Catalogue

Filter

By coin

The hardest filter on this site. If a market does not take what you hold, nothing else about it matters, so this is usually the right place to start.

The whole picture in one table

CoinMarkets that take itNotes
MoneroAll nineThe only coin every entry here accepts
BitcoinEight of nineEverything except BlackOps
LitecoinThree of nineNexus, Mars, Anubis
EthereumOne of nineAnubis only

Read that top to bottom and the shape is obvious. Holding Monero leaves every door open. Holding Ethereum leaves one.

The two things a coin choice actually decides

  1. What is visible afterwards. Bitcoin and Litecoin write sender, receiver and amount to a public chain that never forgets. Monero does not publish those.
  2. How long you wait. Confirmation speed differs between coins and so does the fee at busy times, which is the practical difference most people actually notice.

What a coin choice does not decide

It does not decide anything about the market. A coin is a payment rail. Escrow, disputes, delivery and whether the operation lasts are all separate from it, and a market accepting a privacy coin is not thereby more careful with anything else.

Fees, in plain terms

Two different numbers get called fees and they have nothing to do with each other. A market fee goes to the platform and the platform sets it. A network fee goes to whoever confirms the transaction and it is priced by how much room the transaction takes up rather than by how much it is worth.

That second point explains the thing people find unfair: moving a small amount can cost a noticeable share of it while moving a large amount costs the same few cents. It is also why leaving a balance on a market to avoid a withdrawal fee does not survive being written out. The fee is fractions of a cent and the risk it buys has no ceiling.

What holding each coin does to your options

You holdMarkets openEffect
MoneroNine of nineNothing is closed to you
BitcoinEight of nineOne market closed
LitecoinThree of nineSix markets closed
EthereumOne of nineEight markets closed

Read that as a cost. Holding Litecoin costs you two thirds of this catalogue, and holding Ethereum costs you almost all of it. Neither is a reason to abandon a coin you already have, and both are worth knowing before you decide converting is not worth the trouble.

Confirmations, in one paragraph

A confirmation is one block built on top of the block holding your transaction. Undoing a payment means rebuilding everything above it, so each extra block makes reversal more expensive by a large factor. Markets wait for several before treating a deposit as real, and the number they wait for is a policy that moves with conditions rather than a rule. A market that waits longer is being careful with its own exposure, which costs you time and is mildly in its favour.

The mistake this page exists to prevent

Treating the coin as the security model. It is one layer covering one specific exposure, which is what a public ledger records. The address you opened, the page you typed into and the machine you did it on are all completely untouched by which coin sits at checkout.