Have you ever been in a position where you had just a small amount in tokens left in an exchange, but you can't find how to withdraw without paying too much?
Some coins are listed in exchanges that we don't often use and we have to deal with too many rules we don't know about.
I've recently tried to send some coins I was holding for months in wallets in the HitBTC exchange to sell. I was surprised to see TRX withdrawal fees of 108.5 TRX (~$15,00). XRP required around 10 XRP and Doge was not available for withdrawals. I didn't remember any other coin that I could trade and use to withdraw.
The value of the coins I sent was no more than $30 and that would mean instantly 50% loss if I was to withdraw using TRX.
Before you send your tokens/coins to an exchange to sell, you should always have in mind these rules:
Find the crypto having the lowest withdrawal fees and availability in the exchange/wallet you are withdrawing to
Find the exchange with the highest liquidity for your trading pair
Find the deposit/withdrawal limits for each exchange
Find the number of confirmations for the exchange
Check the withdrawal options first. Sometimes wallets are on maintenance and you can't deposit/withdraw
You don't want to get scammed by a rogue exchange, do research.
Scam exchanges are not rare. They are not frequent either, but some will even be listed in Coinmarketcap and Gecko, and at some point will scam the users and after a while exit.
Often withdrawal fees may be very high due to high miner fees and exchanges being greedy. Transferring big amounts is not worth trading and paying 0,10-0,20% just to save withdrawal fees.
This is only for small amounts, between $10-$500 to reduce the cost of transferring value.
I have been used coins like DogeCoin, Tron, Waves, XVG, BCH in some exchanges withdrawal fees are very low, Litecoin, and a few more. It depends on where I want to send this value, usually, it goes to Binance or another exchange for reinvestment. I often take time to sell many tokens and coins when there is profit to be made and not at very low prices. I even had Decentraland Mana in a few wallets that I had completely forgotten about those and managed to make a great profit after forgetting those tokens for years.
I'm often getting airdrops which are tokens in Ethereum, Tron, and other wallets or given coins when testing new projects on their wallets. I'm holding some of these for years and during a bull run, they can suddenly pump and even make it to thousands of dollars. Of course, I have made mistakes and sold many too early, missing some good chances, but this is how it works.
This site: https://withdrawalfees.com/ helps us find the best withdrawal fees sorting by exchange or by cryptocurrency. There is always a warning to be given as when looking I found exchanges I have never heard of. Always remember to do your research and due diligence before using a new exchange. If you have questions and you are not sure ask someone or perhaps make a short post on read.cash, or another crypto platform, just to be safe.
When looking for the best withdrawal fees for our Bitcoin Cash, we find some exchanges with very low fees.
From these exchanges, I have used BitForex, Bitstamp, Huobi, and OKEX.
Liquidity is very important and we should select the exchange that we trust more and has the highest liquidity in the trading pairs of our coins.
Before you deposit in an exchange, you should bear in mind that any small exchange will probably have very limited liquidity for the token you are trying to sell.
The top exchanges, like Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken have high liquidity in all pairs available. You will find a sell order right on the market price.
Other exchanges, may have so much lower liquidity that you could even sell at a 20-50% discount. Even some exchanges we consider big and reliable (like Poloniex) may have low liquidity in some trading pairs.
I searched some exchanges and one that has many coins free of withdrawal charge is Bitfinex. Each exchange has at least one or two coins having low withdrawal fees.
Don't rush to withdraw $50 in Ethereum and pay $20 fees. We don't have to pay exchanges and high miner fees as we can do our job by paying lower.
If you are dealing with hundreds of tokens make a list, or add them to your Coingecko portfolio. Those that were worthless two years ago and you got them from an airdrop or bounty, can be sold for $50-$100 during a bull run like this one.
I have managed to sell many that I didn't even remember having. And because they were all listed in small exchanges, I had to sell, buy another coin with low withdrawal fees, and withdraw to Binance, or Coinbase, with BCH or XRP/XLM.
