CoinJar Review – Is This Cryptocurrency Exchange Legit?

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By Austin DeNoce

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Coinjar Review

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CoinJar Review

  • Desktop/Interface
  • Mobile App
  • Trading Pairs
  • Fees
  • Customer Support
  • Security
4.7

Summary

In the market for a new crypto exchange? CoinJar, founded in 2013, is an Australian-based cryptocurrency exchange. This exchange offers a wide variety of crypto services including the buying and selling of 42 different crypto assets. CoinJar also offers a CoinJar card as well as Bundles, OTC Trading, and more. Find out whether or not this cryptocurrency exchange is truly worth using in our complete CoinJar review.

Pros

  • Very low fees
  • Advanced and customizable trading interface
  • Extensive support/learning resource via Knowledge Base
  • Bundle investments

Cons

  • Only supports Australian & UK residents
  • Somewhat limited number of assets
  • No staking, lending, or leverage

About CoinJar

CoinJar is an Australian-based cryptocurrency exchange and wallet established all the way back in 2013, making it one of the longest running digital currency exchanges. The exchange offers a number of crypto-related services and currently serves over 400k users. While CoinJar’s wallet is globally accessible, if you want to use their exchange, send/receive from a bank account, or use their CoinJar card, you will have to be a resident of the United Kingdom or Australia.

CoinJar Account Opening

Opening an account with CoinJar is as simple as creating a username/password and verifying your email. If you want to have full access to the site, deposit, trade, and the like, however, you will have to go through additional identity verification (again, must be a resident of the UK or Australia).  

Coinjar Account Opening

Desktop

CoinJar’s desktop interface is very digestible and easy to use, but it’s a bit modest. The website doesn’t pop with colors or animations the way many other crypto brokers do, but I still found it to be welcoming and easy on the eyes. Though the UI could use slight improvements, the whole site is well-organized and leaves little guess work for navigating the platform.

Coinjar Desktop

Mobile App

The CoinJar mobile isn’t the most beautiful or jaw-dropping app out there, but it is very easy to use. It offers users easy access to managing their portfolios, trading (both spot and bundles), and even has a tab to easily manage the CoinJar Card. While the app is nothing to write home about, it is still worth getting if you open an account as it will offer a great deal of convenience with very little difficulty in figuring out how it works.

Coinjar Mobile App

CoinJar Buy/Sell

CoinJar supports 42 different crypto assets, including several stablecoins like USDC, USDT, and UST. The markets are laid out on the left side of the screen with line graphs in addition to price and are extremely accessible. The buy and sell buttons near the top right clearly show the bid and ask prices, and placing orders is extremely straightforward. CoinJar also includes a helpful introduction to whatever asset you click on with links for additional information and supports dollar cost averaging through recurring buys. 

Coinjar Buy/Sell

CoinJar Exchange

CoinJar’s exchange trading interface is surprisingly advanced and aesthetic. With the ability to customize your layout with multiple charts, order books, time and sales, etc., it seems ideal for anyone who takes their trading seriously. The customizability can be a little overwhelming at first and it would be nice to see some default layouts to choose from, but it’s certainly one of the better trading interfaces out there. It should be noted, however, the only order types they offer are market and limit.

Coinjar Exchange

CoinJar Fees

Like most brokers, trading fees with CoinJar are based on your 30-day trading volume. Unlike most brokers, however, CoinJar charges a 0.00% taker fee across the board, which is very impressive. You would be hard pressed to find that with other brokers for any trading volume. The maker fees for BTC/Fiat ETH/Fiat pairs are also impressive at 0.10% for $0 – $10,000 in 30-day volume and can move as low 0.04% for volume over $10M. For all other crypto and stablecoin pairs, the taker fee is 0.04% regardless of volume. The lowest you will generally see maker or taker fees on other exchanges is about 0.10% (Binance, KuCoin) and even they are outliers when compared to Crypto.com (0.4%) and CoinbasePro (0.50%), so CoinJar’s fees are very competitive.

Coinjar Trading Fees

As for deposit fees, CoinJar charges 2% for Visa or Mastercard purchases, which is actually really good compared to other brokers that generally charge 4-6%. There is also a 1.5% fee for Blueshift cash deposits (for Australians), but no other deposit fees for either United Kingdom or Australian residents.

Coinjar Deposit Fees

Other than transaction fees incurred from each respective crypto’s network use (which is standard with crypto), the only other fee is a conversion fee of 1% between digital currency accounts and between digital currency accounts and cash accounts.

CoinJar Card

The CoinJar Card is a prepaid digital currency Mastercard you can use to make purchases at any merchant that accepts Google Pay or Apple Pay. In places where contactless payments are not yet accepted, you can also use the physical CoinJar Card or card number. The CoinJar Card directly uses the funds in your nominated CoinJar Everyday account so you don’t need to worry about pre-loading the card. 

