213. Where To Buy & Sell Large Amounts Of Crypto

Where is the best place to buy crypto? Like if you're going from Ethereum to Sui, for example, this is where it can become a little bit more difficult.

So you're at the mercy of how much you want to pay to get that transaction through as well. Whereas if you're doing an ethereum swap, you're actually trading on chain and you're at the mercy of how many people are using that blockchain, how competitive it is.

The big use case for centralized exchanges are that they're super easy to use. You know, they're built for everyday people.

And like, do I leave it on this exchange? Do I custody it myself? Am I comfortable with them having my license and my passport details? You know, what is the recourse? How are they governed? Is there insurance on this exchange? There's a lot of things you need to consider and it's very individual with the ones that you select.

Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Bergs Podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift. Alongside me is Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. We're here to bring you world class crypto research strategies and insights to help you crush this crypto bull market. Plus get an exclusive behind the scenes look as we scale Australia's leading crypto research company. If you like the podcast, we'd love for you to share it around with a friend. It's how we grow the podcast each and every week. Subscribe if you're on YouTube and follow us on your favorite podcasting app. Now today we're talking about where is the best place to buy crypto, especially if you're using large amounts of capital to bring into the market. We recently had a platinum client that came on board. He wanted to buy a million dollars of crypto and he did it before we started working with him. And he went through the wrong channels and use the wrong exchange and essentially lost tens of thousands of dollars in fees and spreads. And this can multiply as you change assets you sell, move into stable coins, move into fair currencies. There's so many different things you need to be considerate of. So we're going to talk through the best sort of different platforms you can utilize. The things to be aware of if you have a large portfolio or a smaller portfolio, because you can save a lot of money if you do it the right way. And I think there's the exchanges do pretty well in hiding some ways that they make money, which we'll share with you today.

So it is a bit sneaky, isn't it?

Very sneaky. It's very sneaky. So the three main ways you can get in or out of the market is centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges or OTC. Now centralized exchanges are Coinbase, Coin Spot, SwiftX, Binance. These are all centralized exchanges. They're businesses and they create order books where you can buy and sell crypto within these platforms. Now there's a number of different ways inside the platform you can buy and sell as well. Most of the exchanges now have swap features which are really easy where you can basically swap from one asset to another. They have market orders where you can go on and actually use their order book and you can buy and sell or they have over the counter trading otc. And we'll talk about what each one of these means means in a second. But we'll start with centralized exchanges. I think the big use case for centralized exchanges are that they're super easy to use, they're built for everyday people, they're very, very easy to access. Onboard Aussie dollars. You can't onboard Aussie dollars into a decentralized exchange. You have to do it on a centralized exchange. However, you are going to look at copying a fair chunk of money on fees and spreads. So most exchanges probably charge up to 1% fees. Some of them are 0.1% fees. However, a lot of them make their money on the spreads and the spreads is essentially what you can buy and sell.

Your assets on. So the other day I was selling a big chunk of Ethereum and on one of the exchanges there was a really, really sort of big spread between the buy and the sell price. So yes, you can buy Ethereum US$2,000 but you can only sell it at, you know, $1930. Right. That's where they make their money. So if you are using a lot of money and you get trying to get in or out of the market spreads on centralized exchanges you really need to be aware of.

Absolutely. And exchanges are nice because they're easy to get on boarder to. It takes five minutes and they're very simple to use. The interfaces, you got mobile apps as well, they're quite nice. But you're spot on Ben. Like you get stung with fees and spreads. So if you go to a website like Coingecko that'll give you the live price check with your exchange, what price they're actually offering it to you at and what their fee is and the total amount you will get. Because some of them it'll appear to be the market rate. That they're offering that you'll find on Coingecko, but when you go through, they actually charge fees and it's in a smaller font. And the amount you get is even a smaller font still. That's 0.000 whatever Bitcoin. And you don't realize it until you've clicked okay. Some of them will just have a spread with potentially zero fees or less fees, like 0.01% instead of, you know, 1%, whatever it may be. So compare the total amount so you don't end up wondering what happened when there's less than you thought you were going to get.

