Best Online Brokers for Bitcoin Trading for 2023

Here’s a breakdown of some of the best online brokers for U.S. crypto trading.

In our assessment and ranking of cryptocurrency exchanges, we focused on traditional brokers headquartered and regulated in the U.S., including incumbent online brokers that are expanding to offer bitcoin trading on top of regular stock trading (such as buying shares of Apple or Google) right from within your online brokerage account.

Second, they should have a user-friendly website and platform with the necessary trading tools that traders need. And third, they should allow trading of a variety of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.

The best crypto brokers for U.S. bitcoin trading offer three essential benefits. The first, and most important, is that they are properly licensed and regulated by FinCEN as a Money Service Business (MSB), and follow best-practices for crypto custody security with two-factor authentication, cold storage, and integrated safe wallets.

Robinhood Crypto allows users to trade bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, litecoin, dogecoin, ethereum classic and bitcoin SV, and 10 additional coins can be added to a watch list. The broker does not charge a commission for placing crypto trades, but its user agreement states that it may receive activity-based rebates from crypto exchanges, brokers, and market-makers, which can impact trading costs. Read full review

eToro is great for traders seeking zero-commission stock and ETF trades, an efficient platform and access to copy trading. eToro’s crypto offering includes hundreds of currency pairs. eToro charges no fees for sending or receiving transactions; blockchain fees are applicable for sending and receiving. However, eToro does charge a conversion fee of 0.1%, set to market rates. Read full review

Webull offers 44 crypto assets and is known for its ease of use. Though it has a ways to go to compete with the best crypto trading platforms, the large variety of assets available make it an attractive option. Although there is no commission charged for trading crypto, you still pay the spread, where Webull charges a markup of 100 bps, or 1%. Read full review

Fidelity, one of the world’s largest brokers, is the latest market entrant into the cryptocurrency industry and allows you to buy the two most popular cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and ethereum. Fidelity Crypto is still emerging from beta and doesn’t currently charge a spread, but states that it may charge up to 1% on the execution price in the future. Read full review

Interactive Brokers offers both the underlying crypto assets, including bitcoin and several other popular cryptocurrencies, through its partnership with Paxos; and cryptocurrency futures that are traded on U.S. regional exchanges such as the CME. Interactive Brokers doesn’t mark up the underlying spread, making it one of the most affordable brokers for crypto trading. Read full review

TradeStation Crypto allows you to buy, sell, and trade bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, AAVE, COMP, LINK, MATIC, MKR, SHIB, and USDC and caters to both institutional and recreational clients. Under its simple pricing structure, account balances below $100,000 pay a maker fee and taker fee that ranges from 0.12% to 60%. Read full review

1. TradeStation

As a trading technology leader, TradeStation supports casual traders through its web-based platform and active traders through its award-winning desktop platform, all with $0 stock and ETF trades. TradeStation Crypto allows you to buy, sell, and trade bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, AAVE, COMP, LINK, MATIC, MKR, SHIB, and USDC, making it our top choice and best platform for crypto trading. TradeStation Crypto caters to both institutional and recreational clients. Read our full review of TradeStation.

Headquartered in Plantation, Florida, TradeStation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Monex Group, Inc., one of Japan’s largest online financial services providers (1). TradeStation’s roots date back to 1982, when the company was formed under the name Omega Research. The company’s flagship TradeStation platform was launched in 1991, and TradeStation Group was a NASDAQ listed company from 1997 – 2011, until it was acquired by Monex Group (2).

Pricing: TradeStation Crypto features a simple pricing structure. Account balances below $100,000 pay a maker fee and taker fee that ranges from 0.12% to 60% depending on the size of your trade value in U.S. dollars. Account balances over $100,000 have a discounted maker fee, paying 0.1%, and a taker fee of 0.18%. Further discounts are available for high-volume traders, making Trade Station Crypto an excellent choice for active traders and the best crypto exchange for day trading.

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If you prefer trading on the go, see our picks for best mobile apps for stock trading.

2. Interactive Brokers

Interactive Brokers offers both the underlying crypto assets, including bitcoin and several other popular cryptocurrencies, through its partnership with Paxos; and cryptocurrency futures that are traded on U.S. regional exchanges such as the CME, which are available within its trading platforms.

