The world has been swept up by the immense innovation and intrigue that comes with the crypto market. For this reason, there is a huge range of exchanges and platforms that cater to specific countries and nations. So, in this CoinSpot review, I'll cover an Australian exchange.
CoinSpot is a platform that functions as a wide-ranging crypto ecosystem, offering tools for trading cryptocurrencies, buying and selling NFTs, and even offering methods of using crypto for everyday purchases. While this industry is filled with platforms that function and operate in as many countries as possible, such as Binance and KuCoin, some projects take a more streamlined approach and limit their exposure to a specific nation.
My CoinSpot review will cover such a platform, taking a deep dive into the CoinSpot exchange, questioning “How safe is CoinSpot?” and even assessing whether CoinSpot USA support exists on any level. It's safe to say that this will act as both an overview of CoinSpot, as well as a focused examination of the areas where it thrives, and its potential shortcomings.
Verdict at a Glance: CoinSpot is a crypto exchange and ecosystem with an Australian focus. Its simplicity, portfolio tools, and self-directed pension funds are of particular interest, and allow this platform to shine. However, its inconsistent and high fees, as well as its limitation to the Australian market, prevent it from reaching the top-rated status of many other exchanges on the market.
Pros
- Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSFs)
- Crypto Bundles
- Built-in NFT marketplace
- CoinSpot Mastercard
Cons
- For Australian residents only
- Considerably high fees
Table of Contents
- 1. What is CoinSpot?
- 2. CoinSpot Review: PROS
- 2.1. Buy BTC, ETH, and Other Crypto With Fiat
- 2.2. Perform Instant Swaps
- 2.3. Easily Trade NFTs
- 2.4. Invest Long-Term with Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSFs)
- 2.5. Diversify Your Portfolio with Crypto Bundles
- 2.6. Spend Crypto Anywhere with CoinSpot Mastercard
- 3. CoinSpot Review: CONS
- 3.1. Australia-Exclusive Service
- 3.2. Relatively High Fees for Some Features
- 4. How to Sign Up to CoinSpot?
- 5. Conclusions
What is CoinSpot?
Before jumping into my CoinSpot Australia review, I want to answer the all-important question of “What is Coinspot?” This is by no means a household name in the crypto space, yet despite this, it has been making waves in the industry and building a relatively solid user base.
The Coinspot exchange and ecosystem is a platform designed for crypto users of all skill levels. It has tools for complete beginners, such as its instant swaps, as well as features that experienced and advanced members of the industry will favor, such as self-managed super funds. In other words, it does not discriminate between how it caters to newcomers and veterans alike.
Founded in 2013 by an IT consultant and entrepreneur, Russel Wilson, CoinSpot has become one of the top exchanges with headquarters in Australia. Very little is known about the figurehead of the platform, despite its successes in the country, as Wilson rarely takes interviews or is spotted in public.
However, it appears that this has not hindered the platform’s success, as it is a major player in the country.
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CoinSpot Review: PROS
Let’s kick off this CoinSpot review by taking a look at the strengths that the company offers. This is a natural starting point for any review, as it highlights what makes the platform so exciting and enticing to its growing user base. Naturally, this discussion will help clarify our answer to “What is CoinSpot?”.
Buy BTC, ETH, and Other Crypto With Fiat
One of the most impressive and important features to highlight in my CoinSpot review is that the company offers users the ability to buy cryptocurrency with fiat. This is a major selling point and something that many exchanges are simply unable to do.
Not only can people purchase Bitcoin and Ethereum using Australian dollars (AUD), but they can get hold of a huge range of altcoins, such as Binance’s BNB, XRP, Dogecoin, Solana, Theta, and Tezos.
It's relatively uncommon to come across exchanges that put this level of care into buying altcoins with fiat, rather than just behemoths such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and occasionally stablecoins like USDC and USDT. Thus, it's a sign that the CoinSpot exchange is highly involved in onboarding people to the crypto space, by providing these types of on-ramps.
There's no surprise that beginners often struggle to get stuck into this market, as they find it troublesome to overcome the very first hurdle; the process of buying cryptocurrency with fiat is not exactly easy, and can feel laborious and frustrating. This gets even more complicated if somebody only has an interest in a specific altcoin, rather than a household name like Bitcoin.
On many platforms, users need to start their process by buying a top coin like BTC or ETH, and then going through various steps to trade it in for their ideal asset. However, with the range of altcoins that the CoinSpot exchange supports fiat buying for, this step is entirely cut out. People can buy many of the coins and tokens they want without thinking about trading, or any other cumbersome and frustrating elements.
