Exchanges for South Africans

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Maurice Kitching

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Been checking this forum for a while. Lot of great info here. Been trading on Luno for the last couple of months. Come to the conclusion that it's not really the greatest platform. We're buying at a premium ranging between 3-20%. Looking for an exchange where I can buy in USD from SA. Some of the exchanges that allow buys from SA only allow ZAR buys at an even bigger premium. This evening earlier I saw 118k on Luno vs. 122k on Coindirect. This is about 3.5% over and above the 2.6% premium you're already paying. WTF? Anyone buying in USD straight, or do I need to open an account somewhere else?
 
You either:

1.) SWIFT transfer ZAR to an international account to get USD
2.) Go through Luno / local exchanges to get BTC/ETH and send to an international exchange to trade (in and out of BTC/UDST for example).
3.) You can use a credit card at places like CEX.io but I've found it usually works out to about the same as just going through Luno.

We might be paying a premium compared to the rest of the world, but a 15% trade still gets you 15% profit - the premium applies on both ends. Unless of course you want the BTC/ETH to buy other alts - then yes, the premium does take a slice off how far your ZAR goes.
 
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Thanks Saor

To the point, thanks. Will SWIFT to INTL account not amount to the same costs? If not seems like best option. As for loss/win, the movement on Luno simply does not equate to the potential of trading on Bittrex or Bitfinex. Too sluggish. Very long sideways movement with sudden FOMO trading.
 
Should have added that I don't have the time to watch trades for extended periods of time, hence not able to track the changes in BTC/ZAR vs BTC/USD or the influence the ZAR/USD has on it.
 
Maurice Kitching said:
Thanks Saor

To the point, thanks. Will SWIFT to INTL account not amount to the same costs? If not seems like best option. As for loss/win, the movement on Luno simply does not equate to the potential of trading on Bittrex or Bitfinex. Too sluggish. Very long sideways movement with sudden FOMO trading.
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Swift only makes sense for larger amounts (R50k+). My suggestion would be to go through Luno initially, then send elsewhere to trade with - any international exchange will work (send a pm if you want a referral link). That's how I've done it - swallow the initial conversion cost and you eventually make it back (hopefully) with profits on your trade.
 
Maurice Kitching said:
Been checking this forum for a while. Lot of great info here. Been trading on Luno for the last couple of months. Come to the conclusion that it's not really the greatest platform. We're buying at a premium ranging between 3-20%. Looking for an exchange where I can buy in USD from SA. Some of the exchanges that allow buys from SA only allow ZAR buys at an even bigger premium. This evening earlier I saw 118k on Luno vs. 122k on Coindirect. This is about 3.5% over and above the 2.6% premium you're already paying. WTF? Anyone buying in USD straight, or do I need to open an account somewhere else?
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I like cex.io quite a bit.
 
Personally I reckon binance is all you need. and maybe other smaller exchanges if you have an appetite for risk or want to buy ****coin (this is an actual coin). From bank to Luno - from Luno to binance - Make your profits and bring them back home. Easy as pie.
 
phly said:
Personally I reckon binance is all you need. and maybe other smaller exchanges if you have an appetite for risk or want to buy ****coin (this is an actual coin). From bank to Luno - from Luno to binance - Make your profits and bring them back home. Easy as pie.
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True binance is awesome.
 
People like to make profit too, so if they manage to buy overseas at a cheap price, they dont always want to sell it here for what they paid, they want to make some money off it. If you can buy for 20% less overseas, what price would you sell for here?

Most people find its a lot harder, more time consuming, more hassle, and more expensive than they thought to get money from S.A. to an overseas exchange, and buy crypto to send here to trade.

If you can do it for a great price, please come and sell for a good price here too. We would love more liquidity on our exchange (ice3x)
 
ICE3X said:
Most people find its a lot harder, more time consuming, more hassle, and more expensive than they thought to get money from S.A. to an overseas exchange, and buy crypto to send here to trade.
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I can't imagine anyone buying crypto on intl. exchanges is sending it back here to trade - they trade on those intl. exchanges. The only time it comes back here is to cash out. Unless that's what you meant.
 
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saor said:
I can't imagine anyone buying crypto on intl. exchanges is sending it back here to trade - they trade on those intl. exchanges. The only time it comes back here is to cash out. Unless that's what you meant.
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I know a few people that only do arbitrage with BTC when the Luno price goes too high. They quickly buy with dollars on an overseas exchange and transfer here to sell immediately for profit.

It's one of the reason the Luno price got dumped so bad at times in December. Everyone sees the arbitrage opportunity and a large amount of BTC comes back to Luno. The exchange didn't have enough buy orders to support such a selloff though. So it got dumped bad. Luno price also drops a lot at times because we can't short here. So people can only sell when the price goes down. If we had shorters rebuying at lower levels the price wouldn't have dumped so bad.
 
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saor said:
I can't imagine anyone buying crypto on intl. exchanges is sending it back here to trade - they trade on those intl. exchanges. The only time it comes back here is to cash out. Unless that's what you meant.
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If its cheaper to buy overseas, people can send money there, buy bitcoin / crypto, send it to an exchange here, and sell for a profit (OP said 3 - 20%), then repeat.

Obviously its not that simple, as there are limitations to how much money you can send overseas, but there are people who make the effort.
 
ICE3X said:
If its cheaper to buy overseas, people can send money there, buy bitcoin / crypto, send it to an exchange here, and sell for a profit (OP said 3 - 20%), then repeat.

Obviously its not that simple, as there are limitations to how much money you can send overseas, but there are people who make the effort.
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I'm aware of the process. Was just saying people only use local exchanges to cash out. I thought you meant something different to cashing out when you said:

ICE3X said:
... from S.A. to an overseas exchange, and buy crypto to send here to trade.
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