With over $370 billion in client equity and over $7 billion of excess regulatory capital, Interactive Brokers is a well-capitalized broker regulated in the U.S. and many other jurisdictions around the world. Interactive Brokers is publicly traded (NASDAQ: IBKR) and provides investors and traders access to 135 venues and exchange marketplaces, including for cryptocurrency trading.

Pricing: Commissions for crypto futures and options at Interactive Brokers will depend on which contract you trade and can range from $0.10 per contract for a micro ethereum futures option to as much as $5 per contract for a CME bitcoin futures contract. Conversely, for trading the underlying crypto asset at Interactive Brokers with Paxos, there is a minimum cost of $1.75 per order but a maximum of 1%. This is based off a commission of 18 basis points or 0.18% for orders less than $100,000, with steeper discounts available for active traders. The key point is that Interactive Brokers doesn’t mark up the underlying spread, making it one of the most affordable brokers for crypto trading.

3. Fidelity

As one of the largest brokers in the world with over $8.3 trillion in assets under administration, Fidelity is trusted by more than 32 million investors. Fidelity is the latest market entrant into the cryptocurrency industry, after the launch of its long-awaited crypto account offering, allowing you to buy the two most popular cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and ethereum.

The Fidelity Crypto account can be opened alongside your other existing Fidelity brokerage accounts, allowing easy transfer of money between accounts from within the web platform (requires beta view to be enabled), and you can place trades from within the Fidelity mobile app. Fidelity Crypto is currently available in at least 36 U.S. states.

Pricing: Fidelity Crypto is still emerging from beta and doesn’t currently charge a spread, but states that it may charge up to 1% on the execution price in the future.

4. Webull

Webull was founded in 2017, and has since grown quickly to compete among the best brokers for crypto trading in the U.S., with over 44 crypto assets available. Known for its ease of use, the Webull platform is steadily evolving to cater to beginners and even more demanding traders, although it still has a ways to go to compete with the best crypto trading platforms. That said, Webull shines in this category due to the large variety of cryptoassets available to trade (note: New York residents can only access about 10 crypto assets at Webull due to state regulations).

Crypto trading at Webull is powered by Apex Crypto LLC, affiliated with Webull’s clearing agent Apex Clearing. Crypto trading at Webull is available 23 hours a day, 7 days a week, and closed from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Eastern for maintenance. The maximum trade size is $100,000 and the total value of pending orders cannot exceed $200,000.

Pricing: Webull advertises no fees to trade crypto; but even though there is no commission, you still pay the spread, where Webull charges a markup of 100 bps, or 1%.

5. eToro

eToro is great for traders seeking zero-commission stock and ETF trades, an efficient platform, and access to copy trading. That said, there are hidden fees, education is limited, and eToro doesn’t offer the same range of investments as traditional brokers. eToro’s crypto offering includes hundreds of cryptocurrency pairs. The broker offers the underlying cryptocurrency, and outside of the U.S. also offers cryptocurrency derivatives, known as CFDs (which are not available to U.S. residents).

Pricing: As an early pioneer in social copy trading, eToro was founded in Israel in 2006 as a financial trading technology developer. After launching its first product, it has since grown to serve over 9 million users with an innovative platform that continually evolves to be one of the largest social networks globally, with clients in over 170 countries.

eToro charges no fees for sending or receiving transactions; blockchain fees are applicable for sending and receiving. However, eToro does charge a conversion fee of 0.1%, set to market rates. Minimum withdrawal amounts and fees are also imposed for each type of cryptocurrency. The minimum bitcoin withdrawal amount is 0.0086 BTC and the withdrawal fee is 0.0005 units.

6. Robinhood

Robinhood Crypto allows users to trade bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, litecoin, dogecoin, ethereum classic and bitcoin SV. Ten additional coins can be added to a watch list. Robinhood Crypto is best suited to users who trade multiple classes of assets. Read our full review of Robinhood.

Pricing: Robinhood Crypto does not charge a commission for placing crypto trades; however, it generates tiny profits from each order as it is routed (roughly $0.35 for every $100 dollars of crypto order volume it executes). This routing practice, known as payment for order flow (PFOF) and fairly common in the U.S. brokerage industry, is also how Robinhood makes money from stock trades. In its user agreement, Robinhood Crypto states that it may receive activity-based rebates from crypto exchanges, brokers, and market-makers, among other crypto intermediaries.

