Pros and Cons – Forbes Advisor Australia

Trading Fees

Independent Reserve offers a competitive and tiered fee structure based on users’ past 30-day trading volume. The trading volume is recalculated every four hours, and order fees are determined at the time the order is placed. Existing open orders will not have their fees adjusted when the trade volume is recalculated.

The table below illustrates the tiered fee structure based on AUD trading volume:

As users increase their trading volume, they can benefit from lower fees, which makes Independent Reserve an attractive option for both casual and frequent traders.

Security

In the rapidly evolving world of cryptocurrency, security remains a paramount concern for users and investors. When choosing a cryptocurrency exchange, it is essential to assess the platform’s security measures, as inadequate safeguards can lead to devastating consequences. A prime example of the dire outcomes that can arise from weak security and poor management of user funds is the infamous FTX disaster, which resulted in the loss of billions in user funds.

Independent Reserve places a strong emphasis on security, striving to provide a trusted and secure platform for investors to buy, trade, and store cryptocurrencies. They follow a risk-averse approach to managing their business, ensuring complete segregation of customer assets, maintaining a 1:1 reserve for all client assets, and storing the majority of these assets in offline cold storage vaults. The exchange also engages external auditors to conduct annual audits of their financial statements and verify all client asset holdings, both fiat and crypto.

The platform offers a variety of account security features, including 2-Factor Authentication (2FA), the ability to change usernames and email addresses, email notifications for logins and security detail changes, and browser and address whitelisting. Users can also benefit from optional security measures such as PGP-signed emails and bot shields to protect their accounts from brute force attacks.

System security is another crucial aspect of Independent Reserve’s approach, with encryption for all personally identifiable information, secure connections, and top-tier data centres with geographically dispersed disaster recovery backup servers. Intrusion detection monitoring is employed to safeguard against unauthorised system access.

Independent Reserve also takes hot wallet security seriously, with over 97% of cryptocurrencies stored in cold storage and multi-layer encryption of hot wallet private keys. The exchange performs continuous monitoring and address reconciliation between system accounts and the blockchain to maintain the integrity of customer funds.

Cold storage security measures include multiple geographically dispersed vaults with extensive physical security, multi-signature withdrawals requiring more than one person for execution, and proprietary offline storage with multiple encryption layers and redundancies. The exchange also has survivorship procedures in place to recover cold storage funds in case of a catastrophic event.

Operational security at Independent Reserve involves regular penetration testing, bug bounty programs, tiered access for administrators, multi-level approvals for actions relating to user accounts or value transfer, and regular police checks on all administrators with system access. The platform also completed external penetration testing in November 2022. Independent Reserve’s robust security measures make it a reliable choice for cryptocurrency trading.

Related: Hardware Wallets Explained