Beginner’s Guide to COSS: Complete Review

COSS.io, otherwise known as the “Crypto One-stop Solution,” is a newer cryptocurrency exchange that goes far beyond the normal contours of your regular, vanilla crypto exchanges. That’s because COSS is not only an exchange; it’s also a payment gateway for merchants, a micro-crypto economy, and an Ethereum-based ERC20 token that shares COSS’s fees with holders.

In this sense, COSS is aiming to do it all. Merchants can now gear their entire online stores through the COSS platform, accepting cryptocurrency payments and keeping impeccable records while also having crypto-to-fiat functionalities.

About The Company

As for the company itself, the headquarters of COSS is located in Singapore, though the exchange has so many ties to Romania that it is virtually 50/50 Singaporean and Romanian. Many of the employees of the project are Romanian, for example, while COSS is listed in Romania’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry. On top of that, COSS is a member of Singapore’s most popular blockchain association, ACCESS, and the exchange also has a branch in New York.

Notable team members include:

• Co-founder Dan Cearnau
• Team coordinator Ioana Frincu
• Tech officer Iulian Oprea

Accordingly, the COSS exchange has a legal paper trail that points toward its legitimacy, but it is also important to keep in mind that COSS is not managed by any kind of oversight body at this point in time. It’s something you have to consider going forward, but then again it’s a dynamic that’s totally par for the course the cryptoverse.

The exchange in question was launched in the Spring of 2017 after the project’s team ran a successful ICO. The COSS exchange itself is in its beta, not alpha, phase, so there’s still lots of growth ahead and kinks to smooth out.

The advantage of being new, though? COSS has yet to have been successfully hacked, which isn’t surprising since its new. Regardless, COSS doesn’t have the baggage that larger comprised exchanges have accrued.

With these preliminary points out of the way, let’s dive a little deeper.

Visit COSS

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COSS Signup & Login

Signing up for the COSS.io exchange is straightforward and similar to any other sign up process you’ve completed over the past several years.

You’ll pick a username out, input your email address, and select a secure password. Once you’ve completed these tasks, notch the terms and conditions checkbox and complete the captcha and you’re ready to proceed.

Once you submit your details, you’ll be sent a verification email. COSS.io will give you a message saying your account has been created and to check your email to confirm it. Open the email and click the link, and you’ll be verified.

Once you’re back on the exchange, you’ll need to login for the first time. And you’ll receive a timely reminder to set up two-factor authentication on your account immediately.

Trading on the COSS Exchange

The exchange interface itself is sleek and nice on the eyes. COSS currently offers bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) trading pairs with over 30 popular cryptocurrencies, with more cryptos being added all the while. It has all the heavyweights to be sure, from privacy coins like Dash (DASH) to hot ERC20 tokens like OmiseGo (OMG).

For those looking for margin trading, you’ll have to look elsewhere, as COSS doesn’t offer margin trading functionalities. Moreover, there’s nothing in the exchange’s roadmap that suggests such functionalities are coming any time soon, if ever.

To get started trading on COSS you will need to make a deposit of a cryptocurrency as it does not currently offer Fiat payment options yet.

You can access the COSS trading interface through any web browser or through the COSS GO app. And while COSS certainly has its own aesthetic style, its trading software is also par for the course as far as the cryptocurrency space goes: it’s nothing special, but it’s not vanilla either.

One thing that does leave a little to be desired on COSS is its trading charts. They just feel basic compared to other exchange’s chart capabilities, like Bittrex. Basic is fine, but there will be more advanced traders that will be turned off until COSS offers better charting tools (e.g. better technical indicators, zooming).

Another point to consider is that, while COSS is still young and in its beta form, liquidity is low, compared to other popular exchanges. There’s no reason to think this dynamic will always remain, but it is something you’ll have to contend with in the short-term while the exchange grows.

And in the future, COSS hopes to implement fiat-to-crypto trading possibilities, but for now there’s no indication that implementation is going to be here any time soon. For now, all you’ll be able to do is deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies from the exchange.

Lastly, for basic account users, the daily trading limit started out at $2,000 USD. Now (since October 2017) the daily limit is $100k for all account types on COSS, at least until the exchange updates its new KYC (“Know Your Customer”) procedures. Once that’s done, basic users will be by going into your dashboard and applying for an upgraded KYC account.

COSS Wallet

COSS’s cryptocurrency wallets come with the main security benefits that all traditional cryptocurrency exchanges offer. These benefits include two-factor authentication, back-end cold storage, and email confirmations.

Also, the COSS wallets allow you to trade between currencies without the waiting times users endure on decentralized exchanges like Changelly and Shapeshift. In the future, the exchange hopes to add fiat functionalities so that you can withdraw to fiat instantly too, much like Coinbase allows now.

And seeing as how COSS is aiming to be a payments gateway for merchants, its wallets also allow businesses to accept cryptocurrencies in an easy, transparent, and accountable way.

Since the exchange is still in beta, more wallet perks are still to come. These features include streamlined KYC applications, a remittances portal, and token swap capabilities.

COSS Withdrawals

As for withdrawals, the process is straightforward. Once you initiate a withdrawal, you’ll be sent two verification emails. The first of these emails is a simple message explaining that a transaction has been requested. The second email is the confirmation email that you will need to open in order to okay the transaction.

