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Elbaite Exchange Australia Review
This is an independent review of the Elbaite cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated within Australia.
Review contents
- About Elbaite
- Main Features
- Pros & Cons
- How to Buy Bitcoin on Elbaite
- How to Sell Bitcoin on Elbaite
- Elbaite Background
- Conclusions
About Elbaite
Elbaite is an Australian owned and operated non-custodial exchange, the first of its kind to be registered with AUSTRAC.
The project’s aim is provide a non-custodial exchange as a platform for users to trade securely from their own private wallets, without the worry of exchange hacks and stolen funds.
Elbaite is one of the first non-custodial peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto exchanges that doesn’t hold your crypto, but simply facilitates trades and transfers between buyer and seller. Combining fiat escrow with blockchain verification allows for direct P2P secure trading.
The name “elbaite” comes from the only gemstone found in every colour of the spectrum.
Main features:
- Peer-to-Peer: Facilitates the buying and selling of bitcoin and 22 other cryptocurrencies directly between buyer and seller without the need for physical cash exchange or trusted seller bank transfers.
- Partial order fulfilment: Allows you to partially complete your sell orders to multiple buyers with ease.
- Supported cryptos: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Uniswap, ChainLink, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Stellar, Dai, EOS, Compound, Dash, Sushi, yearn.finance, Enjin Coin, Basic Attention Token, 0x, Curve DAO Token, OMG Network, Balancer, Power Ledger, Silver Standard, Gold Standard.
- Trader profiles: The user profiles show reputations of buyers and sellers, which is an important trust element to any marketplace. It shows the numbers of trades and how long they take to send the crypto on average.
Pros:
- Australian compliant: Elbaite is registered with AUSTRAC, with the aim of protecting users from suspicious trading activities.
- Improved security: Elbaite does not hold your cryptocurrency, so there is less chance of your funds going missing or being locked by the exchange. The fiat is escrowed in a bank account in Australia, where it is held until the transfer of the cryptocurrency from the seller to the buyer has been verified on the blockchain.
- Improved privacy: The seller gets the money if and only when the buyer receives the cryptocurrency.
- Low trade fees: Free for sellers, 1% fee for buyers.
- Improved storage: You can store your cryptocurrency on any external wallet on your mobile, computer or hardware wallet.
- Saved additional transfer time & fees: When you buy, the cryptocurrency is sent directly to your wallet, which means you can save time and fees on additional transfers (for example, to a crypto card wallet to spend it).
- Multiple accounts: You can set up an account as an individual, company, SMSF or trust.
- Selling crypto is easy: You can sell crypto directly to your bank by simply providing your BSB and account number.
- No withdrawal fee: Some exchanges charge you a withdrawal fee; Elbaite doesn’t as your crypto is not held by the exchange.
Cons:
- Not decentralised: Although Elbaite doesn’t hold clients’ crypto, it does require KYC before being allowed to trade. And the exchange operations are controlled by a company; it is not a decentralised company (DAO).
- No mobile app: It would be nice to have a mobile app to improve user experience. The website also feels quite bootstrap and could be improved.
- Beginners might struggle: Setting up an external crypto wallet and managing it yourself is a barrier to entry for beginners. They might also be prone to making manual price mistakes which others could take advantage of (arbitrage).
- Limited cryptos: Only 22 cryptos are available to buy and sell. Stores addresses for only 8 crypto wallets.
- Varying selling price: Sellers have the option to nominate the selling price manually, which becomes easily outdated, leaving a list of sellers with unrealistic selling prices.
- No live support: There is currently no phone or live chat support, only email.
- No roadmap: The project does not have a publicly available roadmap.
Other notes:
- There is a refer a friend program where you both can earn $5 per referral (new account that gets verified).
- If you trade over $10,000 of crypto in 30 days, you get a free Trezor Hardware wallet.
How to Buy Bitcoin on Elbaite
Prerequisites:
- Sign up for a free account on Elbaite.
- Complete the KYC verification process (actually really quick approval with just basic details and driver’s licence number).
- Optional: Add an external wallet address to your stored wallets (ie, BTC address of your Trezor or Exodus Wallet or such).
- Optional: Add your bank account details for easy withdrawal.
Steps to Buy Bitcoin:
- Log in to your account
- Go to the Buy BTC web page
- Select the offer from someone selling
- Enter the amount you wish to buy
- Select the wallet where you want to receive the Bitcoin
A buy order for BTC was unable to be processed as the lowest price people were selling for was A$2,000 higher than the actual spot price. After talking with Elbaite, it is working on the spreads to improve liquidity.
How to Sell Bitcoin on Elbaite
See prerequisites above to create your account.
Steps to Sell Bitcoin:
- Log in to your account
- Go to the Sell BTC web page
- Select Bitcoin
- Enter the amount of BTC you want to sell
- Select the other various options (these are well explained; you can click the question marks to get more info)
- Review and confirm
Once you’ve created your offer, you will receive an email when someone buys it. You’ll then get a second email when they have paid, giving you the green light to transfer the crypto to them.
Send the bitcoin to the destination wallet address and enter the transaction hash so the system can verify it.
After the Bitcoin blockchain transaction has been completed (approximately 20 minutes / time can vary), you’ll receive an email saying the cash has been processed to your bank account.
Elbaite’s Background
Elibaite’s founder and CEO Mortaza Tollo is based in Melbourne. He has a background as an accountant and product manager, and holds a Master of Business (MBA). Rod Tasker is providing strong advisory experience to the project with regards to payments and financial services, acting as a non-executive director and mentor. Samira Tollo (co-founder) is the CTO, also based in Melbourne with a background as an electrical engineer and experience in previous cryptocurrency projects.
Conclusions
Elbaite is one of the few established non-custodial cryptocurrency exchanges operating in Australia. It provides an option to buy and sell crypto without the need of an exchange that holds your crypto, and without the need to organise an escrow of your own between two parties for the exchange.
With an increase in the number of hacks we have seen worldwide and in Australia, there could be a high demand in the future for a service that can facilitate Peer-to-Peer buying and selling of cryptocurrencies.
Disclaimer: Please note that this is a paid review, and an honest review from the Crypto News Team. Last updated August 2021.
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