Beginner’s Guide to VirWox Exchange: Complete Review

VirWoX stands for Virtual World Exchange and is an exchange dedicated to buying virtual currencies. Interestingly enough, it is older than the first appearance of Bitcoin on exchanges since it began in 2007 in Austria as a centralized digital currency exchange. At its core, VirWoX is designed as an online exchange dedicated to buying virtual currencies that you can use in online games. Via a loophole, however, VirWoX has come into the limelight by making it possible to purchase Bitcoin via PayPal, although doing so does require a few extra steps.

Visit VirWox

VirWoX History

As mentioned, the history of VirWoX began in 2007. It was first set up for trading Second Life Lindens, SLL, and a few other virtual currencies. Today, you can also trade other virtual currencies, such as the Second Life’s Linden Dollars, Open Metaverse Currency, OMC, and Avination’s C$. As of August 2015, VirWoX had to stop withdrawals of Linden Dollars to Second Life avatars since Second Life only made them available for purchase via its own exchange. However, you can still convert them to other currencies, and SLL continues to have a high trade volume on the website. In September of that year, VirWoX added trading for MVC V$, which is used in My Virtual Community, the OpenSim-based virtual world.

VirWoX entered the world of traditional cryptocurrency in April 2011 when it accepted Bitcoin. At this point, users quickly realized that it is possible to purchase SLL or another virtual currency using PayPal, then use VirWoX for a second transaction converting the virtual currency to Bitcoin.

How Popular Is VirWoX?

There are several ways to measure the popularity of VirWoX, but the number of registered users is a good way to show just how wide the reach of this platform is. VirWoX has 1,087,462 registered users, although only 269 were online at the time of writing, a figure that likely varies based on the time of day.

Those interested in trading volumes on VirWoX can look at SLL and ACD, two of the most popular currencies offered. The 24-hour trading volume for SSL at the time of writing was 123,628,158, with a 30-day volume of 4,079,041,865 and total of 217,739,498,511. The 24-hour trading volume for ACD was 92,844, with a 30-day total of 1,923,566 and an overall total of 514,755,585.

How Do You Make a VirWoX Account?

It is incredibly straightforward to make a VirWoX account, and you can do so from any page of the domain. There is always a Customer Login box in the upper left corner of the page. Below this, there are options for forgotten passwords, registration, and signing up as a partner. To register, just go to the register page, and you will receive a temporary password in your email inbox. Log in within 24 hours and change the password. At this point, your VirWoX account will be active.

What Charts and Data Does VirWoX Offer?

To help users make an informed decision when trading virtual currency, VirWoX has a chart of the current rates for the most popular pairs on the right side of the homepage. Here, you will find Bid and Ask prices for USD/SLL, EUR/SLL, GBP/SLL, CHF/SLL, USD/ACD, EUR/ACD, SLL/OMC, SLL/ACD, EUR/OMC, USD/OMC, EUR/MVC, and BTC/SLL. Below this, you can find graphs displaying the rate movement for each of those pairs in the past 14 days.

Clicking on any of the graphs for a currency pair will take you a Market Depth overview of that particular pairing. On this page, you will see a graph displaying the accumulated volume of offers to buy each currency in the pair and charts below it with more detail on the offers. Each chart for offers has a column for rate, volume, and accumulated volume. In this way, you can view the most important information regarding a currency pair before placing a bid.

What Types of Orders Can You Place with VirWoX?

There are two methods of trading on VirWoX, one prioritizing the quick completion of the transaction and the other prioritizing getting the best possible rate. If you want the order executed right away, you can do a market order, which means you accept the best available rate at the moment. If you want a better rate and are willing to wait, you can place a limit order. With this type of trade, you specify the rate you want, but it will only execute if and when someone accepts the offer.

How Do You Trade with VirWoX?

Once you log in, you will first need to deposit funds into your account via PayPal, credit or debit cards, Skrill, Paysafe card, or one of the other supported options. Then, you can go to the “Exchange” page for the pair you which to buy and sell. There, simply fill out the form for either a market or limit order and submit it.

The order matching system is completely automatic. This means that the system will automatically match your order with an opposite one of the same rate. So, if you want to sell USD for SLL and someone wants to sell SLL for USD at the same rate, the system will match your orders. It is also possible for partial executions to occur, where your order gets matched with multiple other orders to reach the quantity you wish to trade.

Buying Bitcoin with PayPal

As mentioned before, something the crypto community figured out is that using VirWox it’s possible to purchase Bitcoin using PayPal, something you won’t find on many other exchanges. The method to do is quite simple – fund your account with PayPal to purchase SLL, then trade your SLL for Bitcoin and you can then withdraw the bitcoin to your own wallet from the site.

Using this method will incur quite a lot of fees, but if PayPal is your only option for buying Bitcoin, then it’s a neat work-around.

What Are Deposit Methods and Fees?

One of the most popular payment methods for VirWoX is PayPal, but this does come with a fee. VirWoX passes the fees PayPal charges it on to the customers. The fee varies based on payment method, customer location, currency, transaction size, and previous transactions, meaning it is unpredictable. VirWoX also passes on the fees it is charged for credit and debit card deposits and those via Skrill (Moneybookers). The current fee for euro customers is 0.39 EUR plus 3.5 percent. Deposits are possible with a Paysafe card, but the fee is 20 percent, so use this option with caution.

Account Limits

You can also use SOFORT banking, which will come with a fee of 2.5 percent and a minimum of 0.25. Other deposits, such as those of MVC from the My Virtual Community, do not have fees.

What Are Deposit Limits and Levels?

