Trying out Etherdelta with my Ledger Nano S - Trading on Etherdelta is actually kind of cool!

You probably heard of Etherdelta already: it's that smaller peer-to-peer exchange which usually has those new and obscure coins long before the other exchanges do. If you've got a Ledger Nano S wallet, I highly recommend you check it out! I tried it yesterday and it works pretty nice: Basically you just go to Etherdelta, connect your Ledger to your PC, input your password and log into the Ethereum app - and you're logged into the exchange. No KYC, no account registration, no passwords or usernames required.

Trading on the Etherdelta exchange still requires you to move funds 'onto' it though. It doesn't trade wallet-to-wallet, but in between is an Ethereum smart-contract built where you transfer your funds to for trading. Your funds aren't actually on Etherdelta though, but in a smart contract. Should Etherdelta ever go offline, you will be able to retrieve your funds from the smart contract again. They remain only accessible by you. Moving funds onto the Etherdelta smart contract does however mean you pay a small Ethereum gas cost to perform the operation - it is a smart contract transfer after all.

Because everything costs Ethereum Gas on Etherdelta this takes some getting used to! **You need to make sure to always have a little bit of ETH in your ledger wallet, as well as on the smart contract, in order to be able to send funds from one to the other. If you don't, the transfer will fail. You won't lose your coins, but you may have some gascost disappear.

Another exciting part about Etherdelta is the difference in fees. When withdrawing my funds to my hardware wallet from Bittrex I was shocked by how much fees I accumulated in doing so - it's about $3.50 to withdraw my ETH, but also my BTC and other coins. All in all I spent about 20$ on withdrawal fees... that sucks!

Of course we know Bittrex takes 0.25% of every transaction on the network. Etherdelta does it differently: most actions are free of fees but you do pay some Gwei in Ethereum gas cost - how much this is you can determine yourself. However, too low a gas cost means your order goes through slower and may fail because it is too late. Yesterday when I tried it the Gas cost was apparently very high: I had to set it to 25 gwei in order to get through within a reasonable amount of time.

So on Etherdelta depositing/withdrawing funds is free, other than gas cost. But setting a Buy or Sell order is also free! However buying or selling into those orders will cost a fee. So if you purchase from an order that is set by another, you pay some gas and some fee. But if you set your own Buy Order for the same you don't have to pay the fee. However, it will not match your order with another existing order. It is possible for a buy order and a sell order of the same amount to exist side by side. It is even possible for a buy order to exist with a higher price than a sell order which exists and vice versa.

Because no order matching exists on Etherdelta this makes trading slower than on other platforms - orders have to be manually filled.

It is also very confusing and difficult to determine how Etherdelta stacks up in terms of costs against, for example, Bittrex. The UI and user tools on Etherdelta are not very thorough or extensive, so it is difficult to see how much Gas costs you've accumulated. Some trades will go wrong initially too, resulting in lost gas (but not coins). All in all, I think I made some rookie mistakes and probably wasted another $10 in fees.

However once you've gotten the hang of it and stop making rookie mistakes, I think this platform may end up being cheaper for me to trade on than Bittrex. Why? Because I want my funds in my hardware wallet. That means every trade I make on Bittrex will involve me withdrawing my funds to my hardware wallet - resulting in more, expensive, withdrawal fees of, for example, $3.50 for Bitcoin each time. Comparitively the Ethereum gas cost seems to usually be well below $1, usually in the $0.20 range it seems (but this depends on how high the gas fee you are willing to pay).

Although I sacrifice a lot in UI, I do feel a lot more secure and in control trading this way. Additionally Etherdelta seems to have a very friendly and helpful chat community built in, which is nice. I imagine you'll find less n00bs here than elsewhere, as Etherdelta is a lot less accessible than others.

I've also gained an increased interest in Ethereum by this experience. I now actually use Ethereum! The downside is that Etherdelta doesn't let you trade in Bitcoin, and I am not sure there are peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchanges at all (or with decent pairings). So for trading Bitcoin and non-ERC20 tokens I will still have to look to normal exchanges. The ERC20 token ecosystem is huge though, and you could trade there forever without ever leaving it.

I also believe that with the advent of the Raiden network (which is almost 80% complete apparently) gas costs and transaction speeds will be improved significantly - and this means great things for exchanges such as Etherdelta.

Now the best part about Etherdelta
The best part of Etherdelta is, of course, that you'll find tokens for trade there usually sooner than they are available for trade on other exchanges! The recent popular tokens such as WaltonChain, Chainlink, Kyber, eBTC, Loopring, Substratum, are/were all trading on Etherdelta before they were/are on others. This means you can access the markets before they blow up. I personally missed out on WTC because I stuck with Bittrex. Now that I have my Ledger, I'm definitely going to scoop up the newest hottest coins on Etherdelta as soon as I can: Yesterday I bought some Loopring and a couple bucks worth of Substratum! I love this freedom!

I decided to actively look into Etherdelta after watching this video by Crypt0 from yesterday which was timed perfectly with the arrival of my Ledger. I sincerely suggest anybody interested in the Ledger or Etherdelta to have a look, as he explains step by step how the platform works!

So if you have a hardware wallet I definitely suggest taking a look at Etherdelta! Be prepared to incur some initial costs for mistakes, but also because you need to have some gas on the platform in order to transfer funds back into your hardware wallet. If you don't have a hardware wallet I am not sure I would give the same advice - I believe without a hardware wallet you may be better off trading on traditional exchanges.

Have a look at Etherdelta here

Please consider Upvoting, Resteeming or Following if you liked this content! I write frequently about crypto-related things, so consider following me if you are interested in that sort of thing! Thank you!