How To Buy Bitcoin In The UK

Is Interactive Brokers Good For Crypto Trading?

Interactive Brokers has partnered with the Paxos Trust Company, a New York-based regulated trust company and custodian with expertise in digital assets, securities and payments, to provide cryptocurrency brokerage.

Interactive Brokers’ UK clients will have a unified view of their IBKR securities brokerage account and their crypto account at PaxosTrust Company. This means clients will be able to manage their cash, trade cryptocurrencies, and invest in other asset classes, all from a single trading screen.

Gerald Perez, Chief Executive Officer at Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited said of the new service:

“Interactive Brokers offers a wide selection of global investment products, sophisticated technology and competitive pricing,”

He added

“Introducing cryptocurrency trading gives UK clients enhanced flexibility to invest across markets and asset classes while also adding exposure to digital assets.”

Platforms for newbies and pros

There are two types of crypto account for UK traders on Interactive Brokers

Basic Crypto lets you trade and hold Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin through the IBKR platform.

There are no additional or separate funding transactions are required and IBKR handles all required cashiering for you automatically, and unvested cash is always kept in your IBKR brokerage account.

Crypto Plus lets you fund your crypto account, trade using non-marketable limit orders, and enjoy 24/7 trading.

You will be able to hold USD in addition to cryptocurrencies in a dedicated Paxos account with access to 24/7 trading and place non-marketable buy limit orders.

With Crypto Plus, all trading of crypto will require prefunding of your dedicated Paxos account and you will be responsible for managing all fund movement between your IBKR brokerage account and your Paxos crypto account. You can also trade crypto immediately when you transfer funds to your dedicated Paxos account during normal US banking hours.

I opted for Basic Crypto so my cash would stay with IBKR rather than a third party, as I prefer to know who I’m dealing with. To enable crypto investing permissions on IBKR you have to complete a fairly basic questionnaire to prove that you understand the risks involved, which only takes a few minutes. You also have to prove that you are a sophisticated or professional investor. And then, just to be double careful, you’re not getting a severe case of FOMO, you have to wait 24 hours before you are able to buy cryptocurrencies on Interactive Broker (this is a regulatory requirement introduced by the FCA in 2023).

Overall, Interactive Brokers continues to be one of the cheapest places to trade anything. You can see in the below cost comparison below Coinbase and eToro execution costs are very low.

There are several benefits to trading crypto on IBKR:

Consolidated platform: Clients can access a wide range of global investment products, including cryptocurrencies, on a single sophisticated trading platform, eliminating the need for multiple platforms.

Competitive pricing: Cryptocurrency commissions are low at 0.12% – 0.18% of trade value, depending on monthly volume, with a minimum of $1.75 per order. There are no added spreads, markups, or custody fees.

Currency conversion: Clients can convert GBP or other currencies to USD (the denomination for cryptocurrencies on the platform) at tight spreads as low as 1/10 of a PIP.

Efficient portfolio management: Financial advisers can easily allocate a percentage of client assets to cryptocurrencies and manage their clients’ portfolios more efficiently.

However, it’s important to note that cryptocurrency is still a very high-risk investment and even tough the costs of trading are lower, there is a high possibility that crypto could become worthless.

Interactive Brokers (U.K.) Limited is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority as a crypto assets firm under the relevant regulations.
However, it’s important to note that cryptocurrencies are unregulated in the UK, and are therefore not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

Is Kraken Good for Cryptocurrency?

The Test: For now, this is a quickfire test of just the Kraken Pro platform because I have spent all day testing crypto platforms and I’m knackered..

I think my bank would be a little concerned if I used my account for any more crypto deposits today, so I’m funding my Kraken Pro account via PayPal, which comes with a 2.4% fee, but that’s OK because I’m only putting in £100. You’ll see why in a minute. If you are depositing more, it would be sensible to use Plaid Open Banking, because it’s cheaper.

I opened my Kraken account years ago, so I didn’t have to wait for the 24-hour cooling off period. Whilst I waited for my funds to be processed, I turned on the Auto Earn options. This means that whatever eligible  crypto I own, I  can stake it automatically (and also use it as collateral) and earn rewards of up to 12%, which are paid weekly.

If I’m honest, I’m unconvinced by the whole “crypto as an investable asset class” idea because I think crypto is? mainly driven by sentiment. But that doesn’t mean there is opportunity. So when deciding what cryptocurrency to buy on Kraken (there are over 300 of them) I turned to the most rampant ramping source possible, TikTok. I Googled how to search for the most popular cryptos on TikTok and the first video was of a teenager very convincingly talking about the best cryptos to buy during a market crash. I decided to follow his first tip – Ethena.

He was going through his “top picks” with “massive discounts right now” but didn’t say what discount it was or even what the fiat value should be. But as he has 1.2 million followers I assumed that some other people may be listening to him and also buying the same coins. Which would mean that sentiment may drive them up. The first one he mentioned was Ethena at an apparent 73% discount. Which looked like it had been ramped towards the end of 2024 but was now trading on what technical analysts would call “support” although I don’t think that is necessarily relevant here.

