Binance

Binance is an exciting new entry to the increasingly crowded Bitcoin exchange market. Since its Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in 2017, the site has gone on to become the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by volume. That’s why we decided to make our own Binance review to showcase everything the exchange offers.

Binance is based in East Asia. It started off in China, then moved to Japan, and is reportedly relocating to Malta. Currently, it only carries out crypto-to-crypto exchanges, but when the move to Malta goes through, it will look to add fiat currencies to its offering.

Can Binance justify its hype? Does it have a claim for being one of the best Bitcoin exchanges in the world, as well as the most popular?

Binance Key Features

You don’t get to be the biggest Bitcoin trading platform in the world by accident. You get there by offering a good experience to your users and a whole boatload of features.

Binance.com is a digital currency exchange which—even if it’s not the most user-friendly—has an array of benefits. These include high liquidity, an enormous number of markets, and extremely low fees.

Here are some of the major arguments as to why Binance deserves a spot as one of the best Bitcoin exchanges.

Fees

This is easily one of Binance’s main calling cards. Its fees are low, seriously low. They start at 0.1% per trade, which is already on the cheaper end of the spectrum, and drop all the way to 0.05% if you use BNB (Binance Coin; Binance’s own crypto). In addition, there are no fees whatsoever on deposits, and the fees for withdrawals on the Binance website are also extremely competitive.

Markets

To be frank, if you can name a cryptocurrency, I’m pretty sure it’s traded on Binance. I couldn’t find exactly how many cryptos are available to use here—everyone seems to have a different figure—but it’s a lot. These include big-hitters like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, and a variety of lesser-known currencies. Binance is also adding more cryptos all the time.

The only drawback is that you can’t currently trade cryptos against fiats. However, if you’re here, you’re likely more concerned with the Binance exchange rate.

Liquidity

When you’re dealing with one of the top Bitcoin exchanges by volume, and one that’s handling $1.6 billion worth of transactions per day, you can probably guess that liquidity isn’t a problem. Having close to 8 million users, according to Binance’s recent public report, helps in this regard. One way or another, you’re not going to have much trouble completing a trade on this platform. Whatever the value of your trade, you will get your funds in a reasonable amount of time.

Mobile App

Many exchanges don’t even offer a basic Bitcoin mobile trading app, and with those that do, the app is often barely functional. With Binance, however, the mobile app is exceptional. In fact, it’s arguably one of the main reasons for this platform’s success. It’s available both for iOS and Android, and the interface is incredibly easy and intuitive to use.

Binance Currencies

There are Binance reviews that claim otherwise, but I want to make it clear that Binance does not support any fiat currencies, not even USD. With this in mind, we can only focus on cryptocurrency exchange rates here. This may be something that will change in the near future, though, when Binance relocates to Malta.

The good news is that Binance supports a huge number of cryptocurrencies. In addition to its own crypto, BNB, you can use Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dash, EOS, Ethereum, Litecoin, Neo, and more. In terms of the sheer variety of cryptocurrencies you can trade here, Binance is right at the top of the pile of cryptocurrency exchanges.

Binance Login and Signup

Binance is far from the best crypto trading platform when it comes to user-friendliness. I’ll get into that more in the next section, but the issues in this respect begin with the signup and login process.

You’ll get a basic account after you input the usual required pieces of data—an email address and a password—on the Binance Register page. There doesn’t appear to be any criteria your password needs to meet (like having a certain number of alphanumeric characters, for example).

After that, you need to verify your email address. Then you must read through a series of security tips. Then you’re encouraged to set up two-factor authentication right away. After all all of these steps, you are finally allowed into your user area.

Binance Interface

There is no Binance desktop app, but the browser version is easy as it is. When you log in, you go to the user area displaying the current cryptocurrency market situation. On top of the screen are several options, including account management and crypto exchange buttons. One of the things that makes Binance so user-friendly is the fact that it has two exchange interfaces, one for advanced and one for beginner traders.

The basic trade mode doesn’t provide that many things to interact with, but there are large walls of numbers that can be confusing for beginners. The chart in the middle is split into three sections by default, with indicators in place—like a moving average and trading volume—without you even adding them.

How to Use Binance

Experienced traders will quickly realize this is the platform for them. Trading rookies, on the other hand, may well be scared away.

Pure and simple, it throws too much stuff in your face. There’s no need to have every single currency pair on the screen at once. Nor is there any need to show the action on every single price point for the crypto you’re looking at; which, again, is the case here.

The Binance.com exchange looks more like a standard trading platform, which—at the very least—will help experienced traders feel at home right away. While there’s still far too much data being displayed at once, the layout of the screen is more intelligent, and it doesn’t feel so overwhelming.

Binance Market Trading Pairs

There are four options: BTC, ETH, BNB, and USDT (Tether). Given how many cryptos can be traded against these four currencies, however, we reach an extremely high number of trading pairs: 229, in total. This was definitely one of the biggest surprises we came across while compiling this Binance review.

I will say that when fiats are introduced, too, Binance is really going to take off. However, they’re already processing $1.6 billion in trades per day without them. Still, it’ll be nice to have the extra options.

Binance Trading Tools

Binance’s Bitcoin trading platform software certainly doesn’t lack when it comes to features. When I looked at Coinbase—another of the world’s biggest Bitcoin trading sites—I was baffled by how barebones their cryptocurrency trading software was. Binance absolutely blows them out of the water in this respect, greatly improving your chances of trading Bitcoin for profit.

The Binance wallet gives you the kinds of tools you’d find on a traditional equities or forex trading platform. There’s a great array of indicators you can use on the price chart. They include both simple and exponential moving averages, VWAP, and Bollinger Bands. Actually working out how to set them up to your liking is tricky, but it’s still great to have them.

