Overview
On 1st October 2021, MAS issued a full license for Independent Reserve to operate as a regulated entity providing Digital Payment Token services in Singapore.
Currently, IR offers SGD trading with 10 pairs of cryptocurrencies (namely ADA, BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, DOT, ETC, LINK, LTC and USDC. The platform is only based on desktop and there are no mobile version as yet. Users would also not be able to trade in crypto pairs such as ADA/BTC, ADA/ETH.
Note: IR has announced on 8 Dec 2021 that they have reduced platform fees. For deposits, there would be no fees for amounts above $1000 while a $2.50 fee is charged for amounts below $1000. For Withdrawals, a flat fee of $1.50 would be charged
Account registration/ funds deposit
As per all regulated exchanges, the initial KYC information is a requirement during account registration. You would need to provide
a) Photo of Front and Back NRIC
b) Selfie of you holding your NRIC with a paper indicating IR/ today’s date
c) a bill statement with your registered address eg Utility bill
It should take about 2 days to complete the registration. Do note to enable extra security features such as 2FA/ whitelisting.
Referral code:
Huat stands to earn 50% of all brokerage fees paid by referred customers, for the first 90 days. Please note that all such earnings would be channeled towards our mission initiatives. If you are interested to include us,
– please enter TXDFAN in the referral code box during signup
– alternatively, you may wish to click this link
before any trading, you must first deposit funds into your IR account. If you had previously verified your Xfers account, your registered bank account should be reflected in the top right corner. Otherwise, you can manually input your bank details.
Once your bank account is registered, you would be able to deposit funds via FAST bank transfer. Do note that there is $20k deposit limit within 24 hrs and every deposit will incur a 0.55% fee.
Buy/ Sell / Trade ADA
Once your funds are deposited, it is fairly easy to purchase your preferred crypto. Under the buy/sell tab, select trading in SGD, click buy and you would be redirected to a landing page as above, where you could choose to buy in sgd or buy in ada. Do note that the indicated prices are live and are at good spread compared to crypto.com
For the more experienced traders, you may also consider perform market and limit/ stop trades. Besides allowing the user to have more control over their trades, these limit/stop orders also helps to save time for the busy.
Do note that all trades incur 0.5% brokerage fees. If you purchased an account plan with IR / high trading volume over the last 30 days, the fee percentage may vary between 0.02% to 0.5% depending on your according to IR’s trade volume discount
Withdrawing ADA for staking
Once you have successfully purchased your ADA, you can send it to your external wallet eg Daedalus or Yoroi for staking.
However before you send, please ensure that your wallet address is verified ( see image 2 above). For your wallet address to be verified, you would need to send 1.14ADA from your wallet to IR account. If you encounter any issues (eg Yoroi sending tx from another address), you can get in touch with IR’s customer support, which have been very responsive based on experience.
Note: there is a minimum withdrawal limit of 0.5 ADA.
After you have successfully transferred your ADA to your wallet, you may wish to delegate to HUAT or any other stake pool you desire.
Withdrawing funds
You may also decide to sell your cryptos and realise your profits. Do note that every withdrawal has a $20k limit and will incur another 0.55% withdrawal fee.
Huat Thoughts
After the recent Binance announcement, we are certainly glad to hear that sg users would have another option to purchase ada/ other cryptocurrencies.
More importantly, IR allows the sending/receiving of cryptos and is a regulated entity overseen by MAS. This provides for a higher assurance and is in line with Cardano’s vision to interoperate with government entities for a better global payment system.
Our experience with IR thus far has been nothing short of amazing. The customer support has been excellent, and the fees charged are lower than other options (eg Coinhako). IR also provides additional features such as trading limits/ stop orders. All in all, it is certainly poised to be one of the best market options for sg users.
Happy Trading!
