eToro’s Review Summary
Pros: Easy to setup, ability to follow and copy experienced traders, Helpful video tutorials
Cons: Only 4 execution times for trades a day, Limited availability in the US
Conclusion: eToro is probably the easiest investment platform to understand from all other alternatives. It’s simple approach and the fact that you can copy trades and diversify your investment in different people is unusual in the Bitcoin trading world and might be worth considering. The trade hours limitation (only 4 times day) do however prevent it from being my all time favorite.
For more information about eToro’s social investment platform.
Full review of eToro’s Bitcoin trading platform
One of the most interesting investment platform around for Bitcoin is eToro. Unlike other trading platforms, eToro differentiates itself from competitors by being a social investment network and addresses the facts that:
- Trading platforms are too complex.
- Most people can’t find their way easily when it comes to financial markets.
- There is insufficient access to market information and top traders.
Through the use of eToro’s Openbook the world’s largest social network of investors is built. You can now tap into the wisdom of over 3m investors from 200 different countries and view their portfolios and trades. The basic idea is that you can copy of successful investors, which makes the whole story of knowing when and what to invest in much simpler. So instead of the need to decide in what stock or commodity to invest it, you can decide which person to copy (based on his past failures and success).
So what you need to do is see, follow and copy the best performing traders in the network. This means that You don’t need to be an expert to invest like a top performer. For example, Annie Charalambous invests 3.5% of her portfolio in Bitcoin and has gained more than 30% on her Bitcoin investments until today. She has almost 80,000 followers and you can also see which traders she copies to get more insights.
I believe that the best thing about eToro is that it’s easy to use for inexperienced traders. It doesn’t involve all sorts of complex trading platform and weird terminology. It only takes 3 clicks and you can start investing.
The downside to eToro as that since it’s made for “simple” traders, it won’t let you short sell and leverage on Bitcoin when that price drop unlike other trading platforms such as AvaTrade or Plus500.
How to start investing in Bitcoin with eToro
Go to eToro’s Openbook Bitcoin page and click on “Invest in Bitcoin”
After that you will be able to choose the amount of dollars you wish to invest. You can choose from the defaults of $50, $500 and $1000 or state a custom amount. I suggest starting with the minimum amount of $50 just to get yourself acquainted with the system.
Next you will need to enter your payment method and fill in a short survey which is required by regulations for eToro as it is a trading platform. Once you finish the survey you will be required to upload an identification document for your account to be verified. After you upload this document it can take up to 5 days to get reviewed although from my experience it takes much less.
Once your account is verified your order will be executed in the next execution time which are at 06:00, 12:00, 18:00 and 00:00 Monday to Friday. So keep in mind that if you want to place a trade at 16:00 you need to place it at least 5 minutes before, meaning 15:55. eToro take a fee of a fixed 1% of the execution price or a minimum of 1 cent per transaction.
The social interaction is a blast!
I must say, that I didn’t sign up for eToro for it’s social platform but I was really amazed by it. After making my initial investment of $50 (which is now a booming $52.23) I started getting people writing on my wall with different suggestions and helping me out to build my portfolio. This is a real big plus for inexperienced traders.
Conclusion – Very attraction investment option for inexperienced traders
eToro is probably the easiest investment platform to understand from all other alternatives. It’s simple approach and the fact that you can copy trades and diversify your investment in different people is unusual in the Bitcoin trading world and might be worth considering. The trade hours limitation (only 4 times day) do however prevent it from being my all time favorite.
How to join?
Hi Ailen,
It’s easy, just click the link to eToro at the start or end of our article. You’ll then go to the eToro homepage. Then you just need to click the blue “Sign Up” button on the left panel and follow the instructions. Enjoy trading!
eToro might work on some and not for others so before investing on them completely, I checked out some usual issues that etoro clients go through and what they can say about the platform just to make sure before I send over my money. **link removed**