Exodus Wallet Review & Fees Warning
Today we are going to look at one of the wallets I personally use for managing my crypto coins and also to give a heads up about fees when using this app and some of my recommendations around it.
But first a quick overview.
What is Exodus Wallet?
Exodus is an easy to use and visually appealing way to manage and store a number of cryptocurrency coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin to name a few of an ever expanding collection of coins they keep adding to their wallet.
It comes in desktop computer and mobile versions for smartphones and tablets and is definitely one of the easiest ways to manage a growing portfolio of coins whilst having excellent backup and restore options so you never become one of those stories of people who lost access to their wallets.
This is more important than may initially sound because a lot of wallets and online user interfaces are quite clunky and if you forget your mnemonic code you lose access to all your coins. With Exodus wallet as long as you have one of your devices with the wallet on it you can simply scan a QR code on another device and your wallet and all your coins will be available on your new device.
So perfect example when you get a new phone – Exodus Wallet makes it easy for you to get back into your portfolio without needing to remember the mnemonic which most other tools require before letting you access your portfolio.
So if I had to sum up the main benefit of Exodus wallet it would be this ease of use and the fact that you know you are in control and won't lose access to your coins because of its wide base of supported operating systems.
Supported Operating Systems
You can download and use the Exodus Wallet on numerous systems as follows:
- Android
- iOS
- OS X
- Windows
- Linux
- Trezor
But the focus of this Exodus wallet review today is less about the pros of it because at the end of the day a wallet for crypto-coins is a pretty simple proposition of being able to send and receive a variety of coins (see a list here).
So the purpose of this article is to highlight one of the the main disadvantages I have personally experienced when using it and then highlight the main reason I keep using it after the lessons I have learnt.
So what is the main disadvantage? Fees…
Exodus Wallet Fees
When using Exodus Wallet there is one area where its ease of use being able to convert your balance of crypto coins to another one actually hampers the growth of your portfolio.
For example, I have a small amount of Bitcoin remaining in my Exodus wallet (I have moved most of it to Blockfi to earn interest), and let's say I want to convert this small amount of $49.19 BTC (see below) to Cardano which I'm sure many of you agree is a prospect of the future.
Now Exodus wallet makes this super easy to do by clicking the exchange menu option (the orange and blue arrow menu at top of image above) after which I'm presented with the following screen.
What we can see is that I have selected all the Bitcoin option to convert to Cardano and it says I will get 32.16296 ADA at a price of $36.76 for all of my Bitcoin and it gives the impression the cost is only going to be $38.94 – 36.76 = $2.18. Doesn't sound too bad at about 5.5% but for my eagle eyed readers you will immediately know the problem here which is I don't have $38.94 of BTC I had $49.19 (see image above) so that massive difference is part of the Exodus wallet fees they are charging or the exchange they are using is charging at the time.
So the actual cost of this exchange would be $49.19 – 36.76 = $12.43 which represents a massive 25% fee for performing this exchange to Cardano.
Needless to say an absolute rip off!
And why I don't intend to use Exodus wallet for doing exchanges ever again but rather buy coins from exchanges like Swyftx (for Australia and New Zealand), BlockFi, and Binance and then transferring from there to Exodus wallet in some cases like Cardano and BlockFi for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Chainlink.
So you might be wondering why I would recommend Exodus wallet still?
And there are two main reasons being the number of coins that the wallet supports of which I have a number currently stored on Exodus and don't want to move because of the fees to do so and because of staking which is built into the wallet directly and is super easy to use.
Let's talk about both these features now.
Exodus Wallet Supported Coins
This is one of the strong points of Exodus Wallet and is continually updated but here is a current (8th March 2021) selection available to you including the current rate of Exodus Wallet staking available. Depending on when you read this the latest coins and rates will differ ( so here is the latest list)
| 1 | Bitcoin BTC | |
| 2 | Ethereum ETH | |
| 3 | Binance Coin BNB | |
| 4 | Cardano ADA | 6.98 % |
| 5 | Tether USD – ERC20 USDT | |
| 6 |  Polkadot DOT | |
| 7 | XRP XRP | |
| 8 |  Uniswap UNI | |
| 9 | Litecoin LTC | |
| 10 | Chainlink LINK | |
| 11 | Bitcoin Cash BCH | |
| 12 | Stellar Lumens XLM | |
| 13 | USD Coin USDC | |
| 14 | Dogecoin DOGE | |
| 15 |  Wrapped Bitcoin WBTC | |
| 16 |  NEM XEM | |
| 17 |  Aave AAVE | |
| 18 | Cosmos ATOM | 9.92 % |
| 19 |  Crypto.com Coin CRO | |
| 20 | Monero XMR | |