But first I’d have to convert my GBP into USD, which is instant, but comes with a 1.5% ($1.22) fee. So my £100 is now $121.98 which at the GBP-USD mid-rate of 1.2804 is £78.10. So I’m already down 22%, and I haven’t even lost any money on crypto yet! This is because of the conversion rate that Kraken applies, as crypto is generally priced in USD.

There are quite a few order options when you buy, which is great if you’ve got size but I don’t so it’s pointless working an iceberg, which pecks away at the market bit by bit of setting a limit below, so I just went balls in at the market. But not that deep because I put a stop loss in 50% below.

I have zero expectations of this growing gradually, but rather hoping for some sort of social media pump and dump to drive it higher so put my take profit in 350,000% higher, hoping to nick $1,000 profit if that happened. Either way it meant I didn’t have to add Ethena to any watch list to keep track of it. 🤞

You can actually trade that coin on 3x margin, but I’m not daft enough for that. T-20 trading AIM stocks was fun enough and at least they had fundamental value, well some of them at least. I think when it comes to crypto, you pays your money, you takes your chance.

What Does Kraken Pro Look Like?

What is Kraken Pro Like to Use?

You can configure Kraken Pro, customising the layout to suit your  trading style, using the platform’s trading and data modules as required, inside the drag-and-drop desktop interface. Kraken Pro’s functionality is more suited to experienced users.

You  can also switch seamlessly between trading and staking products and services.

You  can track and monitor all of your  positions and performance from one clear and consolidated portfolio view. All of which is powered by real-time data.

The platform allows you  to search for the top gainers and losers and the most actively traded and newly listed cryptocurrencies.

That comes alongside a dedicated charting package that lets you compare four markets simultaneously and apply a range of indicators to those instruments.

At the same time, you can monitor live order books and stream time and sales data to keep up to speed with market trades.

Kraken Pro’s user interface is intuitive to navigate around and use.

You  can drill down to surface a token or coin from the platform’s markets view, which displays a heat map of the available asset classes.

So, for example, clicking on the heatmap icon for layer 1 protocols brings up tokens such as NEAR. Clicking on that icon brings up a chart and an order entry box, alongside the order book in the NEAR/USD pair.

There is a  series of how-to guides and walk-through videos. As well as information on order types and dedicated API documentation.

Kraken also prides itself on answering and attempting to resolve support queries quickly.

Who is Kraken?

Kraken was founded in San Francisco back in 2011. The firm operates in more than 190 countries and is regulated in various jurisdictions, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Europe.

Kraken is one of a select group of businesses authorised by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to offer cryptoasset services in the UK.

Kraken offers trading in more than 300 individual cryptocurrencies and crypto pairs. Kraken’s trading volume in 2024 was more than $207 billion and it has more than 9 million unique clients.

Despite recent market volatility, cryptocurrencies seem to be enjoying a new lease of life, and there is growing interest among both professional and retail traders. That is perhaps driven in part by a change of heart among US regulators and moves by the White House to establish a US national cryptocurrency reserve.

It may take some time for that thaw to spread across the Atlantic, but dedicated cryptocurrency enthusiasts haven’t ever paid much attention to national borders.

Kraken UK FCA-Authorised as an Electronic Money Institution

Kraken was one of the first crypto exchanges in the UK to offer GBP-BTC trading, in 2014, and has been authorised as an e-money institution by the UK’s FCA. Whilst this doesn’t mean you get the same protections as if you were buying shares on a stock exchange, it does mean that Kraken is  one of a handful of Bitcoin brokers that the regulator has deemed responsible enough for UK crypto investors. It’s worth noting, though, that crypto is largely unregulated in the UK.

Kraken currently offers 300+ cryptocurrencies in the UK and hopes to make it easier than ever for the 7 million crypto traders in the UK to invest in digital assets.

In early 2025, Kraken  received a MiFID regulatory licence to buy and sell crypto derivatives within the European Union (EU).

The cryptocurrency exchange gained the licence through buying a Cypriot investment firm which had recently received the licence from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).

The move allows Kraken to offer crypto derivatives products to traders resident in the 27 EU countries, aiding its plans to expand across the continent.

The buyout came  after Kraken had acquired Crypto Facilities, a UK FCA-registered crypto futures platform, in 2019.

The acquisition of the new licence follows the firm’s launch of Kraken Pay in January 2025.  This service allows users to send payments internationally using more than 300 cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies.

In December 2024, rival exchange Coinbase enabled Apple Pay, allowing for immediate conversions between fiat currencies, such as dollars and pounds, and cryptocurrencies.

FCA data shows the percentage of people in the UK who own some crypto rose to 12% in 2023 from 10% in 2022. The average value held rose from £1,595 to £1,842 over the same period.

In 2024, the financial watchdog reiterated its rules against selling cryptocurrency derivatives such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to retail investors in the UK.