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Perform Instant Swaps
One of the best methods of discovering whether an exchange caters to beginners is to see if it offers instant swaps and trades. This is something that definitely needs to be highlighted in my CoinSpot review. The company is clear in its support of newcomers by the fact that it offers this service on a wide array of assets that it lists.
For those who may not know what I'm talking about, instant swapping is the process of taking one asset and trading it for another using a simplified dashboard. In essence, doing this is no different from accessing a complete trading interface, with the one significant change being that it is a supremely uncluttered experience.
While many investors will appreciate a fully-fledged application (which the CoinSpot exchange also has), those who are new to crypto, often want to avoid these complexities[1].
Besides, not only can you perform these swaps with top cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH, but you can also do it with all 410+ crypto assets listed. To give you an example, users can swap NEAR with Algorand, or even NEM with OpenAI’s Worldcoin. In other words, there is no limit when it comes to performing these trades. That's another aspect that is boasted in several CoinSpot reviews.
On top of that, the swapping process is extremely simple – just select the asset you want to swap (the one you already own) and then pick any other asset you want to swap it with (the one you would like to get). When you do this, the CoinSpot exchange will reveal how much of the asset in question you will receive.
Once you perform the swap, the assets will enter your custodial wallet. The process is so fast that it could be considered instantaneous. There are two groups of people who will benefit from this. One group is beginners who love features like this as it strips any complications from the activity.
The other group is people who want to quickly make a trade for something so that they can partake in any particular market activity that they think will swiftly happen. The speed of the process makes this element particularly desirable.
Easily Trade NFTs
Not all exchanges support in-built NFT marketplaces, making the inclusion of one deeply important to explore when it comes to my CoinSpot Australia review. NFT exchanging is very much different from crypto trading, in that you cannot divide an NFT in the same way (unless it has been designed specifically with that function in mind).
This means that CoinSpot’s NFT marketplace works more like a third party that connects NFT owners to potential buyers. In this sense, it is not dissimilar to Binance’s own NFT marketplace.
The platform categorizes each NFT into the name of its collection, for easy searching and discovery. For instance, if you are looking to buy a Bored Ape, you can find all of these NFTs listed on the platform with ease.
You can even search for specific names or numbers of NFTs within the collections in question. This is great for people who may be wanting a particular NFT of which they know the issue number.
To take this one step further, the CoinSpot exchange has even enabled a filter for features. Different NFTs use a range of unique identifiers, with some being more rare than others. To be able to filter which ones you see by these features is highly impressive.
Sometimes people want to only buy NFTs that have rare elements, as these can sell for higher in the future, and also tend to have a more intriguing aesthetic. Rarity within an entire collection is not listed on the platform, but you can see a percentage of NFTs that CoinSpot lists that have these features – which can definitely help regardless.
Other users may be looking for pictorial NFTs that represent themselves, so they might want to only see the ones that fit this requirement. In such a case, these users will be happy to see that they can filter multiple features at once.
However, it should be noted in this CoinSpot review that not every NFT collection is supported (Unstoppable Domains is not, for example), but there is nothing preventing the platform from adding more in the future.
Invest Long-Term with Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSFs)
By now, it should be clear within my CoinSpot review that this platform is more of an ecosystem than a simple exchange. Another element that cements this idea is that it provides self-managed super funds, or SMSFs.
These are a specific type of fund in Australia that is managed by the members themselves, rather than by a third-party trustee. SMSFs are regulated by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and are designed to provide retirement income for their members.
Essentially, they are a type of pension-based investment fund. They are not meant to be used as methods of investing in any short-term way, and are rather built to be accessed many years down the line. This is specifically an Australian service, which is directly tied to the way the Australian government views and handles investments.
However, there are some equivalents to this in other countries. For instance, in the US, the closest equivalent would be a Self-Directed IRA (Individual Retirement Account) or a Self-Directed 401(k) plan. These retirement accounts allow individuals to invest in a broader range of assets than traditional IRAs or 401(k)s, which can include cryptocurrencies.
However, special scrutiny is placed on these types of investment funds, and with each country using different regulatory frameworks, which all have their own ideas about crypto, it can be hard to make truly direct comparisons. It can also be hard to find crypto services that support self-directed pension funds of any sort. For this reason, it is surprising and exciting to see CoinSpot incorporate them.
