My brother had a similar issue with Changelly, noticed that their usd to ripple exchange rate made no sense. Both me and my brother are new to cryptocurrency, I've heard good things about kraken and coinbase. Which exchange would you recommend?
So far kraken looks too tedious to setup an account on, but has more variety than coinbase. It looks like you can't even buy ripple on coinbase yet, but I could be wrong.
I've not tried Kraken; I, too, found the setup a bit daunting.
Coinbase handles only BTC, ETH and LTC at this time. I do have to say, however, exchange rates are clearly posted.
The rates one receives is not the rate shown on the dashboard or on Coin Market Cap, or Bitcoin Wisdom, however. When one purchases BTC, ETH or LTC, one will pay a higher price than the dashboard shows. Conversely, when selling, one receives less than the price shown on the dashboard.
When buying or selling, the customer must pay attention to the price on the Buy or Sell page. I have done the math on my transactions, though, and actually receive what the posted amount states on the Buy/Sell page, less the fees. The difference is sometimes significant, but sometimes not so much. I've realized the prices are the actual buy and sell offers on the exchange because I see the same prices on the Buy/Sell pages as I see on Bitcoin Wisdom (the white numbers to the top and bottom of the red/green price to the right). https://bitcoinwisdom.com/
Coinbase does comply with KYC/AML regulations.