Uphold Review

Uphold claims you can trade "anything to anything" - from crypto to gold to stocks and forex. But are they legit? Read this review to learn more.

	Trade from "Anything to Anything" in Just 10 Seconds Learn More
	Overall Score	4.0
	Cryptocurrency Trading	4.0
	Minimum Deposit	5.0
	Customer Service	3.0
	Commissions and Fees	3.5
	Ease of Use	4.5

5-point scale (the higher, the better)

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Pros and Cons

• Trade between assets classes
• $10 minimum
• 184 countries

• Trading fees can be higher
• Stocks not available in US

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Bottom Line

Unique platform that lets you trade directly across a wide variety of assets

Conversions and transfers are a standard, yet annoying, part of trading.

Whether you want to sell, send, or transfer your assets to another platform, the process is tedious.

Enter: Uphold, whose motto is "Anything to Anything." You can trade Bitcoin to gold to 27 national currencies and send it all over the world.

So can Uphold really deliver? Read this review to find out the pros and cons, fees to watch out for, and more.

What Is Uphold?

Founded in 2015 and based in the UK, Uphold is an exchange and remittance service. Or, as they call themselves, "a multi-asset digital money platform."

Their goal is to make exchanging money cheaper, easier, and more flexible than doing it at a bank.

Uphold is also commission-free. However, they do acknowledge that they charge a variable spread on transactions, meaning using their service isn't truly free. (This is usually the case for similar services, but kudos to them for transparency.)

What sets them apart from competitors is the range of assets and currencies they support. This includes a variety of traditional investments, fiat currencies, and crypto.

Uphold also offers:

• Trading accounts
  
• A rewards debit card that lets you spend your assets
  
• An automated trading system called AutoPilot
  
• The ability to send funds to people all over the world, including employees and businesses

What Securities Does Uphold Support?

Uphold supports the exchange of an impressively wide range of securities. Let's take a look at what they offer.

Fiat Currencies:

• EUR, GBP, USD, AED, ARS, AUD, BRL, CAD, CHF, CNY CZK, DKK, HKD, HRK, HUF, ILS, INR, JPY, KES, MXN, NOK, NZD, PHP, PLN, RON, SEK, SGD,

Cryptocurrencies
Uphold supports a fair range of cryptocurrencies, including the following:

• Aave, Algorand, Avalanche, Axie Infinity, Balancer, Basic Attention Token, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Compound, Curve Dao Token, Dash, Elrond, Enjin, Ethereum, The Graph, Chainlink, Litecoin, Polygon, Maker, OMG Network, Orchid, Ren, The Sandbox, Synthetix, SushiSwap, UMA, Uniswap, Universal Protocol Token, VCOIN, Wrapped Bitcoin, Ripple, 0x, Cardano, Cosmos, Casper, Decred, Digibyte, Dogecoin, Polkadot, EOS, Fantom, Filecoin, Flow, Hedera HashGraph, Helium, IOTA, Terra, Nano, NEO, Thorchain, Solana, Serum, Theta, TRON, VeChain, Chia, NEM, Stellar Lumens, Tezos, Zilliqa, Universal Bitcoin, Dai, TrueUSD, Universal Euro, Universal US Dollar, USD Coin, Tether

Equities:
Equities aren't available for trade in the U.S. or Europe, but for those who do have access, they support a range of stocks including:

• Apple, Adobe, AMD, Amazon, Boeing, Alibaba, Bank of America, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Berkshire Hathaway, Citigroup, Comcast, Cisco, Danaher, Disney, and many more

Precious Metals:
You can trade precious metals and minerals, including:

• Universal Gold, Silver, Gold (Legacy), Palladium, and Platinum

Environmental Assets:
Support the environment with these dedicated tokens:

• Bitcoin Zero, Universal Carbon

Where is Uphold Available?

Uphold is available in over 184 countries worldwide. Their services vary by country due to a number of reasons, including national regulations. They don't support equities trading in the U.S. or Europe.

Their fees also differ depending on region. Take your location into consideration when choosing whether or not to use the platform.^[1]

Uphold Features

Review Uphold's features below to decide whether the platform is a good fit for what you need.

Trading

What makes Uphold remarkable is that you can trade seamlessly between different asset classes, like from USD to Bitcoin, or from Bitcoin to gold.

There aren't many platforms that offer such a wide range of assets. Most focus on traditional investments or cryptocurrency, but rarely both.

