Pros
- Easy to Use
- Wide Range of Assets
- Low fees
- Fractional Investments
- Card Payments
In this review, we will be taking a look at Uphold, a platform that supports many crypto assets and functionality. If you are wondering if Uphold is the best option for you to trade crypto, we have you covered.
Let’s jump in!
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What Is Uphold?
Uphold describes itself as a “global multi-asset digital trading platform”. Founded back in 2015, it has quickly grown to become one of the major destinations for people looking to take charge of their finances by investing their money.
At this time, the platform is used by people located in over 184 countries, supports over 200 currencies, and provides access to a variety of commodities. This reach has allowed Uphold to power more than $31 billion in transactions ever since being launched over 91 million transactions, a testament to its popularity.
With the mission to be the “center of the digital money revolution”, Uphold is all about making investing as easy as possible for its users. This is why it strives to offer a unique experience through its “anything-to-anything” capabilities, simplifying the investment process beyond what other platforms are capable of.
Combined with its regulatory compliance and security, its multiasset approach has been one of the main reasons behind its success.
If you are an investor looking to gain access to new commodities markets without having to relearn what your previous endeavors taught you, Uphold might be a good choice for you.
Setting up your Uphold account is easy and painless, multiple funding and withdrawal methods are available, fees are accessible to low-volume investors, and security is top-notch.
However, if you are a frequent trader or plan to have a large portfolio, it might not be the right fit for you.
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Uphold Features
Understanding what features are offered by a specific platform will be essential when deciding if it is the right fit for you or not. After all, long-term investors will want to have options such as staking in the case of crypto, allowing them to further profit from their investments.
Fortunately, Uphold is a platform that doesn’t lack in the feature department. Having said that, let’s take a look at the most critical features you will gain when using Uphold.
Desktop, Mobile, and Smartphone App
While this might sound like an unimportant feature, we find it to be extremely relevant in today’s world. Not only has technology changed how we can access our digital services but when it comes to investing, you need to be able to access your portfolio at any time.
Surprisingly, many major trading platforms don’t offer smartphone apps for their users to access their services.
If you were to find that your platform of choice didn’t have a smartphone app, your first thought would be to access the website from your phone’s browser.
Despite mobile traffic accounting for almost 59% of all internet traffic, many web developers don’t worry about making their code compatible with mobiles. If your portfolio needs immediate attention, having to go through the mess of an incompatible website is the last thing you want.
Be it with Uphold or any other platform, we always recommend making sure you have different means to access its features. This will not only save you headaches in the future but is also a testament to the platform’s readiness, commitment, and capabilities.
Cryptocurrency Exchange
Let’s start by repeating that Uphold has an “anything-to-anything” mentality, which means you can trade any asset for another at any given time. As such, while we will be talking about the different asset types as distinct, they can be exchanged for one another in reality. Having said that, let’s continue.
Uphold offers an excellent crypto trading platform to its users, supporting some of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the space. This crypto trading platform is available in its desktop, mobile, and Smartphone version, and will allow you to buy, sell, and trade crypto. Unfortunately, the platform only offers limited orders.
This lack of other order types means that advanced crypto traders will be greatly restricted in terms of what they can do. However, if you are a beginner or don’t use any other type of order, this won’t be a limitation at all but will make things easier for you.
Supported Cryptocurrencies
Uphold supports over 190 cryptocurrencies, giving traders of all levels a chance to access the crypto market with the certainty of not missing out on opportunities. These cryptocurrencies include altcoins, emerging tokens, stablecoins, and major currencies.
With the list of supported cryptocurrencies constantly expanding and changing, we recommend that you check the official page for any questions regarding supported currencies.
However, these are some of the most popular cryptocurrencies supported by Uphold:
- BTC
- XRP
- ETH
- BAL
- BAT
- ADA
- COMP
- ATOM
- BCHBTG
- DASH
- DCR
- DGB
- DOGE
- DOT
- EOS
- IOTA
- Many, many more…
Precious Metals Exchange
Investing in precious metals might not be as popular as investing in equity or cryptocurrency but they remain one of the safest bets due to their tangible nature.
Precious metals are considered one of the best hedge methods there are, which is why most expert investors add them to their portfolios.
If you are interested in investing in precious metals, Uphold is a great option.
The platform makes it easy for anyone to invest in them without having to go through the hoops associated with acquiring them physically. This means no storage, transport, or permits have to be something you worry about: Just invest as you would with crypto or stocks!
The precious metals you can buy using Uphold are Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium. Buying them is as easy as any other commodity and you can use any of the currencies or commodities supported by Uphold all thanks to that “anything-to-anything” capabilities!
Stock Exchange
Uphold allows its users to invest in tons of U.S stocks for some of the biggest companies in the world. No matter how expensive a stock is, fractional equities allow them to invest as little as 1 dollar, all while giving you proportional ownership and dividends.
This is the way in which Uphold has helped democratize a market that had historically been accessible to only a few.
The benefits of investing in stocks with Uphold are that there is no minimum investment amount, there are no account fees, equity can be sent to other people free of charge, easy funding, and much more.
In addition to this, you won’t have to worry about your favorite company not being available as over 40 stocks are available.
These include:
- TSLA
- AMZN
- AAPL
- GOOGL
- ADBE
- AMD
- T
- BABA
- BA
- BRK.B
- CSCO
- DIS
Just like with the supported cryptocurrencies, this list could change at any given time. As such, we recommend you check the official page for the latest information.
Environmental Assets
Environmental efforts have gained traction over the past decades as politicians, businesses, and everyday people join forces to help the environment. Now, you can join this fight by investing in projects designed to help tackle issues like climate change. Uphold is one of the few platforms allowing investors to do just that at this time.
