When I began looking for platforms and exchanges to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrency eToro was the first site I found. Admittedly I didn't do much research but I did read 4 or 5 articles comparing it to coinbase, and the general consensus was that though eToro had fewer cryptos available for trading it was a site with lower fees geared more towards the intermediate trader. I was a beginner but lower fees sounded good to me, but that wasn't the only thing I liked. I actually thought it would be better for me because I would have to link a real bank account so the temptation to use a credit card would not be there, and even though they didn't accept my rinky dink small town bank and I had to open a separate savings account with a larger bank I still liked that because I could keep so much for trading there and set aside a certain amount per month in that account meant for trading. So far so good, I got the account setup and funded. I linked the account and it took two days for the money to show up and I bought some crypto. Right away I didn't like the fact that after buying it I couldn't convert it to another type of crypto on the platform, but whatever I was planning on holding a while anyway. Then I started wondering if I could get the crypto out into my own wallet. I looked around and found they do allow you to move crypto into a specific etoro wallet and then from there you can move it into a wallet you own; however, you could only move a few types of crypto into the etoro wallet. It doesn't support every crypto they have available. This was the second thing I didn't like. The third thing I didn't like was that you had to have a minimum amount of crypto in the trade in order to move that into your wallet. At this point I realized it didn't matter if the value of my crypto went up to a million dollars, I'd never be able actually get the crypto out because my initial trade didn't buy the minimum. After a few weeks my trades had made a little money and I saw that if I closed my positions and put it all into litecoin I'd have enough to meet the minimum to move my crypto out into the etoro wallet; so that's what I did. The problem is that you need to have an equal or greater amount of cash deposited in your account on the site as the value of the crypto or the initial trade before you can move your crypto to your wallet; so yet another hoop to jump through. Minimum amount of crypto plus equal amount of fiat currency on the site. Now I'm not an unreasonable person. I can accept that there are lots of things about running a trading exchange platform that I don't know about. I can understand that it makes sense to have that fiat currency to back you in case something goes wrong. This was now the fourth thing I didn't like. The fifth thing I didn't like was that after initiating the transfer to my eToro wallet it said it would take up to five days. By now I had started using coinbase. I can tell you coinbase let's you move crypto directly from their site to your own personal wallet and it shows up in minutes so I have no clue how they justify it taking five days to move it into your wallet. The sixth thing I didn't like was that in the time it took for my cyrpto to crawl into my wallet the price dropped so I'm losing the small amount I was able to make. The seventh thing I didn't like was that after five days of waiting for the crypto to move into my eToro wallet I got an email that said my position had been closed. When I checked my wallet the crypto wasn't there. Instead I had the value of the crypto In fiat currency in my account. This is when I started cussing profusely and swore that I would tell as many people as I possibly could to stay away from this terrible platform. If you don't want to actually own cryptocurrency and you just want to buy and sell when you make a little profit and do it again and keep pumping money into the same site that could be hacked this might be a good option. I think once they have $5000 of your money tied up in the site they actually let you do things you want to do but coinbase pro is a million times better and so is binance. Don't waste your time on etoro
The saying 'if you don't hold it you don't own it' is how etoro treats your money and your digital assets.
The only easy part of dealing with etoro was opening an account, getting verified, and depositing money from my bank account.
I have had an etoro account for over a month and I am STILL unable to gain access to my purchases.
Buying Bitcoin cash and XRP was easy but I was denied the ability to transfer to the etoro wallet. After logging a ticket and much back and forth in emails I was allowed to transfer digital currency from the etoro account to the etoro wallet. But now my currency is sitting in this etoro wallet and they won't let me send it to my personal Exodus wallet OR to my Coinbase wallet.
My husband and I have a VPN in our home - it has a static address - minutes after my last complaint was logged etoro BLOCKED our address to their website so I could no longer even access my account or wallet.
I have since disconnected from the VPN in order to access account and wallet but still I am unable to send my own currency outside of the etoro wallet. The wallet is installed on the phone that was registered with the account to which they send the authorization code: registered phone, no VPN, not even WiFi - and STILL can't get my money out of their wallet.
The response of their 'support' is slower than the speed of grass growing.
And about the wallet - it can Send and Receive currency, but only SIX types of digital currency. But you can't send coins back to your own etoro account. AND THEY CAN STOP YOU REMOVING YOUR CURRENCY FROM THEIR WALLET AT ANY TIME. This is both primitive and very concerning - you literally do NOT own your own money or your currency once it is in the etoro system.
They also state that they must charge a 45 XRP token fee for a XRP wallet and that they don't have any control over this. Really? I've transferred a couple of thousand XRP between my other exchange account and my personal wallet without being taxed a single token.
They'll justify their actions in the name of 'security' and say something like "we have maintained a level of trust, excellence and transparency that is unparalleled in the Fintech industry" - I disagree 100%. I've had many financial accounts over the past three decades and have NEVER had such a poor experience as with etoro. I have since opened another cryptocurrency account with another company and the service, performance, security, and access to my assets has been flawless.
Be very cautious with etoro.
Stay away from Etoro if you value your money
Stay away from Etoro if you value your money. I don't know if they are scammers, but there practices are scammy to say the least. They claim 0% commision, but they have ways to rek you anyway. I have made a withdrawal of 836 dollars and got 699 euro. That's some conversion rate.
Than you have to beg for your money when you made a deposit with a debitcard and your bank does not accept payments to a debitcard. They will hold your money hostage untill you send them prove of this. If you can't prove it, say goodbye to your money. They make depositing funds extremly easy, but withdrawals are a hassle.
Not to speak of other scammy practises they do, which other people have already mentioned here.
Customer service is the worst i have ever come accross. I have opened a ticket about a trade 13 days ago and still nobody feels the need to answer your ticket. They say it will take up to 7 days, which is bad enough when you have a problem with money, but 13 days is a joke.
Than you have to wait for hours to get connected to a live agent trough live chat and if that isn't bad enough, you get someone who is not helpfull in trying to get things solved.
I recommand anyone who has funds at Etoro to take them out of there, before it's to late. Who knows what practices they will come up with in the future. If you can't trust your broker when it comes to withdrawal, than you need to get the hell out of there. I was lucky i didn't had much money on there, but for you who do. You are warned.
Iam being censored by some major review sites. They keep blocking my experience, because etoro keeps reporting me. I wanted to keep it at 1 review, but now iam going to put my experience everywhere i can.
I can't and would never trade with etoro again in my life it has been the roughest decision I ever made in my whole life. About 2 years back I traded with etoro with a substantial sum of money and I thought I was going to get about double of it in couple of months but to my surprise I got locked out only after a week of trading with them I didn't understand at first until when I contacted them and they got it unlocked I found out all my money was gone including the bonuses because I got locked out this nearly gave me a cardiac arrest the funny was that they said if I wanted my money back I'd have to make a new deposit and with that they could trace my statement of account this was the dumbest thing I heard from them i quickly realized there was no way forward working with this brokers so I surfed online and found hackprince6atgmaildotcom I firstly doubted and underestimated him not knew he was truly a legit recovery agent he was able to help me get back my money with accrued interest.
Everyone should beware of this unregulated brokers for they are nothing to write home about they will steal from you and still want to steal more and more they lured me to trade over $200k and which I did after a long run the whole money was taken by them I told a friend about the whole thing and then she referred me to maverickbraydenatconsultantdotcom who helped me get back all my money in full.