Bitcoin trading has been supported by a number of brokers for a couple of years already but this year saw an absolute explosion in the number of cryptocurrency offerings. The incredible rally in blockchain asset prices has attracted so many new companies to the crypto bandwagon – how does a trader choose who to go with?

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To help, Finance Magnates has assembled the ultimate list of brokers offering cryptocurrency trading. We examined which top currencies they support and what the offered leverage is, so you can review the whole market in one place.

Why trade with a broker?

Most crypto investors still trade with exchanges directly, which raises the question – what is the need for a broker at all? There are several answers to this but all emanate from the issue of user experience.

Most cryptocurrency exchanges were not built with a simple trading experience in mind. As such they offer cumbersome interfaces, little support for 3rd party platforms and very limited customer support options.

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If you have ever tried to contact one of the bigger exchanges with a problem that needed active support, you likely only received canned email responses that felt like corresponding with a cheap chat robot. A good broker must offer great client support so if you forget your password and can’t get a text message confirmation (2FA) you won’t completely lose your account as can happen with an exchange.

Online brokers have about twenty years of experience with trading, developing platforms and ancillary services while the cryptocurrency ecosystem is still developing. If you are used to trading on the charts, from a mobile app or need all your EA robots for algo trading, a broker is the way to go.

Crypto exchanges have also fallen victim to cyber attacks, exit scams and FBI takedowns. While everyone can be hacked, at least a broker which you know and trust can provide some accountability in case anything goes wrong.

Why are FX brokers adding cryptocurrencies?

In a word, volatility. While long term investors can just buy an asset at an exchange, transfer it to a secure wallet and hold, day traders look for something else. Volatility creates many small trading opportunities which they try to capture with risking holding for long term. As such, crypto assets are magnet for short term and algo forex traders.

The major fiat currency pairs offer volatility that is literally thousands of times less than cryptocurrencies, so they can not match the excitement associated with trading them.

Breaking down cryptocurrency liquidity for brokers

Beyond that, there is incredible hype right now surrounding Bitcoin and Ethereum in the mainstream financial media, and many clients are simply demanding access to them as a result. By offering just a few more CFDs, a broker can capture a huge new market of people looking to speculate on this hot new thing that they heard about without any desire to ever use blockchain assets for anything else.