Environmental assets are a form of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) in which investors acquire assets like tradable carbon credit tokens and environmentally-conscious commodities.
By doing so, your investment is directly helping the environment either by ensuring no negative impact takes place or actively helping reverse the damage made by other activities.
Uphold only offers two environmental assets at the time of writing: Universal Carbon Tokens (UPCO2) and Bitcoin Zero (BTC0). The former is a crypto token minted through Ethereum which is backed 1:1 by verified carbon units, effectively making it a form of carbon credit.
Bitcoin zero, on the other hand, is a Bitcoin wrapper that has been rendered carbon neutral via UPCO2.
If you want to help the environment while investing, these 2 options are great. Not only are you investing in the underlying projects (Ethereum and Bitcoin) but also in the environmental movement itself. Make sure to check the latest information to be sure what your options are!
Limitless Orders
You might remember we mentioned that Uphold only supports limit orders. Worry not, this is not a mistake. Uphold’s “limitless orders” is a feature of sorts rather than an order type. This feature is one of our favorite things about Uphold as it can be integrated with several investment strategies.
Limitless orders allow users to place up to 50 limit orders at any given time using one pool of capital. What this means is that your funds are not taken away at the moment of creating an order but rather when it is executed.
As such, you no longer have to decide between 2 moves… You can create an order for both and the first one to have its condition met will be executed.
Combine this with Uphold’s “anything-to-anything” and you got yourself a recipe for effective investing. If you are worried about the resulting fees, there is no need. You will only be charged for the transaction that goes through, making it a win-win… All without having to constantly monitor the market.
Staking
Staking is one of the most popular and powerful tools available to crypto investors, allowing them to generate additional rewards. Staking has been possible since the inception of the “proof of stake” protocol in the blockchain world, becoming a major staple ever since.
When a user stakes its cryptocurrency, it is helping the blockchain network become more efficient and secure by improving the transaction verification process. As a result, the user starts generating rewards that come in the form of cryptocurrency most of the time.
The best part about it is that users don’t really need to do much after staking, just wait. This makes this feature incredibly useful for long-term investors.
Most of the dominant blockchain networks support staking at this time, with the exception of Ethereum and Bitcoin at the time of writing. However, Ethereum is working on making a shift that would allow users to stake their Ether. At this time,
Uphold supports staking for the following cryptocurrencies:
- Kava (KAVA)
- Kusama (KSM)
- Polkadot (DOT)
- Cosmos (ATOM)
- Mina (MINA)
- Polygon (MATIC)
- Solana (SOL)
- Tron (TRX)
- Flow (FLOW)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Tezos (XTZ)
- Cardano (ADA)
- Algorand (ALGO)
As usual, make sure to check the latest information to know all the options at any given time.
Automated Trading
Also known as AutoPilot, this feature allows you to automate your investing by setting up regular transactions, be it selling or buying. This is great for people using strategies like Dollar-Cost Averaging as it will take all the work away from you.
This feature can be used to invest in all of the commodities supported by Uphold, as well as using them as payment methods. If you would rather use a debit card to fund your purchases, this is also possible.
Uphold Fees
While you won’t need to open an Uphold account, there are fees associated with some of the services like buying and selling.
This is the same model used by most investment platforms but with the main difference: Fees are locked pre-trade. This means you won’t have nasty surprises when executing orders.
Let’s start by talking about the fees you won’t be paying. These are deposit and withdrawal fees, as well as trading commissions. These are nonexistent.
The feelings you will need to pay attention to are “spreads”. This will differ for cryptocurrencies (depending on which one you are transacting with) and fiat currencies. In the case of crypto, buy spread fees can be between 1.25% and 0.95% while the sell spread will fall between 1.25% and 1.1%. In the case of fiat, the buy spread will be between 0.05% and 0.2% for buy and sell spreads.
You can find the latest information on fees here. As this can change at any time, we recommend you check them before using the platform. However, you will see how much you will incur in fees before completing a transaction as a result of Uphold commitment to transparency.
Uphold Customer Support
Customer support is just as important as features. Fortunately, Uphold is known for having one of the best customer support teams in the space. However, chances are that you won’t be needing them as the platform is extremely intuitive and easy to use.
In addition to this, Uphold offers resources like a Cryptionary, Blog, FAQ, Help Center, System status, and get started sections that do their job pretty well. You can also submit a request via the help center.
While Uphold doesn’t offer support via phone or chat, tickets are replied to in a timely manner. That being said, it is important to clarify that this was our personalñ experience with the customer support team.
Platforms like Trustpilot give Uphold a 2.5 rating, which is considered poor. As such, we recommend you give a look at some good and bad reviews and judge by yourself!
Is Uphold secure?
Uphold complies with all regulations required by the United States. Not only is all of its data encrypted but all security patches and systems are constantly monitored, pen-testing and auditing are regularly taking place, and access to the servers is closely regulated.
Over its more than 7 years of existence, Uphold has not been involved in any data leak or breach. This is not only due to the measures the team takes to protect data on its end but also to the platform offering 2-factor authentication and other features that increase security on the user’s end.
Conclusion
Uphold is one of the most solid choices for any user looking to invest, especially if you are looking to be exposed to several types of commodities. Its ease of use, top-notch security, high transparency when it comes to fees, and great accessibility make it a great option.
That being said, if you are looking for diverse order types or advanced features, you might want to look elsewhere. Popular features like loaning, debit/credit card issuing, advanced charting, and social trading are not supported.
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