Best Altcoin Exchanges
Here are our best picks for trading alternative cryptocurrencies based on value, fees and the amount of coins available. Remember to trade at your own risk and only trade what you can afford to lose. Good Luck.
Binance is our top pick of the year when trading Altcoins. It has one of the easiest signups and is packed with many of the major coins and is constantly updating their inventory. The only downfalls are that the system might seem slow at times just because the overwhelming demand but they have been updating their servers to take on the new demand.
Pros:
Cons
Little to no fees
Slow interface at times
Lots of coins to choose from
Advanced Exchange Lags
Great Security
No clear way to see profit and loss
Deposit Fees: None
Withdrawal Fees: None
Trading Fees: 0.05% to 0.1%
Pros:
Cons
No limits on deposits or withdrawals
Not great customer support
Good looking interface
No mobile app as of yet
Has built in social news feed/ trollbox
Slow withdrawals
Signup process was super easy with HitBTC, and was able to log into the account pretty quickly. One of the nice features they offer is their demo mode which allows you to test the functionality of the site without actually putting in any crypto in. Give the demo account a spin and you should be able to tell if HitBTC is right for your trading needs.
Deposit Fees: No
Withdrawal Fees: ​Yes, varies by crypto
Trading Fees: 0.1%
Pros:
Cons
Very High Volume Site
Need at least 10k minimum to start trading
"Stock Market" like trading platform
Inactivity fee may occur if you don't trade 
Low Fees
Super long verification period
Hong Kong based, Bitfinex is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges to date. Being that they are one of the highest volume exchanges usual implies great liquidity when converting back to USD and is true in this case. After all, that is the end goal and doing it is quite simple with Bitfinex.
Deposit Fees: None
Withdrawal Fees: ​Only on wire transfers
Trading Fees: ​0-0.2%
Pros:
Cons
No trading fees
Not many coins to choose from
Futures, Derivatives and Margin available
Bitcoin deposits only
No identity verification required
Slow withdrawals
You can get a 30% signup bonus on your initial deposit of bitcoin or dash but they spread out the bonus and distribute it over an amount of time. Easy to signup and ability to trade other currencies, they just don't have many altcoins to choose from , but that bonus makes up for it.
Deposit Fees: None
Withdrawal Fees: ​None
Trading Fees: None
Pros:
Cons
Home to many new coins
Not beginner friendly
No deposit fees
Lacks customer support
Easy signup
Harder to use website
KuCoin is a brand new company based in Hong Kong and has really been picking up some steam in the last few months. They offer a lot of coins that aren't found on many of the main exchanges today which makes them a valuable tool for any Altcoin trader.
​Deposit Fees: None
Withdrawal Fees: ​Varies on currency
Trading Fees: 0.1%
Pros:
Cons
Fiat currencies accepted
Negative user comments
Plethora of coins available
No trading leverage here
Competitive fees
Poor UI experience
Yobit.net hasn't always been a crowd favorite but with all the popularity that cryptocurrencies have been getting and because some of the popular ones pausing new registrations, people have been migrating here. The interface is decent but it does have a good amount of coins to trade. They don't offer any trading leverage at the moment.
Deposit Fees: Yes
Withdrawal Fees: ​Yes, varies
Trading Fees: ​0.2%

What are Altcoins?

​Altcoins are a digital currency that share similar aspects to Bitcoin. The term literally means Alternative to Bitcoin and refers to any other cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin. Altcoins have been gaining in popularity due to the rise of Bitcoin and the hopes of "cashing in" on the next big cryptocurrency. Altcoins are created by typically using the same fundamental rules as Bitcoin but diverging from some of the core rules to incorporate better features, more security or just improve the overall infrastructure from the creators point of view.

Useful tools to help you trade

Market News and Tools

http://www.coindesk.com - Overview of what's going on in the crypto world

http://cryptopanic.com - An aggregator of various crypto sites and news, filterable. Great for seeing trends and reasons why the trend is happening!

https://www.tradingview.com/ - Some of the best charting resources out there

http://coinmarketcap.com - Not just for checking prices, they also are the most convenient way to start your research as they have the blockchain explorers, official website links and also a useful API that can be linked to Excel.

http://cryptomaps.org - Visualization of price across different segments, primarily hashing functions and ICO release dates
​
http://onchainfx.com - A better version of coin market cap, has all sort of columns and you can add flags. Only downside is it only has 61 cryptos, but its always adding news ones.

http://icotracker.net - I like this site for looking at what ICO are coming up

http://icobench.com - Another ICO tracker which does nice summaries, shows teams, milestones, financials and gives a rating for each ICO

http://solume.io - compares the number of Twitter mention increase decrease to price

http://eveningstar.io - this is basically like Morning Star except for cryptos

https://bitcoin.tax - for calculating taxes owed on your crypto gains

Portfolio tracking

I would either use Delta, Blockfolio or Coinstats (you can connect your account through API but i've noticed that it hasn't been too accurate but still a good resource to see a general profit or loss on your currencies)