LakeBTC Exchange Review

LakeBTC – Is It Good?

Established all the way back in 2013, LakeBTC is a Shangai-based Bitcoin exchange. They also offer some alt-coins and speculate on their movements using their LakeTreader feature. In fact if you go to their website the first thing you’ll see is “all currencies” followed by “all payment methods in the world”. Those are bold statements.

However their page design seems a bit off, maybe even amateurish, which is usually a red flag. And if you go to their Facebook page you’ll see that trend continues with their profile and cover pics and, worst of all, lots and lots of bad reviews. Most reviews even accuse LakeBTC to be a scam exchange.

So how good is LakeBTC? Is LakeBTC a scam? Do they really take all currencies and payment methods? And, most importantly, how does it stack up against other platforms?

What Does LakeBTC exchange provide?

The BTC in LakeBTC doesn’t stand for “Bitcoin” or “Bitcoin Cash”. Instead LakeBTC stands for “Lake Banking Technology Company”. As a technology company, you get a pretty good wide feature set. The exchange is based on P2P so you’re always trading with someone using LakeBTC as a middle-man. Despite their design (or maybe because of it) they’ve been in business for over six years, starting as a Bitcoin exchange for high-volume traders and professional investors. Now they cater mostly to their Asian market.

Their security is pretty standard, covering everything you need to cover. You can set up two-factor authentication and SMS confirmations to make sure you’re the only one accessing your funds at all times. LakeBTC also keeps most of their customers’ funds in cold storage, which, as we know, is the best way to keep them out of the reach of hackers. There isn’t any hacking report out there although they did lose money with the EgoPay debacle back in 2015. All things considered, Lake BTC has a pretty solid security system.

A big plus in LakeBTC is that there’s no require for the verification of your identity when trading only cryptocurrencies. You only need to verify it when trading any kind of fiat. However their selection of alt-coins isn’t great. They only offer ETH, LTC, BCH and XRP besides BTC. And what about their claim of taking “all currencies”? Well their fiat selection is quite extensive but their claim of having all of them is misleading. You will, however, be able to trade with more than 40 options for fiat, which will more likely than not have your currency among them.

Their design is definitely different than most exchanges, with some people calling it “streamlined”. Despite this it isn’t the fastest exchange, although it’s definitely quite responsive. The design is a bit too busy to call it “minimalistic” yet too simple to call it “attractive”. However you do get used to it quite quickly. There aren’t any apps but you can easily navigate it with your phone.

Supported Countries

Although they focus more on the Asian market, LakeBTC supports almost 200 countries, including most of Europe and the UK, the Middle East, Latin America and, of course, the United States.

LakeBTC Rates and Buying Limits

Being a P2P exchange, LakeBTC makes money by charging a fee to the offer maker and the taker. The fees are very competitive, giving makers a better fee the more they trade.

LakeBTC fee: 0.2% for takers, from 0.15 to 0% for makers.

To reach the 0% makers fee you’ll need to trade 20,000 BTC but even at 500 BTC makers start seeing a reduction in fees, which is why a lot of big traders use it. OTC trading fees are also straight-forward, charging nothing for buyers and 1% to sellers.

Withdrawal fees however are not as simple. On their website they just say that you’ll be charged “dinamically” which doesn’t really say much. In reality the fees you’ll pay depend on a number of factors, which are only made worse with the amount of fiat and deposit options. The best way to see the fee you’ll be paying is by checking it before you complete a transaction.

That being said BTC deposits and withdrawals are free and there are currently no trading limits. All they state in the website is that they’ll contact you if the amount you’re trading is abnormal.

LakeBTC Cons

• Unpredictable deposit/withdrawal fees: Since they offer so many options for fiat and deposit and each option has a different fee, it’s hard to predict how much you’ll pay until you’re about to finish your transaction.
• Customer Support: No live customer support is offered and the only option to contact them is through an email.

Go to LakeBTC

Is LakeBTC Good For Bitcoin?

LakeBTC’s website design, its social media and its lack of apps are all a symptom of one thing: LakeBTC isn’t keeping up with the times. Now, is that just from a visual standpoint or does that translate to the rest of the website? Well their security is pretty good and their platform is quite responsive.
With free BTC deposits and withdrawals and anonymous crypto trading, this platform definitely has some interesting features you can take advantage of, we’d only hope their design would reflect that more.