Cex.io is one of the oldest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. It started out as a UK focused bitcoin exclusive exchange and cloud mining provider. It also at one point offered a highly successful mining pool.
Today, it is exclusively a cryptocurrency exchange that, similar to Coinbase, offers a fiat currency gateway that excepts credit cards, debit cards, and bank transfers. it does have it's downsides though, and we will be going over those as well in today's comprehensive Cex.io review.
The basics of Cex.io
Image via Google PlayCex.io claims that they are offering worldwide coverage with 99% of all countries available for service. The site also specifies that only 24 states in the US are supported currently. According to this article, the following states are not supported by Cex.io:
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
Strangely enough, a few of the countries that the website does not allow credit card purchases from include Iceland and Vietnam, which are relatively large markets for cryptocurrency.
Where is Cex.io located, and who is running it? The site provides a registered address in London, but the site itself does not provide details about the team. The address could also just be a mailbox and not an actual office.
A quick search on LinkedIn reveals a total of 41 members of the Cex.io team, including the CEO Oleksandr Lutskevych.
The profile for Lutskevych states that he is a graduate of Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University, and has over 15 years of experience working in IT, including software development, consulting, and investments.
The Cex.io team has employees that are based mostly in Europe but with a few in the US, and the majority of employees seem to be currently located in Ukraine.
Cex.io fees – some of the highest in the industry
Online Cex.io reviews have often complained about for their notoriously high, and not always transparent fees. This seems to have changed in recent months, at least in terms of the fee transparency. The fees are still, however, among the highest in the world.
The fees are typically around 3.5% plus $0.25 commission. These high fees have caused many former Cex.io customers to avoid them in search of a more economical choice.
As far as trading fees go, those are a little more in line with other major exchanges. For those with accounts that trade less than five bitcoin per month in volume, exchange fees are about 0.25%.
While this rate is not that unusual, it is still on the high-end, with most major Chinese exchanges like Kucoin and Binance charging far less, and having essentially no nationality or residency restrictions (but often lacking fiat support).
Cex.io – enemy number one?
Image via Trustpilot.comAccording to a Cex.io review written on 99bitcoins.com early last year, Cex.io is often the target of many highly critical and negative reviews all over the Internet. A large number of those negative reviews are found on the website trustpilot.com
The many complaints against Cex.io give the company a score of 3.9 out of 10 with over 1,543 reviews
The complaints range from extremely slow support request responses, to significant troubles withdrawing and depositing funds, to accounts getting locked for no apparent reason, to customer verification taking months to process, all alongside several all-caps accusations of Cex.io being an outright fraud.
While none of these Cex.io reviews are actually claiming they are a fraudulent company, these kind of responses do imply the presence of very frustrated and unhappy customers.
While the number of negative comments greatly outweighs the positive, this is to be expected. This is because people normally don't leave reviews on services they like. It is usually only when people get angry, or feel like they are running out of options for recourse that they will leave reviews like this.
However, the sheer number of negative reviews suggests that there are in fact a lot of unhappy customers that use Cex.io regularly.
Cex.io – Not for Americans
The Cex.io review piece that appeared on 99bitcoins.com suggests that only people who live in SEPA countries (basically this means Europe) should use Cex.io. This is because there have been a number of issues relating to depositing and withdrawing US dollars from other countries.
Apparently, Cex.io is attempting to hold themselves up to the extremely strict European financial laws. As a result, dealing with US dollars coming or going outside of Europe is very troublesome and error-prone situation.
The article even suggests that as of January this year, direct US dollar withdraws are no longer supported. We had trouble verifying this information, however, and it may be that that was only a temporary circumstance. Again, we were not able to verify this either way.
Who is Cex.io suitable for?
Generally speaking, Cex.io may be an acceptable alternative to coinbase as a fiat currency to cryptocurrency gateway. Cex.io could be an acceptable option for those living in the European Union as there are some advantages to using their Europe focused system.
For those in the majority of the US, and many other countries, Cex.io probably isn't worth the effort to use. More likely than not, a different choice would probably be more suitable.