Along with its SMSFs, it should be pointed out in my CoinSpot review that it offers easy self-auditing tools for tax seasons, and even 24/7 customer service and support. Plus, when people engage in this, they receive a copy of the trust deed, as well as additional trust beneficiary details.
Not to mention, CoinSpot has a registered Australian Business Number, and provides a registered trust name, as well as an address. This goes a long way to helping offer an answer to the question of “Is CoinSpot safe?”
Diversify Your Portfolio with Crypto Bundles
Some people enjoy taking the helm with their crypto portfolios and work hard to create the perfect combination of assets, all weighted with a certain amount of money attached to them. For people who love the autonomy that comes with trading, this is highly exciting.
However, many other people want a simple method of diversifying their portfolio without having to think too hard about it.
Thankfully, the company offers pre-created portfolios for people to engage in. This is a highly impressive feature mentioned in many CoinSpot reviews, as it makes diversification much less daunting and more straightforward. The pre-created portfolios are referred to as “bundles”, and they are collections of cryptocurrencies that are connected to each other in some way.
To some extent, they are not too different from index funds that you can find on traditional stock and Forex exchanges. These are funds that lump together a range of assets, allowing traders to invest in them all with ease. However, tools like this are rarer to find in the crypto space.
CoinSpot offers a staggering 16 bundles, made up of a range of different cryptocurrencies. For people who want to invest in crypto as an overall institution, there is a top 3 market cap bundle that lets users invest in the major three cryptocurrencies based on their market cap. Besides that, there is a top 10 market cap bundle.
If you are looking for a bundle that relates to a specific topic, then there is a Web3 bundle, a gaming bundle, and even an AI bundle.
CoinSpot also lists a gold and silver bundle. However, make no mistake, this bundle does not actually place your money directly into either asset. Rather, it places them in ERC-20 tokens that are designed to be pegged to silver and gold, by the names of AUS and AGS.
Technically, these are stablecoins, as their price is backed by a tangible asset. We typically think of stablecoins as being associated with fiat, but precious metal versions also exist. The fact that CoinSpot supports them is definitely exciting.
Spend Crypto Anywhere with CoinSpot Mastercard
This CoinSpot review would be incomplete without some discussion on its crypto card. This is a prepaid debit card that is facilitated by Mastercard. To use it, people must top it up with cryptocurrency, which they can then use to make fiat purchases online or even in physical stores. When you do this, CoinSpot will make a quick swap from the cryptocurrencies on the card to fiat.
To top it up, you can use any asset that CoinSpot supports. This means that Bitcoin and Ethereum are supported, alongside a huge range of smaller altcoins.
A physical card will be sent to you, which functions almost identically to any traditional debit card, and you can further connect it to your Apple or Google Pay. This is because it has contactless functionality, and so any phone using NFC will be compatible with it.
For added autonomy, people can choose specifically which cryptocurrencies they want the card to use first as its financial source when making payments. This means that if you own Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP on your CoinSpot account, you can choose which of the three you want to use for payments and purchases.
Cards like this are fantastic for increasing crypto adoption, and work as a great reminder that these are not only assets to invest in, but they are oftentimes meant to be used as an alternative to traditional cash.
While many hardcore traders will only ever view crypto as an investment choice, there are tons of people who want to use crypto in a more commonplace way. Crypto cards like the one in this CoinSpot Australia review are perfect for offering this.
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CoinSpot Review: CONS
No matter how good a project or platform is, there is always going to be a handful of demerits. This is true of all companies, and so it must be highlighted here in my CoinSpot review.
Let’s add some balance to this discussion by exploring the faults and pitfalls that the company falls into. Just like with the pros, this will also help us answer such questions as “What is CoinSpot?” or “How safe is CoinSpot?”.
Australia-Exclusive Service
Unlike many crypto exchanges on the market, this is a service that focuses on only one region. CoinSpot is an Australian-native company, designed to only function inside Australia.
This, therefore, means there is no CoinSpot USA support (or any other country support, for that matter). Naturally, this will disappoint many international users who are reading my CoinSpot review, as there is a wide array of features that are exciting.
That being said, it may not come as much of a surprise either. A major clue that this is the case can be found when looking at its SMSFs. These exist exclusively in Australia; therefore, they cannot function in another country. Plus, assessing the bundles that CoinSpot offers will reveal a specific Australia-focused portfolio option, including only cryptocurrencies that have Australian origin.
While it is frustrating to come across a company that does not offer its services within your own country or region, it is also deeply understandable as to why platforms like CoinSpot exist.