Yeah, bang on. And if you're using smaller amounts of things, you know, the swap feature is fine, but also you're still going to get chopped up pretty bad. So one thing you can do is, you know, you can look at different exchanges. You know, different exchanges offer different things. I know Binance have very low fees, low spreads. You know, there's different exchanges that offer different things. But you can also use the market to the market book to put in basically spot spot orders, like, you know, basically where you put in a target price that you want to sell or buy your asset at and you can log that and then wait for the market to fill it. Now unfortunately, with a lot of the Australian exchanges, they are very low liquidity. So, you know, there's not a lot of people buying and selling on those market order books. So you need to be aware of that.

So if you have large amounts, you know, we would recommend definitely using something like otc. So OTC is over the counter trading. Essentially. That's where an exchange will lock in the price for you either over the phone or online, and they'll match a buyer and a seller for you with the lowest slippage. So, you know, for example, some OTC desks will offer somewhere around a 0.5% fee with about a 0.3% spread. So you're looking about 0.8% in total, probably some of the best you're going to get. We're moving large amounts of crypto, especially if you're trying to get in and out of Aussie dollars, for example, you can save a lot through otc. You can swap between different coins. However, as you're switching chains, like if you're going from Ethereum to Sui, for example, this is where it can become a little bit more difficult because there's less liquidity in those markets. But OTC is definitely something I'd reach out to your exchange and set up an account with get, get sorted especially for those larger, larger transactions because without it yeah you can really get, get eaten up in fees and spreads.

Yeah, OTC is nice because you can, it's a phone call, you lock in a price, you've got time to do it. It's just very convenient and you know what you're going to get with the other options in an exchange there may be higher fees. There's also interesting ones where you can either spot buy within the exchange or you can go to their order book which is usually slash exchange on their website and you get lower fees. But then you're open to the market and you can put a limit order or at a certain amount. Yeah there's, there's a lot of options and you can see why it's quite confusing.

Yeah, I think a lot of people would just can like go for convenience which is fine but again you're gonna, you're gonna be eaten up in, in, in the exchange making a bunch of money on that convenience side. So yeah, do shop around.

Yeah and you raise a good point about trading pairs. Like you generally always have like a BTC pair or ETH pair with most stuff but if you're swapping From Spicy Coin 1 to Spicy Coin 2 in the background, they might have to either that pair exists which is gonna be low liquidity or there's multiple swaps happening to get that across.

Yeah, that's a really good entry point into decentralized exchanges. So decentralized exchanges are basically platforms where you're interacting directly on the blockchain. There's no company intermediary. Usually you'll have the lowest fees, basically next to zero fees for using these dexs because you're just, it's like think like uTorrent or you know, LimeWire. It's just peer to peer trading. There's no, there's no one in the middle outside of the platform itself.

Some of these as well, you don't need KYC for. You just basically plug in your metamask and you can interact with the blockchain directly. They are amazing for same chain swaps. So if you're looking at, you know, different things on Ethereum, you're swapping some Defi projects or you're wanting to interact on some Solana projects. You know, you might look at something like Phantom, you know Ethereum, you're going to look at something like Uniswap. These are really great ways to really interact with crypto itself and utilize. However, if you're looking to swap cross chain so you're looking to go from like Ethereum to Sui or Cardano to xrp. That's where it becomes a little bit more difficult. You can use something like Thor Chain. Thor Chain is a good way where you can swap assets between different chains and they sort of do the, a lot of the grunt work behind the scenes. But again, you're going to be up against slippage, liquidity problems, et cetera, as you're moving between.

Tax.

Yeah, tax. So if you're looking to go cross chain, I would look at potentially going back to a centralized exchange or otc. But if you're looking on chain and wanting to stay on the same blockchain, I would look at something like a Dex because it's going to give you far cheaper.

Fees, better spreads, potentially liquidity might be a problem if you're looking at really large transactions, but if you use something like Uniswap, it'll tell you what the slippage is and you can kind of figure out what the, what the estimate will be at the time.

