Whether you can trust your funds here depends on if they’re putting the right security measures in place to combat the threat of a breach, which is something we’re going to explore. At the very least, the exchange appears to be a target of hackers whether or not those scams are successful. In Q1 2018, users were reporting failed attempted log-ins to their Cryptopia accounts.
To say that Cryptopia is finding its footing is an understatement. If you didn’t need to contact support for any reason, the exchange would run swimmingly. But there are wallet issues involving funds becoming stuck that are exacerbated by what’s largely been inadequate customer support.
On the plus side, the exchange has gone from only a handful of coins and weak trading volume to now offering a wider selection, which based on an increase in trading volume has pleased investors.
According to Coin Market Cap, Cryptopia supports trading in nearly 500 coins and trading pairs. It’s 24-hour volume for a 24-hour period in March 2018 was USD 7.6 million.
The exchange was launched in 2014 and Cryptopia’s CEO is Alan Booth. In Q1 2018, Booth announced the exchange’s commitment to customer service and backed his words by launching the Cryptopia Help Center for customer support. Booth outlined the priorities of the exchange as follows –
- “better infrastructure and security”
- “faster support response times”
Booth says they lost some ground amid a plethora of new users that the platform couldn’t handle.
Meanwhile, Cryptopia also operates a mining pool, which is kind of a smart feature of an exchange to offer. Apparently, users can mine directly to their Cryptopia wallet. But this has triggered some issues and delays with certain wallets associated with specific coins, most notably ETN wallet code originating from Monero that proved insufficient to handle the volume of transactions in this coin on the Cryptopia platform. As a result, investors were unable to access their ETN until the wallet was no longer in maintenance mode.
Cryptopia Pros
- Accepts New Zealand dollar deposits
- Marketplace platform lets users make purchases using BTC
- Charting tools with features such as candlestick and volume. Users can also view real-time price, high/low, etc. Customize the chart duration. Users can also see the ratio of buyers to sellers of a certain coin.
- Multiple coins and trading pairs for traders to choose from. Cryptopia supports some of the newer coins that other exchanges don’t yet offer. Users tout gaining access to altcoins on Cryptopia that they can’t access on Bittrex or Binance, for instance.
- Arbitrage trading capabilities to take advantage in price differences in two or more markets. They call it “Yarrrrrrrbitrage.”
- High-tech trading interface that’s been vastly improved from a previous version.
- Chat feature for traders on the web platform
- They launched a help center in March 2018 to deal with customer issues, which was a long time coming but is a sign they are planning to be around for the long haul.
- Cryptopia says they’re hiring more support staff to handle the increasing number of users on its platform. This is a pro because they attributed some of the problems they’ve had in providing customer support to a staff shortage.
- The exchange is targeting 48-hour wait times for urgent customer service requests
Cryptopia Cons
- Trading is all cryptocurrency driven, so there aren’t any USD pairs or other fiat money trading pairs.
- Users have a habit of getting conned by scamsters on this trading platform
- High deposit fees. One user explained having sent nearly 3.5 ETH to Cryptopia and being charged USD 500 for the deposit. The same user had a stuck withdrawal for IQT and even after two weeks of submitting a support ticket received no response.
- Low trading volume compared to major bitcoin exchanges
- Major delays have been known to occur on the Cryptopia exchange. Withdrawals can be delayed anywhere from 30 hours to more than 30 days. The issue typically surrounds a coin’s wallet and when the digital wallet goes down, they must manage the transactions manually.
- Flawed ticketing system for customer support, which the help center is also tasked with addressing.
- The exchange has suffered issues surrounding forked coins, such as ZClassic in which withdrawals became “stuck”
- Numerous users have reported issues with the Electroneum (ETN) wallet including problems with both deposits and withdrawals. Deposits aren’t arriving to the wallet and withdrawals are getting stuck. These issues were occurring in earnest in March 2018. One user summed it up accordingly