Independent Reserve Review and Website Analysis

Many of our readers are curious about whether they can trust certain cryptocurrency exchanges and if it’s safe to work with specific companies claiming to specialize as crypto brokers. In response to their inquiries, we’ve created an Independent Reserve review. In it, we explore whether the information provided about Australia’s largest crypto trading platform is accurate or if users are being lured into yet another scam. Interested in finding out more? Keep reading, as the information we’ve gathered will help you make an informed decision.

Brief Overview

• 🖥Official Website: https://www.independentreserve.com/
• ✈️Contact Address: Level 26, 44 Market Street, Sydney, 2000 New South Wales, Australia
• 📞Customer Support: feedback form; [email protected]
• 🔐Licensing and Accreditation: by AUSTRAC
• ⏳Track Record: since 2013
• 🧰Specialization: cryptocurrency exchange
• 🤝Terms of Cooperation: maximum leverage 1:2; trading fee (open &close position) 0.5%-0.02% depending on trading volume; 0.1% daily leveraged trading fee; 1% of the total loan amount at full or partially liquidating the position.
• 💰Additional Services: no

Independentreserve.com Examination

The official website of Independent Reserve appears quite solid, as befits an active crypto exchange. The template is well-designed, with carefully chosen colors and images, and there seems to be plenty of useful information on the pages.

However, not everything is as it seems. For example, the conditions for opening a personal account are somewhat hard to find. The main menu link leads to a page that details the registration process. While this is undoubtedly interesting and useful, it would be preferable to know the basic account features before opening one, not afterward.

This approach seems to be consistent throughout the platform. For instance, to find out the maximum leverage available, simply studying the Margin Trading and Leveraged Trading Terms & Conditions pages isn’t enough. The specific value can only be found in the blog (which, frankly, isn’t very obvious).

In essence, Independent Reserve has provided nearly all the information clients might need on its website, but access to it is either limited or made unnecessarily complicated. Why? That question remains unanswered.

Company Contacts

A prime example of this is the contact information provided by Independent Reserve. Even finding the bare minimum, like an email address, isn’t easy. The Help section in the main menu has a link to a Contact Support page, but it leads to the login page. This suggests that, according to the company, only registered users are entitled to communicate with customer support. Others, it seems, shouldn’t have any questions for the exchange’s representatives.

However, even for active clients, things aren’t as straightforward as expected. On the aforementioned page, they’ll find only a form for submitting a ticket, with no specified response time.

The company’s (registered) address is listed on the About page. A client wishing to send a letter or visit the office in person would need to verify whether Independent Reserve truly operates there or if the firm has simply rented a virtual mailing address.

We did eventually find a support email address, hidden in the Terms & Conditions text. This situation with contact details seems unusual, but the crypto exchange team likely knows best.

On the other hand, social media links are easy to find — they’re prominently displayed on all pages of the Independent Reserve website and actually lead to the company’s groups and channels. However, most of them operate in blog mode, and frankly, we haven’t seen anyone posting questions there, nor has the administration responded to any.

Key Conditions

As mentioned earlier, information about Independent Reserve’s trading conditions is skillfully scattered across the website. According to links in the main menu, the company can open accounts for:

• Individuals.
• Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSF).
• Corporate entities.
• Trust fund managers.

To understand the terms under which the exchange provides services, traders will have to sift through the heaps of information dumped onto the website’s pages. For instance, on the personal account page, they’ll find a useful step-by-step registration guide. Unfortunately, nothing is said about the terms of trading. The only clear takeaway from this material is the absence of a minimum deposit requirement.

Clients only learn that margin trading is available when they reach the Leveraged Trading page, where information about trading and related fees is also provided. However, the actual leverage amount can only be found in a blog post.

The only page where the needed information is readily available is the one detailing access to the over-the-counter (OTC) cryptocurrency market. Here, traders are informed that access is granted for large transactions and that Independent Reserve allows deals ranging from $50,000 to $10,000,000. However, this is where the information ends — the platform does not specify the user’s costs for such trading, promising instead that specialists will answer all questions during the process.

Exposing Independent Reserve

As we can see, transparency is not exactly this crypto exchange’s strong suit. We were curious whether Independent Reserve handles official information the same way.

The company claims to have been operating in Australia, providing users with access to crypto assets since 2013. It asserts that all its activities are legal, backed by the appropriate certifications. It even provides registration details as a Digital Currency Exchange (DCE) with AUSTRAC (Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre) under the number DCE-100461150-001.

It’s worth noting that the owners of the exchange are somewhat disingenuous in this regard. Yes, registration with AUSTRAC is mandatory for working with cryptocurrencies. Moreover, any registered business is required to comply with the regulatory documents governing AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and KYC (Know Your Customer) policies. We verified that the company does indeed operate in accordance with these regulations. However, verifying the authenticity of its registration as a crypto exchange isn’t possible, as AUSTRAC does not provide public access to its registries.

Still, this alone isn’t enough for a crypto project to operate legally. The company also needs to undergo official registration with the Australian financial regulator ASIC and obtain an AFSL license.

The Australian government regulates the circulation of cryptocurrencies as financial assets, so having such a license is mandatory for trading them. Otherwise, the activity is considered illegal.

This is a perplexing approach, especially when considering that the exchange is included in all well-known monitoring lists (such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko) and has been operating since 2013.

Yes, the company claims to have been in the crypto market for over 11 years, which is corroborated by Whois data showing that the domain independentreserve.com was registered in May 2013.

Viewing snapshots from the web archive also confirms that a website where Australians could buy and sell cryptocurrencies has existed at this address. Although it only began to resemble a crypto exchange in 2018, there’s no reason to distrust the company’s information.

This makes it all the more puzzling why the links to certificates on the Independent Reserve website are non-functional (they neither open document copies nor redirect to official sites where they could be viewed). In short, the company continues its policy of making it as difficult as possible for users to access information.

What Reviews Do Users Leave?

We expected to find a decent number of Independent Reserve reviews, and that’s exactly what we found. For example, on Trustpilot, the exchange has garnered 84 comments, on BitTrust 99, and there are also analytical reviews on respected industry platforms like Forbes Advisor. However, it’s difficult to say that all users are thrilled with the company’s performance. For instance, on Trustpilot, the average rating is 3.1, with over 30% of reviewers giving the service 1 out of 5 stars.

The main complaints from dissatisfied customers include:

• Very few assets available for trading (only about 120 pairs—30 tokens paired with 4 fiat currencies), with no option to exchange crypto assets for others.
• It’s challenging to make trades because the trading volume on the exchange is low and the offerings are limited.
• The company frequently delays processing withdrawal requests (likely due to a lack of liquidity).
• Support contacts are hard to find, and getting a response to a ticket is even harder, etc.

Even in analytical reviews, when compared to other crypto platforms, Independent Reserve clearly falls short, receiving ratings ranging from 3 to 4 out of 5. As a result, the company doesn’t appear to be the best choice, even for users in Australia and neighboring countries.

Conclusions

In our Independent Reserve review, we aimed to objectively assess the operations of this Australian crypto exchange and how suitable it is for trading. The conclusion was disappointing: while the company cannot be labeled a scam, doing business with it isn’t particularly comfortable. For example, useful information about trading conditions has to be pieced together bit by bit, and the licensing situation isn’t ideal (the company lacks an AFSL license). Online comments aren’t very encouraging either, with over 30% of users expressing dissatisfaction with their experience. We wouldn’t recommend opening a trading account here and would prefer larger, more reliable platforms instead.

Pros/Cons

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