How Old Do You Have To Be To Start Trading Cryptocurrencies

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Cryptocurrency mining, trading and everything related to them have become a massive trend in recent years, with more and more people wanting to join in on the action. A lot of people see the massive amounts of cash that can potentially be earned and dive right in. But what if you’re not sure whether or not you’re old enough to trade cryptocurrencies?

We’ll go over the minimum age to trade crypto and a few other related pieces of info that we think are interesting or noteworthy. We hope that this article will not only be a fun read but also help you be more informed in terms of the limitations around age and crypto trading.

What is the minimum age to trade cryptocurrencies?

While there isn’t technically a minimum age that’s needed to be able to trade crypto, there is a minimum age for most exchanges. The actual age needed varies somewhat from site to site, so for example an exchange such as Yobit might have a different minimum age as opposed to CoinBase.

Since an all-encompassing answer doesn’t exist, the next best thing we can do is cover the most common age restrictions put in place and go from there. Usually, it is 18 years old to trade crypto on your own without any restrictions, 13 years old for trading crypto with your parents’ permission and anyone who is under 13 isn’t eligible to trade cryptocurrencies on most exchanges.

Why are these restrictions in place?

You may be interested in finding out why even forbid people of certain ages to trade in the first place? While most sites and exchanges don’t list their exact reasoning for this, it’s somewhat easy to assume that it’s due to liability. If someone very young could go on the site and easily trade cryptocurrencies, then waste their parents’ money, this would be a lot of bad publicity for the site itself.

On the other hand, exchanges want to limit their users as little as possible and appeal to a wider audience which is why they allow people between 13 and 18 to trade if they have their parents’ permission as they get rid of most of their liability in this case, but something like this would be very difficult to do for people even younger than that as they don’t have a good enough understanding of finances.

Will these restrictions change?

While almost no sites have spoken on whether or not they intend to change these restrictions at all, it is pretty safe to assume that these limitations are here to stay as there aren’t many benefits for exchanges to get rid of them, but the potential bad publicity is very big.

It’s very likely that these limitations will not only remain but perhaps even become a standard for every crypto or NFT related site as it generally isn’t worth it to involve extremely young people in finances due to them not being able to adequately understand. 13 and above is a pretty decent age in our opinion for kids to learn about crypto under supervision so we believe that these limitations are good.

Conclusion

While you may not enjoy these restrictions depending on how old you are, they are pretty much necessary due to safety precautions and legal issues for the sites. Despite no legal minimum age for crypto trading being a thing in most places, many sites still impose this limit just in case and it seems to be a trend that isn’t going to stop anytime soon.

If you are under the minimum age or simply don’t feel like getting your parents’ permission to do so then we recommend researching crypto for now until you hit 18 and then go from there. Best of luck.