set your limit orders with a click on the “advanced” arrow.  Once your order has been placed you can track your profit / loss from the left hand panel.

There you will find your account balance, which demonstrates the value of your holdings without taking into account open positions. This figure minus the profit/loss of open positions is your account equity, and the free margin represents the funds available to open a new position. The used margin is what has been used to open your positions.

If the account equity is 50% or less of the Used Margin – positions will begin to be liquidated, biggest loser first, until the account equity is greater than 50% of the Used Margin. This is easily tracked, and markets.com gives users a margin call when the account equity hits 70% of the used margin.

Trading Fees

Markets.com has generally fixed spreads, though these may widen in extreme market conditions. They generally list the exact spread in USD prices, and then adjust them now and again.  The percentages below are therefore subject to change.

OK, so the funding rates are, for lack of a better term, high. On bitcoin, the rates are 50% cheaper than at main UK competitor Plus500, so that’s good! Anyway, that .25% can add up on large positions so, assuming you are not riding a positive trend, it is good practice to avoid holding positions overnight for too long.

Markets.com have excellent mobile applications for both iOS and Android, which allows for the full functionality available on the desktop platform.

Might look elsewhere if:

You are willing to buy cryptocurrency from an exchange.

You can get much better fees trading futures contracts with very high leverage.  You will just need to buy some bitcoin first.  If you are up for it, check out the best places to buy bitcoin, and then we would recommend opening an account with bitmex.

Bottom Line

Markets.com offers a simple and powerful multidevice trading platform for the buying and selling of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, as well as 2000 additional mainstream CFD instruments.