Singapore based Alluma Exchange is currently open for registrations on their Beta platform and also running a trading competition for top 20 highest volume traders.
While users are trading to earn the title of Highest trader, I have taken up the daunting task to review the exchange. I will test deposits, trading and withdrawal in Alluma. The exchange is also running bounty program and will be doing an ICO in the future.
Alluma is a crypto-to-crypto exchange promising high liquidity to cater to institutional grade investors, to be clear I am not even worth the ‘I’ of institutional so I am going to look at the exchange like a noob trader with low budget. There are five crypto assets listed as of now – BTC, ETH, FUEL, XRP and BCH. The main trading pairs are with BTC and ETH.
Remember, this is a Beta version, so there may be bugs and a lot of room for improvement based on user feedback.
Contents
Registration
Obviously you cannot trade as a guest on Alluma or any other exchange. You can register on Alluma exchange with your email address. If you choose not to do KYC/ID verification, you can still trade on Alluma albeit with lower limits on daily and monthly withdrawals and deposits.
Crypto Deposits
The next logical step on a cryptocurrency exchange after registration is to deposit cryptocurrency to start trading. I did. 0.1 ETH as I said before. I don’t remember exactly how much time it took for the deposit to credit but Alluma says they require 2 confirmations for BTC and 15 for ETH.
Trading on Alluma
There are two ways to trade on Alluma. Closed Book and open order book exchange. The fees are 0.1% for makers and takers.
Closed Book Trading
For closed Book, you can enter the quantity of the coin you wish to buy or sell for another cryptocurrency. The rates are fixed and cannot be set by the user. Since I have 0.1 ETH, I have two options – Buy FUEL or Buy BTC. I will go with BTC.
The transaction went on smoothly within a fraction of a second and I got a confirmation as well. It’s quite quick. If you want to simply convert one cryptocurrency to another, this is the best way. I got a better rate compared to some other exchanges.
Open Order Exchange
Alluma has a trading platform that operates as an open order book exchange. You can place market orders, limit orders, stop loss, play around with charts and so on. Coin Crunch was informed that a new UI for the exchange in currently under development. We will review the existing one right now.
At first I thought I will buy XRP or something else with BTC, but then I thought, let me try and see if I can get my 0.1 ETH back. So I tried that. I was about to place a buy order for 0.1 ETH, but guess what, the fees for the transaction will be deducted in ETH. That means theoretically, no matter what amount I put to buy ETH, I will never receive exact 0.1 ETH.
However, I tried. As you can see below, my order size is 0.1001 ETH to compensate for the 0.0001 ETH fee. My order was executed very quickly once again. There is no doubt that despite being new to market, the liquidity on this exchange is better than many incumbents.
Coming back to my original problem though, I received 0.0999999 ETH instead of 0.1 ETH sadly. I later bought 0.00001 ETH (Minimum order) to compensate. I believe after the launch of LUMA tokens, I can pay LUMA for fees and get rid of this problem. You can see all orders in the ‘filled order’ tab, even the ones placed on closed book exchange.
Crypto Withdrawals
So we deposited ETH, we traded ETH for BTC and BTC for ETH, now it is time to test withdrawals. I am going to send my entire ETH balance out of Alluma.
Withdrawals are pretty standard. You enter the address, you enter the amount, optionally enter a comment and send it. Confirm the withdrawal on email and off it goes. Address whitelisting is not required yet, but my guess is that the final version of the product will have it.
There are no fees for Withdrawals.
Once the withdrawal request was submitted, I received an email notification to confirm the withdrawal. I did. The status of the withdrawal can be seen on the Portfolio Tab under ‘transactions’. What surprised me was that it took 6 hours for the withdrawal to be processed. Was it because I did the transaction at 3 AM?
Other Features
You can buy and sell cryptocurrencies on several exchanges but you must have your own favourites. Reasons range from good support, good number of tokens and coins, high liquidity to sometimes something as trivial as ‘Who is the founder?’
These other features in the product itself can be a great motivation for traders. Alluma has a few new features as well.
Choice of Currency for Fiat based prices
Alluma lets you choose from three currencies, USD, INR and PHP. Whatever currency you choose, it will be used to display the fiat values of any cryptocurrency trade, exchange or even portfolio.
Stop Loss/Stop Limit and other Types
The trading view or the open book exchange allows you to place Stop orders and trailing stop orders as well. In a bear market, a stop limit or stop loss has become an essential feature to save yourself from extensive losses.
Charts
You can see all kinds of charts on Alluma exchange, play around with it and do your technical analysis when you want it. Albeit, the volume currently isn’t enough to draw good charts, but this could help in the future.
Final Word
Alluma is in Beta stage and looks a lot like Alphapoint, but the exchange does offer enough liquidity to peacefully trade and maybe even arbitrage. The best part – No Withdrawal Fees.
While I love the trading experience, I did not like the fact that it took 6 hours for crypto withdrawal, but its free so I’ll take it. I hope that will change soon. The trading fees are lower than many other Indian exchanges and would reduce further once the native token LUMA is listed.
Alluma is marketing itself as a high-liquidity, institutional grade exchange for emerging Asian markets. Right now, it is in open beta and this is the time to work on issues that the users face and I see that they are taking feedback very seriously. It is a good thing.
I would advice you guys to try it out. Don’t even need to do KYC if you trade small amounts. Give it a shot and let us know in the comments below.