Example
I made this post to help you clear a few things if you are new. With experience, you gain this knowledge on your own, as I did with my first steps.
For example, withdrawing BCH from HitBTC comes with a huge fee.
flat fee -0.039346 BCH
This is ~$30 fees. Moving money off from HitBTC in our BCH wallet will come with a huge cost when using this exchange.
If you want to move to Kraken you can select EOS which comes with a $1 cost to transfer out of HitBTC.
$5,000 withdrawal - Not profitable to trade to another coin
There is a need to calculate the cost of trading between pairs too, because if you are moving $5,000 the taker fee will be around $8 for each trade made and you will have first to trade to USDT, then to EOS, and then withdraw. Even so, you will pay $16 in trading fees and $1 for withdrawal. But you will still have EOS and not BCH and have your EOS in another exchange. The same process of trading will cost another $15 making the cost higher than just withdrawing in BCH.
$1,000 withdrawal - Profitable
For $1,000 each trade fee should be about $1,5 making it reasonable to trade in another coin offered with low fees by this exchange. You will make two trades: BCH to USDT and USDT to EOS, paying $3 in trading fees. $1 withdrawal fees of EOS and move to another exchange (i.e. Kraken). Two trades again to reverse the EOS in BCH (another $3) and then a small withdrawal fee (~$0.10).
The cost to move BCH this way to your Bitcoin Cash wallet is reduced by $24.
It all depends on what you want to do. If you just want to sell to fiat then there is one less trade made and less fees.
$100 withdrawal - Recommended withdrawing using another coin
For very higher than $1,000 amounts it all depends on trading fees. The time to move the funds is also important as it could take several hours depending on the exchange and the blockchain selected. Sometimes it will be instant, but some coins may have problems.
For $100 withdrawal, $30 fees should never be accepted, and finding a way out is almost always possible.
The trading cost for $100 between BCH and EOS should be a maximum of 20 cents for each trade. You will pay less than a dollar to move to another exchange, trade back to BCH, and withdraw to your BCH wallet this way.
Instead of a $30 withdrawal fee, we will just pay $1.
HitBTC was my example as it was the only exchange having liquidity for a coin I wanted to sell. Then, I found the withdrawal fees for BCH for this exchange being so high and had to find a way out without paying so much.
This example can happen with many coins. With Bitcoin Cash, you will usually not find any problem as most exchanges have low fees. With other coins it gets interesting.
I've reduced the cost of moving funds between exchanges and wallets by thousands of dollars this way.
When I wanted to take my profit from Binance and send it to an exchange that I could withdraw to a bank I wasn't moving funds in BTC, ETH, or USDT, but I am using the cheapest coin available for withdrawals.
Withdrawing with the coin having the least withdrawal fees is optimal. With time, you will find your ETH (or now BSC) wallets being full of tokens. Also, other coins that you may have earned or bought just small amounts and moved in a multi-wallet.
Moving them to an exchange to sell, for a market average price of $20, may prove to be selling at a loss if you make mistakes. The exchange you select may have low liquidity, so be mindful to select the one that you can sell at the market price. Be careful with unknown exchanges you haven't used before and avoid using one.
As a beginner I was mostly suffering from my ignorance and sending very low amounts, while the exchange had a deposit limit, sending ETC to Coinbase and required weeks to see a deposit and more mistakes. Sometimes though, it was the exchange fault and I had to contact them, provide information and see my transaction executed after a while.
Exchange fees saved reduce our operations costs and increase our profitability.
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in my personal case I use fixedfloat and coinplaza to exchange between some altcoins when it comes to binance I think the cheapest way is either LTC or BNB. Since I change everything to BCH I have not used any other exchange because I have not moved my funds since that time, now I have some cents at publish0x and I think I will have to let that grow before withdrawing to save on fees but that also will be changed into Bitcoin Cash when it becomes enough money to exchange.