Bottom line, since Robinhood is incentivized from rebates available from different venues, this can impact client trading costs, and there is a possibility the all-in costs per trade are actually much higher than some competitors. Unfortunately, there is no way to know for certain, as spreads can vary despite the claim of no commission being charged.

Final thoughts

Trading cryptocurrencies is becoming more widespread as investors around the globe become more comfortable with blockchain technology and the exchanges that offer online crypto trading. Security enhancements for digital wallets continue to improve as well, providing traders more confidence that buying bitcoin is safe.

When assessing security, ease of use, trading tools, and total cryptocurrencies offered, TradeStation comes out on top for 2023. That said, hopefully this review helps shed light on some of the other U.S. crypto exchanges that also provide a good, clean, competitive offering.

StockBrokers.com 2023 Overall Ranking

Here are the Overall rankings for the 17 online brokers who participated in our 2023 Review, sorted by Overall ranking.

“Profound musings” on bitcoin, by StockBrokers.com.

What is the best platform to trade crypto?

Among U.S. stockbrokers that offer cryptocurrency trading, TradeStation offers the best platform to trade crypto in 2023 and was one of the first brokers to offer cryptocurrency in the U.S. The desktop TradeStation platform contains an extensive variety of features to satisfy even the most demanding traders and professional investors, including tools to trade crypto.

The TSCrypto module at TradeStation comes with one-click order entry, analysis tools and the ability to build a custom portfolio and view market depth within its consolidated orderbook, just as you would expect from the largest crypto exchanges.

Which crypto trading platform is the safest?

In our analysis of brokers that offer cryptocurrency, Fidelity is the safest crypto trading platform, when taking into consideration its overall size as a financial institution.

Fidelity holds more customer assets under administration than any other broker — more than $8 trillion — and has been developing its newly launched cryptocurrency custody solution for many years. It has extensive expertise creating financial products for millions of customers. There is no question that Fidelity is among the most trustworthy online brokers, including for holding crypto assets.

SIPC: While all crypto trading platforms mentioned in this guide can be considered safe because they are offered by brokers that are highly regulated, it is important to note that crypto assets do not receive the same protections as traditional investments that are protected under SIPC.

Trustworthiness: It is important to only choose brokers that are well capitalized, to reduce your chance of financial loss in the rare event of bankruptcy, and only deposit an amount that you can afford to lose in any crypto brokerage account.

How can I trade crypto with no fees?

Currently, you can trade crypto with no transaction fee at Fidelity, though the broker has said it does plan to charge a 1% transaction fee.

Some crypto brokers will claim to let you trade commission-free, but you end up paying fees in the form of the spread, which is the difference in price between the bid and ask (the rate at which you buy and sell are slightly different, which creates a spread fee).

Order types: Certain order types can be more expensive when you trade at certain brokers, such as when placing a market order (which takes away liquidity, known as a taker order), compared to a limit-order (which adds liquidity, known as a maker order). However, it’s important to note that not all brokers provide different pricing by order type, such as at Webull or Robinhood, where the rate is the same.

Active trader tiers: Finally, the best crypto brokers provide discounted fees when you trade higher volumes, where the most active traders can even reach a zero-commission rate when adding liquidity as a maker (using limit orders).

How do I start day trading crypto?

While it may seem easy to open a crypto account and start trading, given the number of crypto brokers available, there are a few tips traders should keep in mind to reduce risk of falling victim to potential scams.

Choose a suitable broker: The first and most important step when starting your crypto day trading journey is to choose the best broker that is also properly licensed to hold your money and begin with a small amount of risk capital. Our top choice for day trading crypto in 2023 is TradeStation.

Research blockchain public data: There are also data points relevant to crypto investors, such as on-chain data and fundamental news from social media and projects that can impact cryptocurrency market prices. For example, traders may track the wallet activity showing large transactions moving in or out of crypto exchanges, as potential signals of market direction, in addition to using technical analysis.

Develop a trading strategy: the way you operate your trading account as a day trader, including deciding when to open and close positions and how you manage the potential risk/reward of each trade — including deciding on the expected trade duration or how long to stay in each trade — will be the most crucial factors in determining your success.