Of those that do offer multiple asset classes, they usually lack the ability to trade between them directly. In most cases, you'll have to convert to a fiat currency or stablecoin to complete your transaction.

With Uphold, trading directly between asset classes comes with two big perks:

1. Convenience. Having to exchange your gold for USD to buy Ethereum, or even having to transfer it off of one platform and onto another, can be tedious and time-consuming.

2. Cost. On other platforms, you'd be charged on the sale of your gold, on transferring your funds to a crypto exchange, and for purchasing Ethereum.

Since Uphold only charges a variable spread on each transaction, you aren't getting gouged in the process.

It's easy to get your money onto the platform too. You can make deposits directly from your bank, card, or crypto wallet.

And remember, this service works for several national currencies as well. While you might pay as much as 13% on round-trip fees for a foreign currency exchange at a bank, the spread between major fiat currencies like EUR, USD, and GBP on Uphold is typically 0.2%. (Even PayPal reportedly charges from 3% - 9%.)

Debit Card

Thanks to Uphold's partnership with Mastercard, you can pay real-time with assets other than cash, including crypto, precious metals, even foreign currencies—without costly foreign transaction fees.

Uphold's debit card is accepted all over the world, wherever Mastercard is, and you can use it in stores and at ATMs, as well as online.

Plus there's an additional 2% cash back whenever you spend crypto, and 1% when you spend cash.

It works with over 130 cryptocurrencies, 27 national currencies, and precious metals including gold, silver, palladium, and platinum.

Automated Trading

Uphold's AutoPilot system makes it easy to employ the investing strategy known as dollar cost averaging.

The idea is that it's nearly impossible to beat the market, so it's better not to try. Instead, you schedule purchases of your favored investment at regular intervals to remove the human element from your trading patterns.

Fees to Look out for

Uphold is refreshingly upfront about their fees.

They offer a commission-free exchange, but charge a variable spread on transactions, which varies depending on which asset you're trading, location, as well as market conditions.

The spread will increase proportionately in times of increased market volatility.

Here's a look at the spreads for various tradable assets.^[2]

Crypto

• Normally 0.8% to 1.2% on BTC and ETH in the U.S. and Europe
  
• 1.8% in other countries
  
• Higher spreads may be charged for lower-liquidity coins like XRP, ZIL, OXT, UPT, and DOGE

Precious Metals

• Normally 3% over spot

Fiat Currencies

• Normally 0.2% for major currencies

U.S. Equities

• 1% during market hours, with an additional fee for after-hours trades

There are No:

• Deposit Fees
  
• Withdrawal Fees
  
• Trading Commissions

They charge separate fees for their business accounts, which are listed in detail here.

Security

You'll be happy to know that Uphold uses a variety of security measures to ensure the safety of your assets and information.

Uphold is a FinCEN Registered Money Services Business (MSB) in the U.S. and an EMD Agent of an Electronic Money Issuer regulated by the FCA in the United Kingdom.

• KYC and AML compliance: identity verification helps ensure the safety of your money
  
• Two-Factor Authentication: keeps unwanted visitors out of your account
  
• Encryption: to protect your data
  
• 24/7 Security: to monitor for threats at all times
  
• Bug Bounty: if they miss something, they find out before it's exploited

Additionally, their Transparency page gives detailed, up-to-date information on the assets in their reserve, their obligations, and transaction volume.

Uphold vs Coinbase

Coinbase is one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges. How does it compare to Uphold?

There are a number of differences worth considering between Uphold and Coinbase, though they offer similar services. The biggest is the ability Uphold offers to trade between asset classes.

If you are only interested in trading crypto, then this may not appeal to you; but if you've got some of your investments in stocks, some in gold, and some in cryptocurrency for example, you can likely save money on Uphold by reducing the number of transactions it would take to trade from one to the other.

For example, on Coinbase, if you wanted to take advantage of a particularly good price on Bitcoin, but your money was tied up in stocks, you'd have to first sell the stocks on another platform, transfer that money into your bank account, then from your bank to Coinbase in order to make the purchase.

On Uphold it would be a single step, saving you the time and expense of that process.

And what about the cost of similar transactions on each platform, say from dollars to Bitcoin?

There are two factors that will effect how much you pay. The first is the fees charged by each platform, which we've broken down.

On Uphold, Crypto traders will just pay the Spread for their transaction, which ranges between 0.8% to 1.2% on Bitcoin.