And we also got to remember a DEX is essentially you're running contracts on a blockchain. Right. Like if you really boil it down. So you're at the mercy of how much you want to pay to get that transaction through as well. So if you're on an exchange, that'll go through almost immediately because they've got a random database they have and they figure it all out. Whereas if you're doing an Ethereum swap, you're actually trading on chain and you're at the mercy of how many people are using that blockchain, how competitive it is, and how many, how much fees you will have to pay in order to get your transaction through. So you might have to pay a lot. Your transaction might get stuck. There's all these kind of like dodgy things that you will know and you will feel in your heart if you have done this before, because it sounds kind of idealistic, but it is quite challenging. And wallets and everything have become better and interfaces to handle these kind of things, but people still do get caught out quite regularly using decentralized exchanges.

Yeah. And one thing that I do and an angle you can do this if you hold your crypto on a wallet like a ledger. You can actually swap your assets within your ledger. So what ledger does is it basically takes a quote that you're trying to do, like whether you're swapping ETH to whatever Solana or USDT or whatever it might be, and then it will give you a quote from a couple of different integrated platforms it has whether it be like changely or one inch. And then what you can do is you can select that and you can then process the transaction with inside your ledger. You just need to approve it obviously and sign the transactions. But can be an easier way than moving it from your ledger to your metamask and then moving it around and back. You can do it directly within your wallet now, which is pretty cool.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Should we talk about. We've talked about fees here, but what about on ramps? Because that's a big consideration as well. So we've got exchanges, decentralized exchanges and otc. You can actually on ramp to all of these. So if we go to exchanges they're probably one of the easiest. You can send money across from your bank. You can do bpay. You can do one of those osco transfers that go through relatively quickly. I think that's what they're called credit cards as well. They're very, very friendly. You can even send crypto to an exchange. There are some limits with. Generally banks won't let you send more than 10k per month to a crypto exchange. But they are quite easy and quite fast. OTC again Ben larger trades. Call up the person, give them account details, send them across, process the transaction for you.

Yeah. If you're looking at depositing like a large amount of crypt like fiat like aud into a platform, I would definitely recommend speaking to an OTC broker because sometimes the biggest problem is the bank, not the crypto exchange. You know, I know a lot of people including you know, ourselves that get, get kind of tied up in oh mate, the banking situation. It's an absolute nightmare. I know combank have a 10k monthly limit which is absolutely stupid. You can't even like override it. You have to basically create a new bank account. Yeah.

And if the names don't match up perfectly and then they hold your money for 48 hours. 48 hours and one second it arrives, it is just stupid crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would def. I would definitely look at trying to find a, a more bank crypto friendly bank. You know ing has been pretty good. I, I think there's a few others maybe net, you know, nab again. You have to like ring up and or they'll ring you on the transaction and ask you a few questions. But you know, you'll be able to get it through combat. Can definitely the worst and you literally can't get more than 10k out every month, which is insane.

Yeah. You can go down to a bank and do real time gross settlement. It cost you 30 bucks and half an hour of your life, but at least you'll be able to get a decent amount across. And for dexes, you can't necessarily.

Move capital to a dex, but you can move it to a wallet. So something like Metamask on Ethereum, you can move any coins there. And I'm pretty sure they've got like different paypal slash credit card integrations now where you can buy crypto directly through the wallet, which is interesting.

Yeah, I think you can. You then have to just KYC with the integrated like credit card platform, which is for me just absolute pain in the ass. But you know, you can't. You can do it. The, the thing I would consider, especially when you're selling your crypto, like, do you actually need this in AUD or can you move it to stable coins? That's a big reason why I love stablecoins is because you don't have to move it to your bank account and then back in. So you can just move your, your profits into stable coins, hold it, and then redeploy back in the exchange or into your metamask. So you can't put Aussie dollars into your metamask into an exchange. You have to have stable coins. So you have to buy stable coins at some point anyway. The other reason why you'd hold stable coins is just from a currency FX perspective, you know, it's a good way to hold US Dollars against your.

