Buying €100 of Litecoin: the costs between your bank and wallet

We captured three rounds of LTC/EUR order books from Kraken, Coinbase and OKX EEA, then replayed €100 and €1,000 market purchases against their displayed sell orders. We did not open accounts, deposit money, execute trades or withdraw Litecoin. The wallet amounts below are clearly marked scenarios, not transaction receipts.

Observation window: 29 September 2026, 22:30:31–22:30:52 UTC, which was 30 September, 00:30 in Warsaw. Fee documentation checked at 22:40 UTC. The hero is an AI-generated editorial illustration.

What €100 could buy before any fees

A price ticker does not show how much is available at that price. To model a purchase, take coins from the lowest ask, then the next ask if the first does not cover the order. We used decimal arithmetic and retained the raw responses. The table uses the first round, selected consistently for all three venues.

One basis point is 0.01%. The spread shown is the full bid–ask gap divided by that book’s midpoint. A market buyer crossing from the midpoint to the best ask incurs approximately half that spread before any depth effect; subtracting the whole spread again would double-count part of the cost.

At €100, the Coinbase book yielded only 0.00008593 LTC more than Kraken in this snapshot: about half a euro cent at the observed price. At €1,000, Kraken’s modeled quantity was slightly higher. Coinbase consumed four ask levels, Kraken two and OKX three. The lowest displayed ask therefore did not identify the best volume-weighted result for both budgets.

These are three brief observations, not a liquidity ranking. Requests overlapped but were not synchronized exchange events. Orders can change or disappear before execution. Coinbase’s EEA execution policy also describes its execution arrangements and possible price improvement; a public Exchange book is an indicative input, not a promise of your Advanced Trade fill.

Check the product and fee tier before comparing

Sources: Kraken fee schedule, OKX Europe spot fee tables and Coinbase Advanced fees. Rates are a dated observation and may change. An immediately matching limit order can pay the taker rate; choosing “limit” does not by itself earn the maker rate.

OKX publishes different spot rates for accounts with X-Perps enabled. Our comparison uses its ordinary spot-only account column. There is no reason to open a derivatives account merely to reproduce this worksheet. Kraken’s instant-buy product has a separate pricing structure, including a quoted spread and possible payment costs. Its Pro order-book rate cannot be pasted onto an instant-buy quote.

Calculate the amount that reaches the wallet

For a fee charged in euros, define B as the total euro budget, D as the funding cost paid from it, t as the trading fee rate and W as the LTC deducted for withdrawal. The euro amount available to trade is (B − D) / (1 + t). Walk the asks with that amount, then subtract W.

If the trading fee is instead deducted from the LTC you receive, use book quantity × (1 − t) − W, with the full post-funding euro balance used for the trade. Check the actual fee currency; these two conventions are close at small rates but are not identical. A conversion quote may already include a spread, so do not add a second invented spread on top.

The following worked example uses the first Kraken book, a 0.80% trading fee charged in EUR, and an assumed 0.002 LTC withdrawal deduction. That withdrawal figure is a sensitivity input, not a fee quoted to our account. We compare zero funding cost with an illustrative 2% funding cost. The latter is not a claim about any provider’s current card fee.

For the €100 zero-funding-cost case, the model spends €99.206349 on coins and reserves €0.793651 for trading. It buys 1.678902508 LTC before the assumed withdrawal deduction and leaves 1.67690250 LTC after rounding down to eight decimals. The €0.928600 gap against the midpoint consists of roughly €0.793651 trading cost, €0.016789 book cost and €0.118160 withdrawal cost, plus less than one millionth of a euro of display rounding.

Changing the funding assumption to 2% reduces the modeled wallet receipt to 1.64332445 LTC. That difference is much larger than the observed gap between the best displayed €100 book quantities. A fixed withdrawal deduction matters proportionally more to a small purchase, while a percentage funding charge keeps scaling with the budget.

Bank transfer and card: record a complete quote

A bank transfer and a card purchase may lead to different products, not simply different ways to fund the same order. Record the product name shown in the interface. Compare the final LTC receipt for the same total euro debit, rather than comparing a Pro commission with a card screen’s all-in quote.

Kraken’s cash deposit documentation lists funding methods and warns that some payment routes trigger withdrawal holds. Available methods depend on account and location. A coin balance that appears immediately may not be immediately withdrawable. Its withdrawal documentation says the confirmation screen is authoritative for the final charge. We did not obtain authenticated minimums or hold information for any of the three accounts.

A PLN-funded card introduces another conversion into an EUR comparison. If your bank debits PLN, convert that actual debit using a stated benchmark and time; do not silently treat it as a free EUR deposit. Our guide to fees, spreads and currency effects explains how to keep those costs separate from Litecoin’s price movement.

Check the withdrawal before calling the purchase complete

1. Obtain a fresh receiving address from a wallet whose backup you have checked. Use the wallet recovery evidence to understand what a backup does and does not restore.
2. Match the full address and network to the withdrawal preview. A plausible prefix is not a substitute for checking the destination.
3. Save the exchange receipt and the withdrawal transaction ID. An exchange’s charge can differ from the on-chain miner fee, especially if it batches withdrawals.
4. Use the transaction checker to locate the output to your address. Keep your chosen confirmation policy separate from the amount check.

A small test withdrawal can reduce the risk of a destination mistake, but two withdrawals may incur two provider charges. Include that in your plan rather than pretending the test is free. For normal comparison purposes, the useful unit is total fiat spent divided by confirmed LTC received.

Data, code and limits

Download the study ZIP · 18 book calculations · CSV · Four cost scenarios · CSV · Results · JSON · Method and reproduction · SHA-256 checksums

The package contains all nine raw books, UTC request/response times, HTTP dates, two Python scripts and the calculation outputs. Run the analysis against the saved books to reproduce this table; run the capture script only if you want a new observation. The archived replay needs no API key and makes no network requests.

We do not model venue lot increments, per-fill fee rounding, order-entry buffers, account eligibility, fiat conversion, authenticated withdrawal minimums or actual transfer time. Quantities are displayed to eight decimals. Those limits prevent an honest “cheapest exchange” verdict from this dataset alone. The worksheet is designed to make the missing evidence visible. There are no affiliate links or referral assumptions in this study.