Why know exchange rates? Not only cryptocurrencies, but also any other assets. This question seems obvious, but ask it spontaneously to another person and I guarantee you, you will not hear the right answer. Obviously, they will tell you: "In order to know how much money (fiat) you will receive for your cryptocurrency." Kind of right, but totally pointless: is that really the main thing you should be worried about? In fact, simply knowing the rate at a specific moment in time is nothing. But having information about previous indicators for a certain period of time is extremely valuable analytical information that will help you, at least, not to lose, and at most to earn. And now I will explain why all this is important.

Before writing this article, I conducted a mini-survey among my close acquaintances who are also interested in cryptocurrency. This is an important condition, so I, for example, did not ask this question to my wife, who is only interested in the prices of branded clothes, shoes and accessories. So I asked, “Where do you learn cryptocurrency courses?” It will be fair to add that there was not a single real trader among all those interviewed. The vast majority answered "on the exchange" and since I write on Square, clarifying the name Binance will not be advertising. Although some had in mind another crypto exchange. A minority of my interlocutors mentioned other sources of obtaining information about the course, and only one, like me, found out about the course from the Telegram bot. Now let's understand the advantages and disadvantages of these methods of obtaining data.

So, as I said, the survey was conducted among people who were not professional traders, that is, their main income did not depend on the success or loss of the trades. That is why these people could afford to use the simplest and most affordable method — to find out the exchange rate.

I took a screenshot of the Bitcoin exchange rate while writing these lines. Here everything is as convenient and clear as possible: a chart that takes into account previous periods, value, index, trends — everything you need to understand at a glance what is happening with the rate and what the value of the coin is at the time of the check. And this is correct, because digital assets in general and cryptocurrencies in particular are characterized by high volatility - the ability to rapid and significant exchange rate fluctuations. There are many reasons for this, including geopolitical changes, market capitalization, daily trading volume and number of coins on the exchange, etc.

Therefore, the exchange provides the user with the necessary maximum to quickly make a decision: to buy, sell or wait. If the decision is not related to inaction, but to action, you will always have enough arguments to determine the volume of buying or selling. However, it should not be forgotten that the greater number of provided tools is necessarily associated with the costs of maintaining their effectiveness. And each of you, lovers of crypto exchanges, will have to pay for it. Therefore, the local rate may differ significantly from other resources.

Those of my acquaintances who did not name crypto-exchanges answered "exchanges", but on a smaller scale. This is also natural: people who use cryptocurrency not on a permanent basis, but for situational transfers, will not waste time on large exchanges. Many smaller services provide services for the exchange of a small amount of cryptocurrencies without providing users with in-depth information about the state of the market. Everything is simple here: came in, saw the exchange rate, exchanged. Usually, the ratio of cryptocurrencies to fiat money on such platforms is more attractive than on well-known exchanges. That's right, they can afford it.

However, such services may have a number of disadvantages: transaction execution time, availability of operations related to the liquidity of the service and, in fact, honesty. After all, when we represent a large and respected stock exchange, reputation is very important to us. And if we pursue exclusively pirate interests, then only our conscience forbids us to create a scam project with attractive terms, wait for a solid transaction and appropriate all the assets for ourselves.

None of those interviewed by me named aggregators as a source of information about the exchange rate of cryptocurrencies, and this is not surprising - because, as I have already said, there are no professional traders among them. Aggregator is not just a scary name, but also a complex analytical platform that only professionals need. This is mostly tabular data, where information is collected and filtered from many separate sources, there are complex algorithms for filtering and even forecasting. First of all, it is needed by people who are actively engaged in trading and need to see a broader picture of events than the crypto exchange offers. This allows not only to make decisions, but also to forecast the situation, build multi-level moves and go to the bank with confidence in further success.

With the rest, we came to the last answer - specialized applications. Under this concept, I combined all possible solutions created for comfort and automation of processes, including applications, bots, extensions and others. The main point of this point: you check the exchange rate of the desired currency in a certain service on request or automatically. For example, I set up to get live rates for BTC, ETH, LTC, NON, XPR, and BNB every 2 hours (every hour is too much, and every three hours is a long time considering the volatility). Notifications are sent to the Telegram crypto-bot, where, in addition to viewing rates, you can also perform many other operations: transfers, withdrawals, staking, and more.

The main advantage of such solutions is automation. After all, now you do not personally perform actions to check the course, but the programs check it for you and only show the result. Moreover, such services provide the possibility of setting up automatic transactions with many conditions. For example: buy the necessary cryptocurrency for $100, if the exchange rate is ≤ the specified amount. The developers of my company are engaged in the creation of such solutions for Telegram, so I can say that such applications are gaining more and more popularity both among professional traders and ordinary owners of digital assets.

In the end, I want to give not a financial recommendation, but friendly advice about when to check the course regardless of the solutions you use. First of all, it should be done during market turmoil, when the value of cryptocurrency can change every minute. Secondly, one should pay attention to the public statements of significant personalities, for example, presidents of states, heads of global financial organizations or structures related to cryptocurrencies. Thirdly, these are important events in the economic or political situation. And the last is the statements of large investors, which can also have a significant impact on cryptocurrency rates. Be aware of changes, pay attention to side factors and reasons for changing the course, and may your activity always be successful!