What does Checkmate call it? The Pacific Pesos.

And let's talk about how we each use all of these. So, Ben, how and when to use an exchange? When will we use a diploma, a dex, and when do you personally use otc?

So I use OTC when I'm buying large amounts of crypto from Aussie dollars. So I have Aussie dollars in the bank. I'll use OTC to buy large amounts of crypto when I'm deploying Aussie dollars. I would also consider using OTC if I'm selling any of my crypto back in Aussie dollars. I use a centralized exchange to sell smaller amounts and swap smaller amounts between various chains. So if I'm wanting to swap, like I made a trade recently, like I sold some, I think it was ETH to sui or SUI to eth. It was just easier to do it on a centralized exchange because it's got the liquidity there. And then I'll use a dex to buy and trade certain chain altcoins, whether that be eth based memes or defi projects or I'm using Phantom. I'm Phantom Wallet for Solana. You know, when I bought, you know, some of the Solana based memes, I was using Phantom that they're all on Dexs just because it's easier to access, it's cheaper, and I can then use those assets to interact with different platforms as well.

Awesome. I'm quite similar. So I'll use otc. If I want to deploy a significant amount of capital and I can't be bothered. I just want to make a phone call or something's happened in the market, I'm out and about, I know I can make that phone call. They send me an email. I look at the little, you know, invoice they've sent me, the fees and what I'm getting, say, okay, send the money from my bank account all on my phone in 10 minutes, I'm done and I've made that purchase. I'll use a centralized exchange to set up dollar cost averaging and to buy coins when I need to. And I also use centralized exchanges to sell back to Aussie dollars if I need to Y and I use decentralized exchanges pretty much just to buy spicy things that aren't anywhere else or to sell spicy things or things that have been delisted from my exchanges. So if my exchange no longer holds a coin I want to offload, I'll move it to a Dex. I'll then swap it for usdc, something like that, move it back to my exchange and then cash out to aud.

Yeah, yeah, perfect. Yeah, they all had the different use cases. And again then you need to select the right centralized exchanges. Like you got to be looking at altcoin selection, security.

Australian exchanges, overseas exchanges. There's a bunch of different things you have to consider.

There's a lot of. Yeah, and like, do I leave it on this exchange? Do I custody it myself? Am I comfortable with them having my license and my passport details? You know, what is the recourse? How are they governed? Is there insurance on this exchange? There's a lot of things you need to consider and it's very individual with the ones that you select.

Yeah, yeah, bang on. It's one of the processes in our, in our strategy process where we work with our platinum clients is going through and you know, figuring out what their goals are, where they're going to be trading, you know, how much money they want in. We can really like set them up with the right exchange so you, you know, you're not losing a bunch of Money, I mean, man, some members just make their money back of the membership just from not going on the right, right exchange. So set them up with the right, isn't it? Set you up with the right exchange, make sure you're buying the right platform, saving that money ready, getting your plan in order, ready for when it's sell, having all those personal contacts that we introduce you with personally, just getting it all of it sorted so you're not stressed and worried, you've got it all confident, you've got a plan, you've got your assets in the right place. It makes a lot of difference when it comes to sell.

That's the thing. These things are complicated and when you talk to people that have been in it for a while and you tell us your circumstances, we can let you know which ones are probably right for you and then connect you with the right professionals for things like, you know, tax things or legal things, things, whatever. You need to get this whole thing really singing.

Yeah, bang on. So, yeah, if you're keen and want to have a sort of chat to us, you can book in a call, see if it's a good fit for you, ask a few questions. We're gonna ask a few questions of you because we don't take many people on, but we want to help as many as we can. And we've also got a bunch of free resources over on our website if you need some help looking at exchanges and whatnot. But hopefully that's been helpful, giving you a good insight as where to buy, where to sell and starting some thinking around that over the course of this year. So thanks so much for listening, folks. If you enjoyed the episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend who's also in crypto, who may be spending way too much on their exchange. Shoot them this, Tell them Benneberg said, get this shit together and we'll see on the next episode.

That's it. Get them sorted. Thanks, champions.