How to Choose the Right Crypto Exchange to Buy Crypto

When you’re ready to start investing in crypto, one of the most important decisions you’ll make is where to buy and store it. The crypto exchange you choose determines how secure your money is, how much you pay in fees, and how easy it is to buy or sell your crypto.

But with so many options - Crypto.com, Coinbase, Kraken, KuCoin, Binance, OKX, and Gate.io, for example, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and confused as to which is the best one. Choosing the wrong exchange can cost you money, time, and peace of mind - and it can be tricky and costly to move your crypto from one exchange to another. That being said, it’s good to use more than one exchange for your crypto because if one of your accounts get compromised, it means that not all of your crypto is gone. 

Before we get into the different crypto exchanges, there’s a few things you need to understand. 

Centralised Exchanges vs Decentralised Exchanges

When you start exploring crypto, you’ll come across two main types of exchanges: centralised (CEX) and decentralised (DEX).

Centralised Exchanges (CEX) like Binance, Coinbase, and Crypto.com act as middlemen. You deposit your money, they hold your crypto, and you trade through their platform. These are beginner-friendly, convenient, and usually offer customer support, fiat deposits (like GBP), and built-in security features. However, the trade off with this is that you don’t actually own your crypto, the exchange does, until you withdraw it. That’s why you’ll often hear the phrase: “Not your keys, not your coins.”

Decentralised Exchanges (DEX) like Uniswap, PancakeSwap, or 1inch work differently. There’s no middleman. You connect your crypto wallet directly and trade peer-to-peer using smart contracts. This way, you have full control of your funds and private keys, but there’s more responsibility and if you make a mistake, there’s no customer service to rescue you. It can be a lot trickier for newbies to navigate DEXs because you first need a wallet which you need to top up, then you need to connect to the DEX. 

I recommend buying your crypto on a centralised exchange like Cypto.com - that’s my preferred exchange, then once you have almost £1000 worth of crypto or nearabouts, you transfer it out to your own cold storage. This brings us onto the next bit of key information you need to understand before we get onto the best crypto exchanges…

Cold Storage vs Hot Storage

Once you’ve bought your crypto, where you store it is just as important as where you buy it.

• Hot Storage means your crypto is stored online -  for example, inside your crypto exchange account or a mobile wallet like MetaMask. It’s convenient for frequent trading or small amounts, but it’s more vulnerable to hacks because it’s always connected to the internet.
  

• Cold Storage means your crypto is stored offline, using a hardware wallet like a Ledger or Trezor. Since it’s not connected to the internet, it’s far less likely to be hacked. This is the safest way to store larger amounts of crypto long-term but you need to keep the device or at least the seed phrase you are issued to access your crypto, safe forever. If you lose it, you lose access to your crypto!
  

Think of hot storage like your everyday purse - easy to access, but not where you keep your life savings. Cold storage is your secure vault - a place to protect your wealth from digital threats for the long term.

When you sign up to a crypto exchange,you will have to first create an account, choose a password, complete a process called KYC - this stands for Know Your Customer and is a legal requirement for crypto exchanges to request this information from you in order for them to operate in certain countries, for example, the UK. As part of KYC you need to submit your ID and this can be passed to HMRC. If exchanges don’t comply with this, they can face heavy fines and be banned from operating in the country. 

Now you understand this, we can get onto the main crypto exchanges and help you understand what to look for and which one fits your goals. 

Crypto.com, like I mentioned before, my preferred crypto exchange. It has a nice, clean UI that's easy to navigate, they of course have an app and website, it’s easy to set up, even more so recently, as they prompt you through the set up stages. You can instantly withdraw your cash to your bank account, they also have a debit card through VISA which you can load up with money. Say for example, you earn some crypto for a job you do (yes some companies pay in crypto), you can load that crypto as GBP onto your card and spend from that. You earn cashback in CRO which is the crypto.com coin. The fees are reasonable when you buy, but I do feel they hide some costs when you sell - but this is like most of the biggest crypto exchanges. 

They have a large range of crypto, more than Coinbase and they list a lot of information about the coin including detailed price history which I like. Coinbase

Coinbase is another one of the larger crypto exchanges  - they have most of the bigger coins, they are easy to use and also have a card but I do find their fees to be crazy high! That being said, I do have a coinbase account too. 

Binance

Binance is like a crypto playground - they have tons of different cryptos, way more than coinbase and crypto.com. It used to be tricker for newbies to buy with Binance as you couldn;t buy straight from your bank card but now you can. If you want to find future gems that could do a crazy pump, Binance is for you. 

KuCoin & Gate.io 

These exchanges are like Binance but have even more cryptos - their criteria for crypto coins to be listed are a lot lower than crypto.com etc, so more new coins are incentivised to list on them. 

Kraken

Kraken is a reliable choice for those who value peace of mind and security over everything and just want to buy some bitcoin, maybe a bit of Ethereum and forget about it. They’ve never been hacked, are a larger exchange and easy to use. 

Hopefully this guide has helped you understand how to choose a crypto exchange and the best crypto exchange for beginners. Remember you should use more than one, and ultimately, having cold storage is the safest option for keeping your crypto safe.