Coinsquare vs Binance | Pros, Cons & Comparison Winner
Jack Moreau
Feb 2024
9 min read
Fact checked
Are you wondering which cryptocurrency exchange to use between Coinsquare vs Binance? We've done a thorough comparison on KYC requirements, country availability, product offerings, trading fees, deposit methods and more to help you make the best decision!
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
eToro USA LLC: Investments are subject to market risk. Including the possible loss of principal. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
eToro USA LLC: Investments are subject to market risk. Including the possible loss of principal. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.
Coinsquare was founded in 2014, has over 50 employees and is registered and based in Ontario, Canada. It's a Canadian exchange that focuses on providing a simple and secure platform for Canadians to buy and sell cryptocurrencies.
The exchange is only available to Canadian residents, and users from other countries cannot use its services.
Coinsquare is known for its user-friendly platform and supports a limited range of over 40 cryptocurrencies. The exchange has over 500,000 registered users and is available on Android and IOS platforms where it has been downloaded by over 50,000 Canadians.
Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao and is registered in the Cayman Islands as Binance Holdings Ltd.
Binance offers a comprehensive suite of trading and financial services, including spot trading, futures trading, staking of cryptocurrencies, earning of digital assets, NFTs and much more.
The exchange supports over 350 cryptocurrencies, numerous trading pairs, and is the most liquid exchange in the world.
Binance has over 120 million users worldwide and is available on both Android and IOS platforms where it has been downloaded over 50 million times and has a rating of 4.4 based on over 1 million reviews.
Coinsquare vs Binance Signup & KYC
When it comes to KYC requirements, Coinsquare and Binance both require that all of their users pass KYC in order to trade.
Coinsquare is exclusively for Canadian residents, while Binance is available worldwide. The signup process for Coinsquare begins with entering an email and verifying it.
Users are then prompted to enter their phone number and complete KYC, which involves providing personal information, a government ID, and a selfie. Verification typically takes 1-2 business days.
On the other hand, creating a Binance account takes less than a minute but users must complete KYC to unlock account privileges. This involves submitting information such as country of residence, address, and government ID, which can take a few minutes to complete.
The verification process can take as little as 15 minutes, but may take up to 2-3 business days in some cases. As such, both Coinsquare and Binance require KYC verification for their users, with Coinsquare only being available to Canadian residents and Binance being a global exchange available to all.
Coinsquare vs Binance Products & Services
In terms of product offering, Coinsquare is a smaller local exchange that does not offer a wide range of products and services.
What they do offer, however, is buying and selling of 40 cryptocurrencies. These can be bought via their swap services (more expensive) or their spot exchange called Coinsquare Pro.
Spot trading volumes on Coinsquare are in the range between $20 to $40 million on a daily basis. This is not much and to be expected from a smaller country-specific exchange.
The user experience on Coinsquare is pretty average but it's at least easy to use for total beginners. However, there is nothing that stands out as particularly impressive when it comes to the product offering or user experience of Coinsquare.
Binance provides a much wider variety of trading services that includes spot trading, futures trading, margin trading, perpetual swaps (perps), and options trading. Liquidity on Binance is one of the most liquid exchanges in the world with daily spot trading volumes frequently exceeding $10 billion.
Binance offers leveraged tokens and contracts that can be settled either perpetually or on a quarterly basis, using USDT, BUSD, or other cryptocurrencies. Binance also offers trading bots and copy trading, which allows users to follow and copy the trades of successful traders automatically.
In terms of leverage, Binance offers a max leverage of up to 125X on futures and margin trading is available with up to 5X leverage with stablecoins, altcoins and fiat currencies as underlying collateral.
For those that want to earn interest on their digital assets, Binance provides staking, lending, and different types of vaults. Binance also has its own NFT marketplace and its own Web 3 wallet in Trust Wallet.
The user experience on Binance is also quite good considering how many products they offer. As a whole, Binance is a much more versatile and exciting exchange as compared to Coinsquare. Binance offers more products, many more cryptocurrencies and an overall better user experience than Coinsquare.
When it comes to trading fees, Coinsquare has a hard time keeping up with the low fees of Binance.
Coinsquare charges a spot trading fee of 0.5% for makers and takers on their Pro platform. This is quite high compared to other exchanges.
