Uphold
Key Takeaways
Pros
Easy to use
Access to national currencies
Ability to send money to friends and family
Cons
Higher fees than major exchanges
Not as many cryptos as major exchanges
Tax preparation may be a challenge
Uphold is a digital money platform that allows users to buy, sell and send cryptocurrencies, utility tokens, stable coins, national currencies and precious metals. There are numerous exchanges where you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies like Binance, Coinbase and even Robinhood. Uphold has over 1.5 million users and is available in over 180 countries. Compared to the largest and most well known exchanges like Binance and Coinbase, Uphold is relatively small in comparison. So here’s the skinny on Uphold:
Fees
You can fund your account for free from your bank account or from a debit/ credit card for a 3.99% fee. Uphold charges 0% commissions on trades and withdrawals. This does not mean transactions are free, however. Uphold charges a spread that is built into each transaction. According to their website, this spread is about 1% for the major cryptos like Bitcoin and Ether. For the smaller less liquid cryptos the spread can be higher.
Drawbacks and Downsides
These fees are not insignificant if you consider that for every buy and sell you are losing out on about 2% of the transaction value. Compared to other exchanges, their fees are on the higher side.
As far as access to crypto assets, the other major exchanges include more cryptocurrencies than Uphold. If you are looking for a very specific, smaller cryptocurrency you will want to confirm that Uphold carries it. See list below for cryptocurrencies availability on Uphold. (Availability varies slightly depending on your location.)
Available Cryptos
Uphold supports a wide variety of cryptocurrencies that you can buy and sell. Crypto markets are constantly evolving and exchanges are updating and adding more cryptos. Uphold supports many of the major cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum, but also numerous alt coins as well like Cardano, Polkadot and Chainlink.
Another negative is the integration of tax preparation. So far I have only used Uphold to buy and hold various crypto assets so I do not have any taxable transactions. I typically use TurboTax to prepare my taxes, primarily because they have made it easy to link my various accounts and do all the heavy lifting for me. Uphold has partnered with CryptoTrader.Tax and Tax.Bit to help automate your tax preparation for your crypto trades. However they will cost you extra. Both start at $50 and go as high as $500 per tax filing depending on how many transactions you made. If your transactions are limited, you may be able to get by by doing it manually without too much brain drain. Hopefully TurboTax and Uphold will partner in the near future to give us a cheaper alternative to our crypto taxes.
Lastly, Uphold does not do a good job of tracking your gains and losses. When you buy stocks or cryptos on other platforms like Robinhood, it is very clear what your average price (cost basis) is and how much you have gained or lost overall for each of your positions. Uphold’s interface is lacking in this department. This is fundamental information for any investor to have. Without this it is much more difficult to make informed buys and sells.
Positives and Perks
One of the nice perks of having an Uphold account is that it can link to your Brave browser, giving you a place to monetize your rewards by withdrawing them to your bank or exchanging them with other cryptocurrencies. Every month your Brave rewards are deposited into your Uphold account where you can withdraw or exchange them for other crypto assets.
Unlike other exchanges, Uphold allows you to transact between 27 different national currencies. This is in addition to their “Anything to Anything” feature that allows you to easily transact between international currencies and cryptocurrencies in 1 step. They also allow you to send money to friends and families from all over the world and all you need is their email.
Final thoughts
Overall, the Uphold app is easy to use and set up on mobile and desktop. Their fees aren’t the lowest and the quantity of cryptocurrencies available to trade are not the highest. Nonetheless, Uphold does a decent job of providing reasonable access to the most common cryptocurrencies. If sending money to family overseas or monetizing Brave rewards are not key to your decision, then I would consider another platform to trade cryptocurrencies. However, if these are important, I think Uphold deserves a spot on your list.
Click here for referral link to start trading with Uphold.