This is where you want to spend time looking at formulas to determine what your win/loss ratio must be in order to increase your chances of success, and when calculating the size of each position as that will impact the size of any potential profits or loss over time for a given strategy.

For example, a smaller trade size can still risk as much as a larger trade, but the smaller position may take a longer time to reach that level, whereas a larger trade can have a greater impact much faster on your bottom line, resulting in a potentially larger profit or larger loss.

Here are some key questions to answer when day trading crypto:

• Which crypto assets should I trade?
• When should I enter and exit the crypto market?
• What is the ideal crypto trade size?
• How long should my expected crypto trade duration be?
• What are the ideal risk/reward levels I should use per crypto trade?
• What is my maximum risk per day, and ideal profit target day trading crypto?
• What win/loss ratio do I need trading crypto to succeed for a given risk/reward ratio?
• What other rules can I develop to stay on track and disciplined?
• How can I fine-tune the strategy based on my historical results?
• What amount should I test the crypto trading strategy with before scaling it higher?

Use trading tools for day traders: TradeStation is our top choice for day trading crypto, thanks in part to the range of powerful tools available. In addition to answering the questions above when developing a crypto trading strategy, becoming familiar with the trading tools and platform available from your broker will enable you to maximize your trading performance with all available resources.

Read Next

Explore our other online trading guides:

• Best Trading Platforms 2023
• Best Online Brokers for Beginners
• Best Day Trading Platforms
• Best Brokers for Penny Stocks
• Compare Online Brokers

Methodology

For the StockBrokers.com 13th Annual Review published in January 2023, a total of 3,332 data points were collected over three months and used to score 17 top brokers. This makes StockBrokers.com home to the largest independent database on the web covering the online broker industry.

In order to assess the overall trading experience, we test across a wide range of devices and operating systems.

Testing was done on devices for both Apple and Android operating systems. For Apple: iPhone XS with the most current iOS. For Android: Samsung Galaxy S9+, 6.2″ 4K Super AMOLED (2960×1440) 64-bit Octa-Core Snapdragon 835 Processor 2.7GHz, 6GB RAM 6.2″ with the most current operating system.

For this guide to the best online brokers for bitcoin trading, our research team closely analyzed several key factors: security (including two-factor authentication and integrated safe wallets), ease of use of the broker’s app and other platforms, and access to a variety of cryptocurrencies.

As part of our annual review process, all brokers had the opportunity to provide updates and key milestones and complete an in-depth data profile, which we hand-checked for accuracy. Brokers also were offered the opportunity to provide executive time for an annual update meeting.

Our rigorous data validation process yields an error rate of less than .001% each year, providing site visitors quality data they can trust. Learn more about how we test.

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About the Editorial Team

Steven Hatzakis

Steven Hatzakis is the Global Director of Research for ForexBrokers.com. Steven previously served as an Editor for Finance Magnates, where he authored over 1,000 published articles about the online finance industry. Steven is an active fintech and crypto industry researcher and advises blockchain companies at the board level. Over the past 20 years, Steven has held numerous positions within the international forex markets, from writing to consulting to serving as a registered commodity futures representative.

Blain Reinkensmeyer

Blain Reinkensmeyer has 20 years of trading experience with over 2,500 trades placed during that time. He heads research for all U.S.-based brokerages on StockBrokers.com and is respected by executives as the leading expert covering the online broker industry. Blain’s insights have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Chicago Tribune, among other media outlets.

Carolyn Kimball

Carolyn Kimball is managing editor for Reink Media and the lead editor for the StockBrokers.com Annual Review. Carolyn has more than 20 years of writing and editing experience at major media outlets including NerdWallet, the Los Angeles Times and the San Jose Mercury News. She specializes in coverage of personal financial products and services, wielding her editing skills to clarify complex (some might say befuddling) topics to help consumers make informed decisions about their money.

Dayana Yochim

Dayana Yochim is a Senior Writer/Editor at Reink Media Group who has written about personal finance and investing for more than 20 years. Her work has appeared in outlets including HerMoney.com, NerdWallet and the Motley Fool, and has been syndicated nationally. Dayana has also been a guest expert on “Today” and Good Morning America.

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