Choosing the Best Crypto App for UK Beginners

Bitcoin (BTC) is at its highest price since the beginning of 2023, and veterans believe we could be in for a new crypto bull run. As most people consider crypto trading an ingenious way to earn passive income, many new investors are looking for an alternative investment and considering joining the ranks. Considering the growing popularity of speculative crypto trade, our guide describes the best crypto app UK for beginners. 

Getting started trading crypto

If you already understand cryptocurrencies and how they work, there’s every chance you already know that you need a platform, either an exchange or a crypto app, to trade from.

While there are many ways you can manage, trade, invest and earn from your cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrency apps are among the best ways to remove the complexities involved in crypto trade. As a result, picking the best crypto app in the UK is a positive way to learn and enhance your trading experience. 

As people’s knowledge on the subject increases, adding crypto to investment portfolios is no longer considered something for only select individuals. Once you decide to buy or sell cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and Litecoin (LTC), choose an app that best suits your interests. We've reviewed several crypto apps to help you decide which is most helpful.

What is a crypto app?

A crypto app is an Android or iPhone-based application that enables investors to buy or sell cryptocurrencies on the go. Also called crypto exchange apps, these applications can trade crypto from both centralized and decentralized crypto exchanges.

Centralized exchanges operate like stock exchanges where market makers buy tokens when a sell order appears and sell them when there's a buy order. In contrast, decentralized ones use algorithms to match buyers and sellers automatically. 

Choosing the best crypto app UK

The best apps for trading crypto have numerous things in common. These include security, simplicity, and frequency of updates - all of which you must consider when choosing the best crypto app UK.  

Security

Security ranks as the highest factor worth consideration, as everyone must ensure they can keep their crypto securely in their wallet. The ability to keep crypto relatively safe is why many people have been attracted, and adoption is growing. Among the key features you want to check in any app include the presence of two-factor authentication (2FA), withdrawal confirmation methods, multi-signature algorithms, and the ability to transfer funds to cold wallets.  

Beginner friendliness

If you're a complete greenhorn, you want an app that's easy to use and understand as you dip your toes into the volatile but relatively lucrative world of the crypto trade.

It's important to avoid an app whose interface is overly complicated since the crypto market is already stressful enough. The best crypto app has a straightforward interface offering multi-language support and the least amount of technical migraines to deal with.  

Fees

The abundance of crypto apps means there’s enough competition in the space. As they fight to win over customers, users are likely to benefit from the lower fees offered.

As a new user, it's your responsibility to do research and double-check to ensure that the provider you choose will offer you the most competitive rates without compromising on quality and security. While some fees are unavoidable when you use any crypto app, you shouldn't pay an arm and a leg to access the services.  

Investment targets

There’s every chance you have already set your strategic investment target as an aspiring crypto trader. It is, therefore, only fair to consider an app that enables you to set investment targets for a crypto investment portfolio.

If that's available, you can always refer back to it to remember your long-term strategy of holding specific crypto assets for a specified period instead of actively participating in all markets. Ultimately, ensure that you try an app with a small amount of crypto before you decide to make a bigger deposit after confirming that it's the right one for you. 

The best crypto apps

eToro

eToro is popular and perhaps the best crypto app in the UK because it makes trading 75 crypto coins at home or on the go a simple exercise. The app offers among the lowest fees among crypto brokers at a flat rate besides offering high-level investor protection. eToro offers users a social trading experience through its intuitive interface that shows trending coins and their technical analysis, as well as the ability to copy other users trading suggestions on your app or desktop. The broker charges traders a 1% fee, included in the price displayed for buying or selling crypto.

Binance

With over 30 million users and trading over 350 different cryptocurrencies, Binance ranks as the world's leading cryptocurrency exchange, offering services including crypto loans, derivative markets, and staking. The Binance app has a "Lite" version that only displays basics and is best for beginners. With advanced features, the "Regular" one is best for experienced traders. While Binance offers free trading for Bitcoin (BTC), the app charges a 0.1% fee for all other trades, and Binance coin (BNB) holders enjoy a 25% discount on all fees. Moreover, there are no deposit fees, but withdrawals are charged variously depending on the coin.

Coinbase

Coinbase is a leading crypto trading platform offering more than 170 coins and a secure wallet, alongside automatic staking rewards for holders of over ten coins via Coinbase Earn. The Coinbase app is renowned for safety and offers insurance for balances of up to $250,000. Trading fees range from 0.6% and become lower for higher trading volumes. Users enjoy free wallet-to-wallet crypt transactions, no bank transfer deposits and withdrawals, but pay 25% for staking services.

##vOKX

With the flexible and adaptable OKX crypto app, users can choose three versions based on their trading preferences. The versions include the beginner-friendly “Lite” version, the “Pro” version with its myriad of trading tools, and the new “Web3” version meant for NFT traders. Whether you’re using the app or the desktop version, you can choose from over 350 cryptocurrencies and select from several simple payment methods. Regular users are charged a 0.1% fee for spot trades, while holders of the OKB crypto enjoy a 0.02% discount on over 2,000 coins.    

Kraken

Kraken is a well-established cryptocurrency exchange, and its crypto trading app offers a selection of more than 65 cryptocurrencies: BTC and ETH being the most popular ones, with some DeFi coins also offered. Moreover, the exchange's popularity is related to its layer-2 scaling solution for the lightning network and Polygon. This enables users to seamlessly conduct instant and virtual free withdrawals and skip the cumbersome network fees of regular transfers. The Kraken app's fee structure includes a maker and taker fee and a spread. For instance, the Bitcoin trading fee is 0.16% for the maker and 0.26% for the taker.

Best crypto app UK conclusion

Once you choose the best crypto app UK according to your needs, starting to invest in cryptocurrencies ceases to become rocket science.

However, since cryptocurrencies are a new niche in finance, crypto is still volatile, and, as a result, the rule of thumb is always to invest as much as you're comfortable losing if things go south and learn as much as you can about crypto trading.