What You Can Buy

Uphold advertises itself as the “Anything to Anything” exchange and the billing fits. Uphold offers not only 250 different cryptocurrencies but also a wide selection of fiat currencies and precious metals.

The precious metals (Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium) offering is really quote unusual for a crypto exchange the concept of swapping BTC for Gold or vice versa is quite novel.

Note that Uphold assets are divided into different tiers (1, 2, 3). Tier 3 assets are available for buy, hold, trade, deposit and withdraw. Some of the other tiers are more restricted.

Here’s a partial list of some of the most popular assets:

• Basic Attention Token
• Bitcoin
• Bitcoin Cash
• CRED
• Toncoin
• Metal DAO
• Euro Coin
• Cardano
• BAT
• XDC
• Dash
• Ether
• Litecoin
• Stellar Lumens
• Ripple
• Flare (FLR)

Supported Applications

Uphold is available on most computing platforms. The cryptocurrency service is available on any computer via the company’s website, and apps are also available for Apple and Android phones.

The UI is quite modern and easy to understand although it does lack some of the advanced trading features you might find on the competing exchanges.

Fees

There are a large number of different fee structures to look at for Uphold due to the variety of different assets that can be bought, held, and sold on the platform.

There are no fees for depositing money onto Uphold, unless that deposit is made via a debit or credit card. It’s worth noting that you can deposit up to $2,500 per transaction using Google Pay in the USA, which is very high compared to competitors.

Most withdrawal methods involve a fee of $2.99 or $3.99. These withdrawals will also involve a network fee if they are made via a cryptocurrency.

Conversion fees for the various assets available on Uphold range from 0.65% to 3.95%.

Is Uphold Exchange Safe?

Uphold is considered to be one of the safest ways to buy cryptocurrency by many digital asset experts. Since launching in 2014, Uphold has maintained an exemplary reputation for security among its customers. The site is unique in the sheer amount of assets it offers — including gold and silver — and that might help explain why security seems to be so important to the company.

It also offers a solid proof of reserves program, which is one of the strongest security features that an exchange can provide.

Uphold also features a rather unique security solution called The Vault. The Vault is a subscription based service that lets users hold coins in a multi-signature wallet, which gives users the option of self custody. In theory this alleviates much of the problems with holding crypto on exchanges. It’s currently only available for XRP but Uphold has plans to expand to more coins in the future.

On the flip side there have been some complaints about Uphold’s customer service over the years but that appears to be getting better and the number of issues seems to have gone down significantly in the last year.

What is Uphold's Take Profit Feature?

Uphold offers an interesting feature on their app where users can essentially make profit taking automatic.

It works by letting users set up an automated limit order to sell a cryptocurrency they are holding when it goes up by a certain percentage (set by user). Of course the crypto actually has to increase in value for their to be any profit to be had but it’s an interesting way of taking emotion out of the dilemma of deciding when to take profit.

Here’s how to set it up on your own account:

1. Tap option to ‘Take Profit’ when buying an asset
2. Set the percentage increase in price at which you want to take profit
3. You’re all set! Hopefully profit starts to roll in.

Connection with Brave

Uphold is the designated wallet provider for the Brave Browser. Even though Brave has a wallet built into the browser, you can’t send your Basic Attention Tokens to a cryptocurrency address from the browser itself, you can only tip through YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc.

In order to unlock your BAT from the advertising rewards, or earn tips as a publisher on one of the supporting networks, you need to sign up, and complete registration for an uphold account. For more information on the Brave Browser and Basic Attention Token, head on over to our guides.

Uphold Best Features

Here’s a look at some of the top reasons crypto users pick Uphold over other exchanges:

Proof of Reserves

With knowledge of exchange reserves and liabilities being more important than ever, Uphold’s long standing transparency regarding their holdings and obligations stands out in the crowd. They provide a live Reserve Status where you can see the assets in their reserve, their obligations, transaction volume, and number of transactions.

They even go a step further and break down those reserves and obligations into 10 categories. These categories include currencies for bank transfers, currencies to hold, exchange or send to around the world, crypto holdings, precious metals, environmental assets, and every other type of asset that is available on Uphold. Below is an example:

Convert Anything to Anything

One of the most convenient aspects of Uphold Exchange is that you can convert any of their assets to any of their other supported assets from the same trading page. There is no need to enter different accounts or platforms to convert something like Bitcoin to a US stock like Apple. Simply enter what you want to trade and what you want to receive, and Uphold will do the heavy lifting. The fee you pay for the conversion varies by the types of assets involved and works as a price spread.

Uphold Card

The Uphold Card is a Mastercard Debit card accessible to Uphold Exchange users in the UK. The Uphold Card can be used anywhere Mastercard is accepted both online and in person, with no annual fees or activation fees. Those who are limited to the virtual card can add it to their Apple or Google Pay wallets.

The Uphold Card allows users to spend any asset they hold in the Uphold wallet, whether crypto, precious metals, commodities, or fiat. Any time a purchase is made using the Uphold Card the user gets 4% cashback in the form of Ripple (XRP), which can then be spent or converted to any of the assets available on Uphold, whether Bitcoin or gold.

“Terms Apply. Cryptoassets are highly volatile. Your capital is at risk. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment, and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong.”

Vault

Uphold offers users of their platform a feature called Vault. It is an assisted self-custody wallet application, meaning you do hold the private keys to the wallet but there is also a subscription attached through which you can recover your keys and funds if you lose them. It is similar to Ledger Recover.

Vault allows you to keep full control over your cryptocurrency assets but gives you the peace of mind of being able to recover access if you somehow lose it.

With Uphold Vault, you can pay either a monthly subscription of $4.99, or a yearly one at $49.99. You get a vault key and a backup key, while Uphold also holds a key that can only be used to help you recover a lost key. 

The Uphold Vault application has the added bonus of being directly connected to Uphold’s trading platform, allowing you to trade any of the supported assets without having to move them from the wallet itself.

Currently, the Vault supports Bitcoin (BTC) and Ripple (XRP), but there is planned support coming for other layer one blockchain networks such as Stellar (XLM) and XDC Network (XDC) in 2024.