Liquid cryptocurrency exchange review

What is Liquid?

Liquid is an online cryptocurrency exchange where you can trade a wide range of fiat/crypto and crypto/crypto currency pairs. Its World Book order book combines a global network of liquidity sources in order to provide access to a higher level of liquidity and better price matching.

The site also offers Liquid Margin, where you can trade with up to 25x leverage, and has its own utility token known as QASH. Use QASH to pay for services on Liquid, which was rebranded to Liquid Coin (LQC) in February 2019.

Liquid’s parent company, Quoine, is headquartered in Tokyo and is licensed by the Japanese Financial Services Agency. Quoine was founded in 2014 and launched Quoinex, a fiat-to-crypto trading platform, in the same year.

In 2017, the company launched a crypto-to-crypto exchange known as Qryptos, and in the 12 months to July 2018, the two platforms handled a combined total of more than US$50 billion in transactions.

In September 2018, Liquid was formed from the amalgamation of Quoinex and Qryptos.

Which cryptocurrencies can I buy/sell?

Liquid lists dozens of cryptocurrencies on its trading platform, so there’s not enough space to include them all here. However, some of the currencies you can buy and sell on Liquid include the following:

Available countries

Liquid offers its services to users worldwide, with the exception of the following countries:

In addition, if you reside in the United States, you can’t trade fiat pairs on the platform. If you’re a Japanese resident, you can only access currency pairs and services that are approved by the Japanese Financial Services Agency.

Which payment methods are accepted?

Liquid accepts cryptocurrency transfers as well as fiat deposits in the following fiat currencies:

• Japanese yen (JPY)
• US dollars (USD)
• Euros (EUR)
• Australian dollars (AUD)
• Singapore dollars (SGD)
• Hong Kong dollars (HKD)
• Philippine Peso (PHP)

Liquid doesn’t accept New Zealand dollars at this time.

To make a deposit, you’ll need to link your bank account to your Liquid account. The payment processor that handles the deposit varies depending on the currency you’re using:

• USD, AUD, SGD, EUR: Swapforex
• JPY: SBI Japan
• EUR (for deposits within SEPA): UAB Mistertango

How much will it cost me to use Liquid?

There are three types of fees you need to be aware of when using Liquid: deposit fees, trading fees and withdrawal fees.

Deposit fees

Liquid does not impose any fees on crypto deposits. However, please be aware that your bank or payment processor may charge a fee when you deposit funds.

Trading fees

Crypto/fiat pairs have no trading fees.

Crypto/crypto pairs have the following fees:

• Maker: 0.00-0.30%
• Taker: 0.06-0.30%

In addition, if you pay your trading fee with QASH, a 50% discount applies to crypto/crypto pairs for market takers.

Finally, if you’re placing a margin trade, a 0.05% fee applies to all crypto/crypto and crypto/fiat pairs.

Withdrawal fees

Liquid charges varied fees for crypto withdrawals.

However, the following fees apply to fiat currency withdrawals:

• USD: USD$15
• SGD: SGD$15
• EUR: EUR€15
• AUD: AUD$15
• JPY: JPY¥1500
• HKD: HKD$100

Please note that payment processor charges also apply as follows:

• Swapforex: US$35.25 equivalent per transaction
• UAB Mistertango (SEPA payments only): EUR€0.99 per transaction or zero if the beneficiary account is held at UAB Mistertango

How fast will my funds be available?

According to Liquid’s trading rules document, fiat withdrawals generally take three banking days while the withdrawal of digital assets generally takes two business days from the date of the request. This wait time is quite a long one for crypto withdrawals, so make sure you’re aware of it before you start trading.

Are there any transaction limits?

A combined trading limit of 500 BTC (or equivalent) per hour for market takers and spot trades/leveraged trades applies. You also won’t be able to withdraw any funds from your Liquid account until you have uploaded proof of ID.

Is it safe to use Liquid?

Quoine is licensed by the Japanese Financial Services Agency and has implemented a range of anti-money laundering and security measures to protect user funds. These include the following:

• ID verification required before you can start trading (you’ll need to provide government-issued ID, proof of address and a selfie)
• 100% cold wallet storage of crypto assets
• Mandatory 2-factor authentication for all users
• Crypto withdrawal address whitelist
• No API withdrawals

Customer support

If you have any problems with your account or even a specific transaction, Liquid’s online support centre contains several guides and answers to a wide range of FAQs.

If you need further assistance, you can open a live chat window to start a conversation with the Liquid support team.

Pros and cons

Next steps

Compare Liquid’s features with those offered by a range of other leading crypto exchanges. If you then decide that you’d like to start trading on Liquid, visit the Liquid website to sign up for an account.

To register, click the “Sign up” link and select your country of residence. You can then provide your email address, create a password and enter your full name. As 2-factor authentication is a mandatory requirement, you’ll need to set this up before you can start trading.

FAQs

• What order types are available on Liquid?

  Liquid allows you to place market orders, limit orders, stop-loss orders and trailing stop orders.

• What happened to Qryptos and Quoinex, the two platforms Liquid has superseded?

  Qryptos was shut down and has been unavailable since 4 September 2018. Quoinex has ceased to exist and has been replaced by Liquid.

• What if I had a Qryptos or Quoinex account?

  You don’t need to do anything. You can log in to Liquid using the same account details, and any funds that were previously in your account will have been transferred over to Liquid.

• Does Liquid list all the same currencies as Qryptos and Quoinex did?

  Yes. All the coins and tokens that were on Qryptos and Quoinex are now on Liquid.

Disclosure: At time of writing, the author holds ADA, ICX, IOTA and XLM.