Deposit limits are based on your account level, which depends on how long you have had an active VirWoX account. Level 0 is immediate and has a 90 EUR limit for each 24-hour period for deposits made via PayPal and Skrill. The limit per 30 days is 270 EUR. You reach Level 1 after 10 days, at which point the 24-hour limit increases to 120 EUR and the 30-day limit becomes 900 EUR. Level 2 is reached after 30 days with limits of 200 and 2,000 EUR, respectively. You reach Level 3 after 60 days with limits of 400 and 5,000 EUR. Level 4 is available upon request, increasing the 24-hour limit to 1,000 EUR and the 30-day limit to 15,000. To get the limit in USD, multiply the amount by 1.3. Multiply it by 1.2 for CHF or 0.9 for GBP. You can view your level at any time on the account overview page.

How Can You Withdraw from VirWoX?

VirWoX does not have any withdrawal limits. Withdrawing SLL to SL accounts typically takes only seconds. Withdrawals to bank accounts, PayPal, or Skrill tend to take a bit longer since they might require manual intervention. Bitcoin withdrawals have a handling fee of 0.0005 BTC. Withdrawals via PayPal have a handling fee of 1 EUR/USD/CHF/GBP plus 2 percent. All other withdrawal types, including Skrill and bank transfers, have a handling fee of 1 EUR/USD/CHF/GBP.

What Other Fees Does VirWoX Charge?

Fees are slightly different for market orders and limit orders, but you can find a detailed list of fees for either type of transaction for each currency pair on the VirWoX help page. Market orders have a fee of 50 SLL, 25 or 50 ACD, 25 or 50 OMC, or 50 MVC, plus a variable fee of 1.90 to 3.90 percent, depending on the currency pair. While there are no discounts for market orders, any commission you pay will count toward a discount on limit orders.

Market Orders Fees

VirWoX only charges for limit orders when an order is actually executed. In the case of partially executed orders, you are only charged a commission on the executed portion. The commission begins at 3.9 percent for all currency pairs, but it drops as you exchange more. This discount is based on trading activity, specifically the SLL commission paid, combining both market and limit orders, within the past 30 days. Once you have paid 1,000 SLL in commissions in the past 30 days, you get a 10 percent discount. At 2,000 SLL, this increases to 20 percent. The discounts continue with 30 percent at 5,000 SLL, 40 percent at 10,000 SLL, 50 percent at 20,000 SLL, 60 percent at 50,000 SLL, 70 percent at 100,000 SLL, and 80 percent at 200,000 SLL.

Limit Orders Fees

There are no fees for sending SLL, ACD, and OMC to other users. Although VirWoX does not charge an account maintenance fee, there is an inactivity fee after 12 months of inactivity. This is set at 2 EUR (or its equivalent) monthly, but it only is charged when the account has a positive balance.

What Are VirWoX Terminals?

Those who use VirWoX for buying and selling SLL might want to take advantage of the Terminals in the Second Life virtual world. These Terminals are a required part of validating your account. Upon validating the account, users make permanent links between VirWoX accounts and Second Life avatars. This permanent link is an important part of securely and effectively transferring Linden dollars. To validate your account and create this link, simply wait until you have logged into your newly created VirWoX account. Then, log into the SL world and visit a VirWoX Terminal. Touch the Terminal, and you will get a pop-up dialogue box displaying your chosen username in VirWoX for the avatar. Confirm the username to create the link.

You can find the Terminal locations via the VirWoX website. VirWoX warns that there might be fake VirWoX Terminals. Genuine VirWoX Terminals will always prove that they are real by showing your VirWoX username and your secret Terminal Identification Number (TIN). You can choose this TIN and change it as often as you want via your Settings Page. Always confirm a Terminal displays your TIN and username before hitting Pay.

VirWoX is also interested in hearing from people who own a location suitable for a Terminal. You can get more information or contact the company to get one and improve additional traffic.

Is VirWox Safe?

VirWoX is operated, developed, and designed by the Austrian company Virtual World Services GmbH. The sole purpose of this company is running services like this and conducting business within and related to virtual worlds. For security, VirWoX provides guidelines on passwords, such as that they are at least eight characters in length and combine uppercase and lowercase letters plus numbers.

VirWoX will need certain personal information, like your name, when sending real-world money to bank accounts, PayPal, and Skrill. It never gives or sells this information to third parties unless public authorities request it, with the exception of anonymous data used for statistical purposes. It does not store credit card information.

What Resources Does VirWoX Provide for Developers?

Because of the reliability and scalability of the VirWoX server, it has opened its internal interfaces up to third-party developers who want to access it via the products or applications. This also allows developers to build applications requiring programmatic access to an exchange for virtual currencies. VirWoX offers three APIs for developers: Basic, Trading, and MicroPayment.

Conclusion

VirWoX, or Virtual World Exchange, is an exchange for virtual currencies. It was originally created for buying and selling virtual currencies used in online games. When the platform introduced support for Bitcoin, it became even more popular by making it possible to indirectly purchase Bitcoin with PayPal and other hard-to-find payment methods by first buying SLL and then converting this to Bitcoin.

VirWoX is a particularly useful exchange for those who want additional methods of buying Bitcoin and don’t mind paying extra fees for doing so or who wish to remain anonymous for whatever reason.  It’s also a useful resource for people who play the supported online games that utilize one of the virtual currencies that are tradeable on VirWoX.

Visit VirWox

VirWox

8

Ease of Use

8.0/10

Reputation

8.0/10

Fees

7.0/10

Customer Support

8.0/10

Payment Methods

9.0/10

Pros

• Possible to Buy BTC with PayPal
• No ID Verification Required
• Fiat Purchases

Cons

• Dated Interface
• High Fees
• Limited Currencies

Visit

Advertise Here