Bitcoin commands 45 percent of the cryptocurrency market capitalization, Ethereum commands 19 percent while Ripple commands only 7 percent. Other cryptocurrencies control less than 2 percent. Identifying and analyzing the top exchange site that handles the transactions of top currencies is important for new and current cryptocurrency users.
Largest Bitcoin exchange sites
The biggest Bitcoin exchange sites are Polominex.com which transacts 8 percent of Bitcoin transactions, bitfinex.com transacts 6 percent while bittrex.com transacts 4 percent of Bitcoin transactions in this market.
An average of $2.3 billion bitcoins are transacted by exchange sites in the cryptocurrency market.
Largest Ethereum exchange sites
The biggest Ethereum exchange sites are, Bithumb which transacts 13 percent of Ethereum transactions in this market, OKCoin.cn transacts 8 percent while Coinone handles 6 percent of transactions in this market. An average of $875 million Ethereums are transacted by exchange sites in the cryptocurrency market.
Largest Ripple exchange sites
The biggest Ripple exchange sites are Bithumb which transacts 46 percent of Ripple coins, Coinone transacts 17 percent while Korbit transacts 11 percent of Ripple coins. An average of $2.2 billion Ripple coins are transacted by exchange sites in the cryptocurrency market.
Past hurdles experienced by users of these exchange sites
According to Bloomberg, Poloniex, LLC was founded in 2014 and is based in Wilmington, Delaware. The company seems to be having poor customers support. On July 31 this year, contelegraph.com wrote an article on how users of this exchange site are frustrated due to the site's lack of timely customer support.
According to the article, an account of one user which contained $70,000 was hacked.
The user by the name 'Alexander Levin' never got a response from the site for a month which made him express his dissatisfaction of Reddit. The user later responded to his Reddit post stating that his account has been restored and was able to withdraw his funds.
Another Reddit user named 'starsoccer9' posted on Reddit saying that he has been waiting for a ticket response from Poloniex for more than three months while Reddit user 'iupqmv' waited for four months.
Bitfinex is a Hongkong based exchange site. On August 2, 2016, Bitfinex announced that hackers had stolen 120,000 Bitcoins worth $72 million at that time. According to the New York times, Bitcoin lost 20 percent of its value on the day the announcement was made. The exchange site completed the reimbursement of the lost funds to its customers early this year according to cryptocoinsnews.com. The site stopped providing its services to U.S customers citing a high number of requests and problems while offering USD deposits and withdrawals.
Bithumb is a South Korean exchange site. Hackers stole $870,000 worth of crypto currencies in July last months. User data was also stolen. Bithumb is gaining credibility after it opened a customer service center in Seoul last week to enable a one-on-one interaction between its customer care professionals and its clients.