At this point, your withdrawal will be processed and begun. In the absence of clicking the link in the confirmation email, you’ll be able to cancel your transaction at any time.

If you’d like to check in to see how far along your withdrawal is, go to the “Account” tab. Find the “History” button, click on it, and then click on “Deposits & Withdrawals.”

Not verified the transaction yet? Then you’ll see the “Withdrawal (pending user confirmation” message. Otherwise, you should see “Withdrawal (processed)” and your funds should be over shortly.

One last point that’s crucial to consider in judging COSS is that withdrawal times can be quite slow compared to other providers. As the exchange explains in their FAQ:

“On this topic COSS puts security above convenience and we hope our users appreciate that. There are multiple transactions in play that a user doesn’t see when depositing and withdrawing as we store all cryptocurrencies offline. So please allow some time for transactions to clear. This is not optimal for instant traders looking for an arbitrage, but we will not compromise security over convenience in this matter. 10-30 minutes on most ERC20 tokens and 1-3 hours for BTC as a general rule (but with exceptions both ways).”

ICO Listings

One of the more novel and interesting aspects about COSS is that it allows Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) on its platforms. To this end, this model can be a gamechanger as far as making ICOs accessible to everyday investors, as they currently aren’t for the most part.

Accordingly, if approved, projects can have their ICOs facilitated on COSS, and then thereafter also have their newly released crypto then listed on the actual COSS exchange. This dynamic can help projects quickly legitimize themselves and gain liquidity.

The listing process seems straightforward. Per the COSS.io website, your project will need to:

1. Fill in and submit a listing request on https://coss.io/cryptocurrency-listing
2. Send a clear legal opinion to info@coss.io
3. Pay a listing fee of 200,000* COSS tokens once your request has been approved. Negotiable as a trading promo can be set up instead of paying for the listing. Also, the 200,000 can be adjusted based on the current trading price of the COSS token.

Another perk of having an ICO on COSS is that the exchange instantly enters the new cryptocurrency into its lucrative PROMO program. The program is an incentives campaign that splits proceeds between the top 50 volume traders over a one month period.

To date, COSS has raised over $500k USD for this PROMO campaign. Proceeds are split as follows:

• Top 10 traders split 30% of the pool
• Next 10 split 25%
• Next 10 split 20%
• Next 10 split 15%
• Next 10 split 10%

COSS Fees

In a somewhat troubling development, a quick survey of the exchange’s site did not provide any readily discoverable details on transaction fees. Other users have reported fees on COSS being in the ballpark of 0.20 percent per trade, though this has not been independently verified at press time.

But trades aren’t the only source of fees on COSS: so too are withdrawals. Withdrawal fees are different from coin to coin, so the amount you’ll have to pay will vary, there is a popup in your profile section which details the fees for each currency.

COSS Coin

The exchange ran its ICO in early August 2017. The COSS token itself is an Ethereum-based ERC20 token that generates dividends derived from COSS exchange fees to holders of the token. Your COSS can be held in any Ethereum wallet like MyEtherWallet, for example.

This kind of model has been extremely popular in the ecosystem as of late, as Binance’s and KuCoin’s dividend tokens have boomed in popularity over the past few weeks. So, not only have users gotten paid dividends for holding COSS, but the token price has also been steadily rising, increasing profits all around.

You can imagine how this could be a very lucrative dynamic if COSS becomes a dominant exchange in the future. What’s not to like, as COSS disseminates 50 percent of its exchange’ transaction fees to COSS holders. The disbursements are weekly too

As far as market specs go, there are 200 million COSS tokens that will exist when all is said and done. During the ICO 130 million tokens were released to investors, and before that 25 million were nabbed up in a pre-ICO sale.

COSS Customer Support

Customer support on COSS? Pretty scarce for now by the looks of it. This will need to be drastically improved in the months ahead. The only semblance of support on the platform itself was a message to “Report an issue” to support@coss.io.

To the project’s credit, though, the COSS community widely aggress that COSS developers’ communication is strong on social media.

What’s To Come For COSS

The exchange has its roadmap for the future listed out clearly. First will come the “Crowdfunding Phase.” This will be a platform within COSS that will allow users to finance their own projects.

Next, will come the “Pre-Paid Cards Phase .” Once completed, COSS wants you to have a MasterCard-backed card that you can deposit your cryptocurrency funds onto directly from the exchange.

Thirdly will be the “Smart Contracts” phase. This will be a functionality on the exchange that will allow you to set up smart contracts for legal or business purposes.

Then comes the “Remittance Phase,” wherein COSS will attempt to be provide one-stop solutions to international money transfers.

Lastly, the final phase mapped out currently is the “Third-Party Plugins Phase.” As its name suggests, this phase will focus on providing innovative plugin functionalities to COSS’s users.

Conclusion

First off, we have to remember that COSS.io is still in a beta state, so we absolutely can’t render a final judgment on it for now. You can always pop into COSS’s Telegram or Slack to give feedback on any hiccups you encounter; the team will certainly appreciate it as they work to smooth out all the edges.

With that said, COSS is certainly an interesting exchange that will likely see further adoption in the months ahead. With there being so many competitors, it’s hard to say where COSS will eventually settle but it does look promising and it it takes off like other exchanges such as Binance and Kucoin did, it could be very successful indeed.