The 0.60% Fee Buried on Page 6 of the New Fee Schedule

Page six, line twelve. That is where the number lived, in a 19-page PDF titled "Advanced Trading Fee Schedule, Effective February 2, 2026," opened at my kitchen table at 9:20 p.m. on January 20 while a burrito went cold next to the trackpad. Maker fee, bottom tier: 0.60%. I trade on the exchange's advanced interface maybe twice a week, limit orders, slight size, and I had spent three years treating my tier like a permanent object, somethin' printed, somethin' with my name on it.

Here is what it costs to be wrong about a percentage. December volume: $980 across nine trades. At 0.40% maker, my assumed rate, that is $3.92 in fees. At 0.60%, the rate the table actually charged, it is $5.88. Difference: $1.96 in one month. Run it across the whole fourth quarter and the gap is $22.60 paid above what I believed, on money I reckoned was fee-exempt cuz I had read a table once, in 2023, and never again.

The schedule did not raise anything. My volume dropped the tier, the tier took the fee with it, and page 6 buried both facts in the same gray table. The part that took a phone call to find out was how frequently the re-pricing happens now, and that answer is what changed my habits for good.

the table on page 6, line 12

The table runs six tiers by trailing 30-day volume, $0 to $1,000 at the bottom, $400 million and up at the top, and the maker fee steps down 0.60, 0.40, 0.25, 0.15 as the volume climbs, with taker rates running 0.80 down to 0.05 alongside. What changes on February 2 is the cadence: tiers re-price on the first of each month off the trailing 30 days, no grace period, no grandfathering, where the old schedule re-checked quarterly. Support confirmed it in nine minutes of hold music, a rep named Dinesh reading from the same PDF I had open. My December, all $980 of it, priced me at the bottom.

nine hundred eighty dollars of December

December, for the record, was not a strategy. I bought $340 of ETH on the 3rd, $210 of BTC on the 14th, sold $180 of SOL on the 19th at a loss I wanted on the books for taxes, and poked at two limit orders that never filled. Volume: $980. Fills: nine. The tier does not care why the volume fell, whether it was the holidays or the car repair or the fact that I simply had nothin' to buy. It counts. That is all it does.

the spreadsheet with eleven columns

The sheet now runs: date, pair, side, order type, size, fill price, fee, fee rate, tier, trailing 30-day volume, delta versus assumed. Eleven columns, 61 rows since October. I jotted the first version on the back of an electric bill at midnight and banged out the real one in Google Sheets before 1 a.m. The delta column is the one that pays, cuz it turns a buried table into one number I read every mornin' with my coffee. It has caught the drift twice since the night I built it.

the audit of the fourth quarter

Backfilled rows, October thru December: $18,400 of total volume, $96.20 of fees actually charged, $73.60 under my assumed tier, gap $22.60. The gap never shows up on a statement as a line item. It shows up as nothing, as a slightly thinner balance, as a fee field I scrolled past on every confirmation screen. Multiply my habit by a few million retail accounts and you have a quiet, structural revenue line built entirely outta nobody re-reading page 6. I am not outraged. I am subscribed, apparently, and now I know the price of the subscription.

the notification setting that does not exist

On January 21 I clicked through every settings page looking for an alert, notify me when my tier changes. It does not exist. Support confirmed by chat, ticket 04471238, and suggested I "monitor the fee schedule page." I narrowed the request down to a monthly calendar reminder instead, the 1st, 9 a.m., labeled "count volume." Low-tech. Free. It has fired twice so far, and I checked the table twice, which is two more times than the old schedule ever made me check.

what the convert button costs

Separate table, same PDF, page 9: the simple buy-and-sell flow, the one my brother-in-law uses, prices differently from the advanced interface, and the spread is not printed next to the button anybody actually presses. I walked him thru both screens at Thanksgiving with his login and my laptop. Same $100 of ETH. The simple flow cost him $2.49 more. He kept using the simple flow. People do.

February 2, no reprieve

February 2 will price me at tier two for January, $1,240 of volume, 0.40% maker, exactly as Dinesh read it out. The fix was never a better tier. The fix is knowing, on the 1st, which tier I am in, because the exchange updates a page and the page does not chase anybody with an email. That is it. Sixty-one rows, one calendar reminder, one column that pays. That is the whole method.