As the globe tries to make sense of cryptocurrency, and regulators from different regions come up with inconsistent conclusions[2], there are naturally going to be companies that are going to try to influence the regulatory landscape in the countries they're based in.
This is because they will have a greater understanding of how the country works and how it views crypto. They may also find it easier to make inroads in their own native countries as they could have greater connections at a government level and more knowledgeable lawyers.
If you are disappointed by the lack of CoinSpot USA support, then there are several other cryptocurrency companies that operate here and are top-rated. This includes Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp. All three are well-revered in this industry, and some consider them to be market leaders.
Relatively High Fees for Some Features
One of the biggest pain points within many CoinSpot reviews is that its fees can be somewhat inconsistent. While fees for standard spot trading are relatively competitive, the ones for instant buys, sells, and swaps are frustratingly high.
These are set to 1.00%, which is arguably outlandish. This is an extremely steep rate, which makes it feel like beginners are paying a high premium for using a simplified interface.
To some extent, it can be viewed as relatively understandable if you consider that filling instant orders for obscure altcoins could be tough, as there will probably be less liquidity than top market cap assets.
But the problem is that CoinSpot does not discriminate between these altcoins and assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum when it comes to instant swap fees. Therefore, this argument only half-works.
Not only this, but take profit, stop, and limit orders are also set to 1.00%, as are recurring buys. Moreover, when examining deposits and withdrawals, it becomes a mixed bag. While AUD withdrawals and direct deposits are free, cash and card deposits are 2.50% and 2.58%, respectively. These, too, are relatively uncompetitive rates.
How to Sign Up to CoinSpot?
To help contextualize and further frame my CoinSpot review, let’s take a look at how to set up an account. This is a tremendously simple process, one that is more streamlined than many other platforms on the market.
Step 1: Head to the CoinSpot homepage. In the top right, you will see a button to register. Click on it.
Step 2: You will now be taken to a page that asks you to create a CoinSpot account. Enter your email address and password. If you have an affiliate code, you can add it here, as well. However, this is an optional action. Then click “Create Account”.
Step 3: Your account will now be created, and you will be able to see your profile. An email will be sent to you to verify the account. However, you can actually see and use the platform to some extent before even opening this email.
Of course, to fully experience the features mentioned in my CoinSpot review, you will need to not only verify your email, but also perform ID verification. This acts as a method of both proving you are a real person, as well as allowing CoinSpot to access sensitive information about you, which they need to do for the purposes of KYC and AML.
- A very well-known crypto exchange platform
- More than 500 different cryptos available
- Two-factor authentication
- Over 500 different cryptocurrencies available
- Strong security
- Small withdrawal fees
- Very low trading fees
- Exceptional functionality
- Mobile trading app
- Very competitive trading fees
- An intuitive mobile app
- Up to 100x leverage available
- Huge trading variety
- Copy trading functionality
- Regulation-compliant around the globe
- Beginner-friendly
- A wide array of features
- Vast number of different crypto coins & tokens
Conclusions
My CoinSpot review has answered many questions, such as “What is CoinSpot?”, “is CoinSpot safe?” and “Is there CoinSpot USA support?”. Overall, this review has covered a range of areas that highlight the platform’s successes and limitations. Among its greatest achievements are its streamlined instant swaps, SFMS funds, and its bundles.
Of course, it also contains some glaring negatives. Its lack of US or global support is disappointing, and its high fees for some features leave a stain on the platform. While it feels unlikely that CoinSpot will ever aim for a more international audience due to its laser focus on Australia, it could definitely improve its fees at some point in the future.
There is no denying that these negatives are significant, although I would argue that the positives outweigh them by a potentially wide margin. If you live in Australia, then this CoinSpot review should definitely be taken into consideration, as there are some useful tools on offer. Of course, those who are not Australian residents, may wish to look elsewhere, such as Binance or Kraken.
The content published on this website is not aimed to give any kind of financial, investment, trading, or any other form of advice. BitDegree.org does not endorse or suggest you to buy, sell or hold any kind of cryptocurrency. Before making financial investment decisions, do consult your financial advisor.
Scientific References
1. M. Froehlich, C. Kobiella, A. Schmidt, et al.: 'Is it Better With Onboarding? Improving First-Time Cryptocurrency App Experiences';
2. S. Blemus: 'Law and Blockchain: A Legal Perspective on Current Regulatory Trends Worldwide'.