However, they do offer rebates for those who trade above $10,000 during a 30-day period. For those using Coinsquare trade (swaps), the fees are even higher with the exchange taking a portion of the spread.
In regards to the trading fees of Binance, they charge a much lower spot maker fee of 0.1% and a spot taker fee of 0.1%. Trading fees on Binance can be further lowered if monthly trade volumes exceed $1 million or if users hold at least 25 BNB tokens.
Plus, Binance also offers futures trading with competitive fees ranging from 0.02% to 0.04% for makers and takers. Overall, Binance is the much cheaper exchange to trade at and users who want to save money should use it over Coinsquare.
Coinsquare only supports fiat deposits for CAD and USD, while Binance supports 26 fiat currencies in total, such as USD, EUR, AUD, GBP, SEK, DKK, PLN, and many others.
When it comes to deposit methods, Coinsquare allows users to deposit USD via wire transfer free of charge, with a processing time of 2 days. For those who wish to deposit CAD, they can do so via Interac e-Transfers or wire transfers, both of which are also free of charge.
In addition, Coinsquare users can deposit AUD via Poli, PayID, and Direct Deposits, all of which are free to use.
Moving on to Binance, they offer a wide range of deposit methods for fiat currencies, including bank transfers via Swift, Signet, SEPA, and Faster Payments, as well as Visa, Mastercard, PayID, and Advacash.
The deposit fees on Binance range from 1 EUR for SEPA bank transfers to 1.8% for Visa and Mastercard deposits.
In short, Coinsquare and Binance offer different deposit methods for fiat currencies, with Coinsquare only supporting CAD and USD while Binance supports over 26 fiat currencies and plenty of low cost deposit methods.
Coinsquare and Binance once more offer different options for withdrawing fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies.
Coinsquare allows users to withdraw USD or CAD via wire transfer, Interac e-Transfer, or bank withdrawal, while Binance offers multiple methods for withdrawing fiat currencies such as USD via SWIFT, EUR via SEPA, and GBP via Faster Payments (FSP).
When it comes to fees for withdrawing fiat currencies, Coinsquare charges a 1.5% fee for wire transfers and bank withdrawals in CAD, while Binance charges a 1.8% withdrawal fee for fiat withdrawals with Visa and MasterCard, and a 1 EUR withdrawal fee with SEPA.
In terms of cryptocurrency withdrawals, Coinsquare allows users to withdraw cryptocurrencies but charges a dynamic fee depending on the blockchain used.
On the other hand, Binance charges a 0.0002 BTC withdrawal fee for Bitcoin withdrawals, a 0.000768 ETH withdrawal fee for Ethereum and for Solana the fee is 0.008 SOL.
In conclusion, Coinsquare is a small Canadian exchange that focuses on providing a simple and secure platform for Canadians to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. It offers a limited range of only 40 cryptocurrencies and few products such as spot trading and an OTC desk.
KYC is required for all users and only Canadian citizens have the possibility to access the platform. Trading fees begin at 0.5% for makers and takers and the user experience overall is quite basic.
Binance is the much larger exchange both in terms of geographical footprint, number of users, cryptocurrencies and product and services.
Binance supports over 350 cryptocurrencies and has over 120 million users worldwide with daily spot trading volumes frequently exceeding $10 billion. And similar to Coinsquare, Binance also require KYC verification for their users.
Binance charges a spot maker fee of 0.1% and a spot taker fee of 0.1% which is much lower than what is charged by Coinsquare. In terms of options to deposit and withdraw fiat currencies, while Coinsquare only offers support for USD and CAD, Binance offers support for over 20 fiat currencies.
Binance is simply the better and more well rounded exchange across every category and metric. While Coinsquare has done a decent job making it easy for Canadians to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, it's simply not competitive enough to take on the likes of Binance.
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
eToro USA LLC: Investments are subject to market risk. Including the possible loss of principal. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.
eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk.
eToro USA LLC: Investments are subject to market risk. Including the possible loss of principal. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.
Author
Jack Moreau
Jack is a crypto writer and reviewer who has been active in the space since he caught the crypto bug in 2017. With a passion for trying out new shiny things, Jack is always eager to try the latest cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets or DeFi applications.