Bitstamp

Bitstamp uses a maker-taker fee schedule that steps down with 30-day trading volume. At the entry level the headline rate sits around 0.30% maker and 0.40% taker, and it falls steadily as monthly volume grows, reaching a fraction of that for high-volume desks. Very small monthly volumes trade free of the percentage fee, which suits people making occasional token purchases rather than active traders.

What sets Bitstamp apart on cost is that it never split into a cheap "pro" tier and an expensive instant-buy button the way many rivals did — its one fee schedule applies across the platform, so a beginner is not quietly routed onto a worse rate. Withdrawals still carry the underlying network fee of whichever chain you move coins on, which Bitstamp passes through rather than marking up as a trading fee.

Bitstamp's safety case rests heavily on longevity and regulation. It has traded since 2011 without collapsing, and it now sits inside Robinhood, a US-listed public company, while holding a MiCA licence from Luxembourg's CSSF that subjects it to EU capital, custody and conduct rules. The one serious breach in its history — the January 2015 theft of roughly 19,000 BTC — was absorbed by the company so that customer balances were honoured in full, which is the outcome that matters most when judging an exchange's response.

The caveats are the ones inherent to any custodial venue: Bitstamp holds your keys, so you are trusting its cold-storage and internal controls, and your individual account remains exposed to phishing that no exchange can fully prevent. Using a strong second factor and treating unsolicited "Bitstamp" messages as hostile covers the part of the risk that is yours to manage.

Robinhood announced its intention to buy Bitstamp in June 2024 and closed the deal on 2 June 2025 for total consideration of about $200 million in cash. The acquisition gave Robinhood an established, licensed exchange with a large institutional client base and operations spanning Europe, the UK and Asia — a faster route into regulated global crypto than building one from scratch. At the time of the close Bitstamp served well over 500,000 funded retail customers and thousands of institutional clients.

For existing Bitstamp users the practical change is ownership and long-term strategy rather than a new app: the exchange continues to operate under the Bitstamp brand and its own licences, now described as "Bitstamp by Robinhood." The deal also means Bitstamp's ultimate parent is a publicly traded company that files audited financials, which adds a layer of transparency the standalone business did not have.