| 21 | VeChain VET | 1.65 % |
| 22 | Tron TRX | |
| 23 | EOS EOS | |
| 24 |  Solana SOL | |
| 25 | Bitcoin SV BSV | |
| 26 | Tezos XTZ | 5.50 % |
| 27 | Neo NEO | 3.41 % |
| 28 |  Sai (old Dai) SAI | |
| 29 |  Dai DAI | 5.32 % |
| 30 | Algorand ALGO | 5.99 % |
| 31 |  Synthetix SNX | |
| 32 |  The Graph GRT | |
| 33 |  Compound COMP | |
| 34 |  SushiSwap SUSHI | |
| 35 |  Maker MKR | |
| 36 | Dash DASH | |
| 37 |  Unus Sed Leo LEO | |
| 38 | Decred DCR | |
| 39 |  Yearn Finance YFI | |
| 40 | Zcash ZEC | |
| 41 | Ethereum Classic ETC | |
| 42 |  Voyager VGX | |
| 43 |  UMA UMA | |
| 44 |  Zilliqa ZIL | |
| 45 |  Ravencoin RVN | |
| 46 |  Bancor BNT | |
| 47 |  BitTorrent BTT | |
| 48 |  Ren REN | |
| 49 | Hedera Hashgraph HBAR | |
| 50 |  ICON ICX | |
| 51 | 0x ZRX | |
| 52 |  Revain REV | |
| 53 |  Waves WAVES | |
| 54 | Basic Attention Token BAT | |
| 55 | Ontology ONT | 8.70 % |
| 56 | DigiByte DGB | |
| 57 |  Ontology Gas ONG | |
| 58 |  OmiseGO OMG | |
| 59 | Nano NANO | |
| 60 |  Decentraland MANA | |
| 61 |  Paxos PAX | |
| 62 |  Qtum QTUM | |
| 63 |  1inch 1INCH | |
| 64 |  Curve DAO CRV | |
| 65 |  Bitcoin Gold BTG | |
| 66 |  Kyber KNC | |
| 67 |  Golem GLM | |
| 68 |  Lisk LSK | |
| 69 |  Augur REP | |
| 70 |  Status SNT | |
| 71 |  Balancer BAL | |
| 72 |  TrueUSD TUSD | |
| 73 |  Serum SRM | |
| 74 |  Civic CVC | |
| 75 |  Polymath Network POLY | |
| 76 |  FunFair FUN | |
| 77 |  Gnosis GNO | |
| 78 |  Aragon ANT | |
| 79 |  Numeraire NMR | |
| 80 |  VeThor VTHO | |
| 81 |  Golem GNT | |
| 82 |  Ark ARK | |
| 83 |  Storj STORJ | |
| 84 |  Dent DENT | |
| 85 |  District0x DNT | |
| 86 |  Populous PPT | |
| 87 |  IExec RLC RLC | |
| 88 |  Power Ledger POWR | |
| 89 |  Dentacoin DCN | |
| 90 |  Loom LOOM | |
| 91 |  PAX Gold PAXG | |
| 92 |  Gemini Dollar GUSD | |
| 93 |  NEO Gas GAS | |
| 94 |  Matchpool GUP | |
| 95 |  StormX STMX | |
| 96 |  Request REQ | |
| 97 |  Metal MTL | |
| 98 |  Melonport MLN | |
| 99 |  Dragonchain DRGN | |
| 100 |  Veritaseum VERI | |
| 101 |  Cindicator CND | |
| 102 |  Ripio RCN | |
| 103 |  DigixDAO DGD | |
| 104 |  AirSwap AST | |
| 105 |  Quantstamp QSP | |
| 106 |  Qash QASH | |
| 107 |  TenX PAY | |
| 108 |  Crypto.com MCO | |
| 109 |  Raiden RDN | |
| 110 |  Genesis Vision GVT | |
| 111 |  Salt SALT | |
| 112 |  BnkToTheFuture BFT | |
| 113 |  Ambrosus AMB | |
| 114 |  Bread BRD | |
| 115 |  Appcoins APPC | |
| 116 |  Santiment SAN | |
| 117 |  Viberate VIB | |
| 118 |  Wings WINGS | |
| 119 |  Time New Bank TNB | |
| 120 |  Breaker SNGLS | |
| 121 |  MediShares MDS | |
| 122 |  Pillar PLR | |
| 123 |  Rivetz RVT | |
| 124 |  WeTrust TRST | |
| 125 |  Edgeless EDG | |
| 126 |  Lunyr LUN | |
| 127 |  AdToken ADT | |
| 128 |  Compound Dai CDAI | 5.32 % |
| 129 |  Storm STORM | |
| 130 |  Po.et POE | |
| 131 |  TaaS TAAS | |
| 132 |  FirstBlood 1ST |
Many of the coins listed above are Ethereum tokens that do require you to have an Ethereum balance and until the huge gas fees issue is solved is generally not worth it to exchange.
For the full updated list of coins and staking rates from Exodus (click here)
Let's now talk about the main reason I continue with Exodus wallet – staking.
Exodus Wallet Staking
As per Coinbase the definition of staking is as follows:
Staking is the process of actively participating in transaction validation (similar to mining) on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. On these blockchains, anyone with a minimum-required balance of a specific cryptocurrency can validate transactions and earn Staking rewards.
So basically the more coins you stake the more you will get back so in effect its like compound interest for crypto coins which pays significantly more handsomely than leaving cash in the bank (sometimes up to 20% as was recently the case with ATOM).
The only issue with staking though is that it changes on a regular basis so it makes it difficult to use a compound interest calculator to see how many coins you could earn as the rate varies sometimes on a daily basis.
That being said I am currently staking Cardano in my Exodus wallet which was super easy to do as clicking a button in Exodus Wallet as shown.
After which you click “Get reward” and be presented with the following screen showing your average rate of return. As you can see mine says 6.35% which again you will never get from a bank!
Exodus Wallet Conclusion
So to sum it up I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Exodus Wallet.
I love how easy it is to store a large range of promising coins with the ability to stake some of them and earn interest on my balance.
But I won't lie I get quite annoyed when I think how much I paid in Exodus fees when I transferred my balances to other coins as I probably would have triple the amount of Bitcoin that I currently have if I was paying more attention at the time I did the transfers.
So with that being said my recommendation for Exodus wallet is that its a good easy to use wallet which ensures you never lose access to your coins but definitely use an exchange like Coinbase, Binance, or Swyftx to buy coins and then use Exodus wallet to stake some coins like Cardano and Blockfi for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and Chainlink to earn interest on those balances.
