When you place an order to trade crypto, Wealthsimple gets prices from third parties that we call liquidity providers. Liquidity providers buy and sell crypto on global markets. We work with multiple liquidity providers to try to get the most competitive crypto prices.

Since crypto mostly trades in global markets in USD, we convert the prices provided by our liquidity providers from USD to CAD. 

You’ll also be charged Wealthsimple’s trading fee on each order based on the value of the crypto bought or sold by the order. The trading fee varies by your client tier, as set out below:

Trading Fee

• Core clients: 2%
• Premium clients: 1%
• Generation clients: 0.5%

To keep things simple, our trading fee includes any costs of converting between CAD and USD. 

For illustrative purposes, if you place an order to buy 0.01 bitcoin when the liquidity provider’s price of 1 bitcoin is $30,000 CAD, the trading fee will be as follows:

• Core clients - $6.00 (total cost: $306.00)
• Premium clients - $3.00 (total cost: $303.00)
• Generation clients - $1.50 (total cost: $301.50)

Please note, when you are submitting an order, the price you see and the actual fill price might differ slightly due to market fluctuations.

You can view the full breakdown of our fees in the Fee schedule for crypto trading accounts.