Coinjar Card

There is no card activation fee, but there is a 1% transaction fee, 1% ATM withdrawal fee, and 2.99% foreign transaction fee. The card also has a $5,000 daily spend limit, 25 transactions per day limit, and $1,000 daily ATM withdrawal limit. However, you will earn 1% of every eligible transaction in CoinJar Rewards, which can be put towards transaction fees and the CoinJar Rewards Store.

Those limited benefits aside, there aren’t too many advantages to using the CoinJar Card, and charging a 1% fee only to offer 1% back on eligible transactions through CoinJar rewards seems pretty undesirable compared to other cards that provide more usable rewards or just regular cashback.

CoinJar Bundles

CoinJar Bundles are collections of popular digital assets you can purchase as a group, allowing you to diversify your portfolio in one simple transaction similar to an ETF. Each bundle’s performance is automatically tracked and can be grown by adding more funds or setting up recurring payments.

Bundles can be simple pairs such as the BTC/ETH bundle or be more inclusive like their DeFi bundle of 14 different assets. There are a total of 10 bundles to choose from so you’ll have plenty of options (although many of the bundles have repeated assets).

Coinjar Bundles

OTC Trading

CoinJar’s OTC trading desk offers 1-on-1 service for investors through email and chat whenever they want to make a trade. Their OTC trading is for anyone looking to trade $50k and above—providing more discrete transactions and flexible settlement times. CoinJar’s OTC desk supports trades with any combination of the following fiat currencies and digital asset cryptocurrencies: AUD, GBP, EUR, BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC, ZRX, USDC, and BAT.

Coinjar Otc Trading

CoinJar Security

Like most brokers, CoinJar offers 2-factor authentication via authenticator apps like Google Authenticator or SMS for added security to your account. 

On their own end of security, CoinJar ensures at least 90% of their customers’ digital currencies are stored offline in geographically-redundant, secure locations and, wherever practicable, they use multi-sig technology to protect digital assets that must be stored online. They also maintain full reserves at all times with sufficient assets to cover customer balances with matched durations and currencies. All in all, CoinJar takes security seriously and your funds stored with them are likely safe.

Coinjar Security

Customer Support

CoinJar has their own version of a help center called the Knowledge base. It’s an exceptional resource with pretty much all the information you will need. Everything within the Knowledge Base is neatly laid out with step-by-step walkthroughs and helpful pictures to make learning incredibly digestible. The Knowledge Base is one of the more exhaustive support/learning resources for an exchange I have come across, so I would encourage anyone new to the platform to check it out.

Coinjar Customer Support Knowledge Base

Additionally, as of August 2018, CoinJar offers premium phone support for select CoinJar Exchange members. They are unable to extend this offer to all CoinJar members at the moment, but eligible CoinJar Exchange members will be provided with phone support options within their CoinJar Settings.

For those ineligible for phone support, you can also submit a Support Request with screenshots and whatever questions you may have.

CoinJar Rewards

As is now standard practice within the industry, CoinJar runs a referral program that rewards both you and any referrals with 500 CoinJar points after they’ve opened an account and been verified. Points are also earned through buying and selling with AUD, purchases on the CoinJar store, CoinJar Swipe purchases, and CoinJar Card purchases. As alluded to earlier, these points can be put towards transaction fees or CoinJar Reward Store purchases, which includes redeemables like crypto tax software, gift cards, a hardware wallet, and even merchandise.

Coinjar Rewards Store

Conclusion: CoinJar Review

Overall, CoinJar is an exceptional broker for both passive and active traders, which is not very common. Usually platforms that place an emphasis on simplicity or ease of use do not cater to more experienced traders. Couple all that with their crazy low fees and I’d say anyone who can use their platform should consider it. Although they may not have as many supported assets as other brokers, they have more than enough for your average crypto trader. After all, only a small percentage of traders really chase coins or tokens beyond the top 40. Some drawbacks to consider are CoinJar doesn’t provide any leverage trading, lending, or staking, which may be make or break for some, but they have an easy-to-use interface, an exceptional fee structure, crypto bundles, and support both passive traders through the simplicity of their Buy/Sell tab and dollar cost averaging, as well as advanced traders through their exchange trading interface. If it were’t for their location restrictions, I would recommend CoinJar to everybody, but that obviously dramatically limits who can use their platform. Nevertheless, they are absolutely one of the better brokers out there and I would highly recommend it to those living in Australia or the UK.

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Austin DeNoce

Austin DeNoce is a writer, personal investor, and entrepreneur who is focused on trading and investing education for macro, crypto, equities, derivatives, and foreign exchange traders. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a bachelor’s in philosophy and carries a deep passion for a first-principles approach to investing and education therein. Austin specializes in topics related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

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