What is EQONEX (EQO)? Is It a Safe Exchange?

Cryptocurrency trading has existed almost since the start of cryptocurrency. Many people prefer trading crypto as the day trading regulations found in stock trading do not exist in crypto. However, while it’s possible to day trade on regular crypto exchanges like Binance or Coinbase; it’s not really recommended as it can be a little cumbersome. 

This has led to trading exchanges emerging on the market. These exchanges provide customers with a variety of tools and products that make trading a lot easier for them. Anyway, this article will offer a comprehensive review of EQONEX and the native token of the exchange – $EQO. 

What is EQONEX?

So, EQONEX is a centralized cryptocurrency exchange that caters to those wishing to trade cryptocurrency rather than those simply wanting to make a one off purchase of crypto. The interesting thing about EQONEX is that the company is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, which adds some legitimacy to it.

One feature of EQONEX that makes it fairly unique amongst exchanges is that it’s possible to program coding bots with absolutely no programming required. Most exchanges don’t include a feature like this. Usually traders must use a 3rd party service to build a trading bot. 

This is included with EQONEX because the exchange has partnered with Capitalise.ai, which develops automated trading bots. 

As for liquidity, EQONEX has partnered with liquidity providers like GSR, Parallel, and Kronos. All these liquidity providers have purchased shares of EQONEX as well. These partnerships make liquidity on the exchange less of a concern and add more legitimacy to the project. 

The exchange currently has over $1 billion worth of crypto traded per month. Much of this trading volume is actually from institutional users of EQONEX.

What Products Does EQONEX Offer?

EQONEX offers a whole host of products on their exchange. These products include the following:

Perpetual Futures

Perpetual futures are similar to regular futures, but they have no settlement date. This means that one can hold a perpetual future indefinitely if they can keep the account funded past the liquidation date. 

This allows a little more flexibility than having a regular futures contract and is a tool that many institutions use to lock in the price of their Bitcoin purchase. 

Perpetual futures have fairly low fees – there’s no maker fee and a 0.070% taker fee to a 0.035% taker fee depending on the total volume the user traded that month. 

Spot Trading

Spot trading is exactly what it sounds like – users have the option of simply trading cryptocurrency. The fees for spot trading on EQONEX are not too bad when compared to other exchanges. 

If you trade under $200,000 of crypto per month, then you pay a maker fee of 0.080% and a taker fee of 0.070%. The rate drops as the trading volume increases with the lowest tier being a 0.010% maker fee and 0.020% taker fee at $500 million traded per month. 

Dated Futures

Dated futures are simply regular futures contracts. This means that users must buy or sell a cryptocurrency asset at a certain date at a certain price. EQONEX uses leverage to enable their dated futures contracts. 

Dated futures have the same taker fees as perpetual futures. There’s also a 0.02% settlement fee on all dated futures contracts. 

EQO Token Explained

EQO token has two main benefits of it – reduced fees and the ability to stake EQO. This section will cover both of the features, which should allow you to make an informed decision about whether or not you should buy EQO. 

So, we would rank the reduced fees as the main benefit of EQO. EQONET has an interesting way of implementing these reduced fees compared to other exchanges that have a native token. 

Basically, the number of EQO that one holds puts them in a certain tier. The different tiers are the following:

Note: EQO costs ~$0.20/token at the time of writing.

• 10,000 EQO for tier 1
• 50,000 EQO for tier 2
• 100,000 EQO for tier 3
• 500,000 EQO for tier 4

The trading fee reduction is not stated on the fee schedule section of the website. It appears that the table is missing a column that states the percent reduction or we are simply not reading the table properly. See the attached picture below:

Also, anyone that holds over 500 EQO will not have to pay any crypto withdrawal fees on EQONET and all holders of EQO pay a reduced withdrawal fee. 

It’s also possible to stake EQO. The staking return isn’t great at only a few percent return per year. Now, if the price of EQO increases, then that’s essentially free money on top of more free money. 

One last thing, EQO holders are rewarded with a very small amount of EQO when they make any trade on EQONET. The amount really isn’t much, though. Someone trading $2,000,000 in a month would earn approximately 2.2 EQO. 

That’s the equivalent of $0.40.

The thing is the price of EQO is so low that not many people are likely interested in staking nor do many people care about the trading reward from using EQONET. 

The main use for EQO is simply holding it for the reduced trading fees. In fact, the low price of EQO makes it somewhat affordable to hold a large enough amount to receive some trading discount. 

Is EQONET Legitimate?

Yes, all evidence points to EQONET being a legitimate company. For one, it’s listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange, which means the finances are audited every three months. The executive board are all fully doxxed and have quite a bit of experience in the industry. 

We find it unlikely that a convicted fraudster, or even felon, could receive a trading license from any regulatory body, so the board likely has a clean record. 

All these are good signs for a crypto exchange. 

Yes, we are aware that plenty of publicly traded companies like Enron and WorldCom have had issues. However, we find it extremely unlikely that many of the more common scams that exist in the crypto industry (ie. disappearing with everyone’s money) will occur with a publicly traded company. The financial statements are all audited as well, so that significantly decreases the chances of EQONET doing something similar to QuadrigaCX.

To summarize, EQONET is the safest cryptocurrency exchange you will find because the financial statements are audited – a cash shortage cannot easily (or legally) be hidden because the financial statements are audited by an accounting firm. There’s always the outside chance that something nefarious occurs with any business, but a publicly traded company is as legitimate as it gets when it comes to cryptocurrency exchanges.

Is EQO Token a Good Investment?

We do not see EQO token as a particularly good investment for those simply looking to hold a cryptocurrency. The native currencies of exchanges tend to not perform particularly well because at the end of the day they just don’t have much utility outside of the closed exchange environment. 

This can obviously change if the token has some sort of utility outside of the exchange. The most notable example of this is with Binance Coin (BNB). It had very little value until Binance launched the Binance Smart Chain and made BNB the native token of the chain. 

This led to an enormous price spike. 

With that in mind, we would invest in EQO token if the team announced some sort of blockchain project similar to Ethereum or the Binance Smart Chain. Until then, it’s a coin we would avoid as an investment. 

Closing Words

To summarize, EQONEX appears to be a legitimate cryptocurrency exchange. It’s publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange, which is a good sign. The fees on the exchange are not particularly high and we have seen no reports of this exchange scamming anyone. 

If you are looking for a good trading exchange, then EQONEX would certainly be a good option.