On Coinbase you'll pay a Transaction Fee (a flat fee or 1.49%), a Spread (.50%), and a potential third fee depending on the purchase method you choose (1.49% - 3.99%). Since the first two fees add up to roughly 2%, even at the lowest rates you'll be paying higher fees on Coinbase than Uphold.

The second factor is the difference between markets.

Since most exchanges are not connected, they act as their own, siloed marketplace. Because the buyers and sellers on each are different, there will be differences (usually small) in price from one exchange to the other.

After monitoring the prices on both Uphold and Coinbase, we found that both had the potential to be higher or lower than the other at times. Sometimes the prices were roughly the same, others there was as much as a $20 difference, but the price differences did not clearly favor either platform.

Since the price of Bitcoin fluctuates so rapidly, it is very hard to lock in a specific price down to the dollar.

One way to do this is to use a limit buy, where you set the price you're willing to pay and wait for the platform to execute the trade automatically if it's reached.

Uphold offers this tool, but Coinbase does not; you can however find it on Coinbase Pro, which is a lower fee, more expert-oriented version of Coinbase.

		CoinbaseeToroCrypto.comGeminiRobinhood
	Uphold	Coinbase
	SPECIAL OFFER Trade from "Anything to Anything" in Just 10 Seconds - Learn More	SPECIAL OFFER Earn $5 in bitcoin on your first trade on Coinbase - Learn More
	Benefits and Features
Stock Trading	50 U.S. stocks (equities trading not available in US and UK)	No
Options Trading	No	No
Cryptocurrency Trading	Yes
Minimum Deposit	$10	$2
Cryptocurrencies Supported	Over 130	170
Countries Supported	184	Over 100
Fiat Currencies Supported	USD, EUR, GBP, AED, ARS, AUD, BRL, CAD, CHF, CNY CZK, DKK, HKD, HRK, HUF, ILS, INR, JPY, KES, MXN, NOK, NZD, PHP, PLN, RON, SEK, SGD	USD, GBP, EUR
Digital Wallet	Yes	Yes
Transaction Fee	None; only a spread when you trade	Greater of Minimum Flat Fees or Variable Fees (1.49%+) by Location and Payment Method. Minimum Flat Fees: < $10: $0.99 $10.01 - $25: $1.49 $25.01 - $50: $1.99 $50.01 - $200: $2.99
Copy Trading	No	No
Limit Orders	Yes	No
Margin Trading	No	No
Spread	0.5% - 1.8% for cryptocurrencies; 1.0% for U.S equities; 0.2% for fiat currencies; 3% for precious metals	0.50%
Crypto Loans	Yes, through partner SALT Lending	Invitation only
Bank Account Purchase Fee	No	1.49%
Debit Card Purchase Fee	No	3.99%
Wallet Purchase Fee	No	1.49%
Credit Transaction Fee	No	2%
Mobile App	Yes	Yes
ACH Transfer Fee	No	No
Wire Transfer Fee	$20 (less than $5,000); $0 ($5,000 or more)	$10 ($25 outgoing)
Crypto Conversion Fee	No	up to 2%
SEPA Bank Transfer Fee	No	Free (€0.15 out)
Other Fees	Network fees when you withdraw to external crypto wallets (varies)	Instant Card Withdrawal: up to 1.5% + minimum fee of $0.55
Anonymity	No	No
Biometric Login	Yes	Yes
Cold Storage	Yes	Yes
Maximum Trading Amount	$25,000 per trade with a daily limit of $100,000 USD	Unlimited
Two-Factor Authentication	Yes	SMS or Google Authenticator
Withdrawal Limit	$10,000 / day for US ACH transfers; €50,000 / day for Euro SEPA bank transfers; £25,000 / day for British FPS transfers	$50,000 / day
	Trade from "Anything to Anything" in Just 10 Seconds Buy Cryptocurrency Buy Stocks	Earn $5 in bitcoin on your first trade on Coinbase Buy and Sell Cryptocurrency Learn Crypto, Earn Crypto
Coinbase: Pricing information from published website as of 04/13/2021.

Bottom Line

While Uphold doesn't have the lowest prices of any exchange, they do provide a convenient service to those working with multiple asset classes. And especially for those trading between multiple national currencies.

One of the goals of crypto was to remove borders from money, and Uphold seems to be working toward that ideal, even rewarding you for spending crypto at merchants in real-time with their debit card.

You may find better options if you are planning to limit yourself to a specific set or type of investments, but if your needs are many and varied, Uphold may be what you're looking for.

References