There’s also a nice selection of time frames you can apply to your charts. These range from one minute intervals all the way up to weekly. One moment of frustration in this Binance review, it appears that the exchange only has data for price action since it was formed (around mid-2017). If you want data from earlier than that, you’ll need to use a site like TradingView.

Overall, I couldn’t be happier with the trading tools available at Binance. They could certainly be easier to use, but once you do acclimatize to them, there’s an excellent array of features, which should easily allow you to implement your chosen Bitcoin trading strategies.

How to Make a Deposit

To make a deposit on your Binance wallet, you first need to have your identity verified using a photo ID. There are reports online of this taking quite a while, so don’t expect to be signing up and starting to trade right off the bat.

Once your account is verified, you can head up to the “Funds” option on the top bar, and select, you guessed it, “Deposits.” There, you can choose which type of crypto you want to deposit from an enormous drop-down list. You’ll then be given a specific deposit address to which you must send your funds in order to get them into your account (following a network confirmation).

How to Buy on Binance

To clarify, you don’t actually “buy” cryptos on Binance. You need to own them already—having bought them from a site like Coinbase or Kraken—then you deposit them into your Binance account to begin trading. If you’re looking to buy Bitcoin online with US dollars, this isn’t the place for you.

How to Make a Trade

You simply head to the Bitcoin trading platform (I recommend using its advanced version, even if you’re a beginner), and select the pair you want to trade. Choose the type of order you’d like to make, enter your prices if you’re making a limit or stop-limit order, then simply click “Buy” or “Sell.”

Binance Fees

There are no fees whatsoever for making deposits with Binance, which is obviously great.

Regarding withdrawals, things get a little more complicated. The fee is always a flat rate, but the amount you get charged varies depending on the crypto. Binance warns that the fees are also liable to change frequently, “according to the blockchain conditions.”

Withdrawing Bitcoin, for example, currently incurs a 0.0005 BTC fee; around $3.75 at the time of writing. Withdrawing Ethereum is slightly more expensive, with the Binance withdrawal fee being 0.01 ETH (around $5.70). You can find a full list of Binance’s withdrawal fees here. As you can see, Binance has really made sure to cater to the needs of users who prefer large withdrawals.

As noted, the fees are certainly not prohibitive, and the fact that they’re a flat fee—rather than a percentage—is great if you’re planning to make large withdrawals. This means that large withdrawals will incur less fees.

Binance Trading Fees

Binance’s low trading fees have been one of the driving forces behind the incredible success of this Bitcoin exchange platform.

Binance charges a flat rate of 0.1% for trades, which is extremely low. If you choose to use Binance’s own crypto (BNB) for your trades, it gets even lower, deducting the trading fee by 50%.

It should be pointed out that this 50% BNB discount only applies in your first year with Binance. In the second year it drops to 25%. After that, it continues to decrease annually until, by the fifth year, it won’t apply at all. We’d love to go in-depth analyzing all of the characteristics of the Binance Coin in a review of our own, but their coin is not the subject now.

Trading Limits

Some cryptocurrency exchanges operate on a tier-based system, which determines how much trading you can do on their platform. This is not the case with Binance, which has no trading limits whatsoever.

Binance does have minimum order sizes, which is standard practice throughout the industry. The amount depends on the pair you’re trading (it’s 0.001 for ETH/BTC, for example). You can check out all of the minimum amounts here.

Binance Security

This is one of the most disappointing areas of my entire Binance review.

Binance discusses nothing whatsoever about the online or offline security they have in place to keep your funds safe. In fact, the only part of their website that even mentions security is the FAQ section. There, you’ll find helpful tips like “do not give your password to anyone.” Yeah … thanks for the advice.

The only thing that’s definitely true of Binance is that they have two-factor authentication, which is a nice starting point. As for the actual, centralized security measures, they’re rumoured to include multi-tier system architecture, but even that hasn’t been confirmed.

What we’re learning in this Binance review is that you really have very little idea how secure your coins are on this platform. This makes a stark contrast with a company like Bitfinex, who goes into great detail in this respect. In addition, you certainly can’t enjoy the same peace of mind as you would on a platform like Coinbase, where your funds are actually insured.

Binance Customer Service

Right now, you can only contact Binance by submitting a ticket. There is no phone number you can call, and no live chat option. There’s a worrying number of reports online of extremely slow responses—something I’ll touch on again in the next section.

Overall, customer service is one the weakest points in our Binance review. In fact, it’s one of the main things holding them back from being considered the absolute best Bitcoin trading site. I strongly hope that this is just because Binance is an extremely young company and that it will sort its act out in the coming weeks and months.

Binance Reputation

As you can imagine, Binance has gained a great deal of online attention, having grown so big in such a short amount of time.

While researching this Binance review, it’s been impressive to see that the general user perception of the exchange is positive. Its customers tend to like the actual cryptocurrency exchange platform (as I did myself, once I’d gotten used to it) and how active Binance is in the general cryptocurrency trading community. The interface is smooth and easy to operate, although you need some time to get used to the site.

People also appreciate the Binance Labs initiative, which serves as a blockchain technology incubator, mostly for pre-ICO teams, by providing funding for promising projects.

Finally, on the aforementioned issue of our short Binance security review, it’s worth noting that the site was actually the target of a large-scale hack in March 2018. The hackers managed to access numerous users’ accounts and attempted to withdraw large amounts of money. Fortunately, they were stopped in the process. In the end, none of Binance’s users lost any of their funds, which is quite impressive.

This proves that there are at least some security measures in place on Binance and that they work well. I just wish Binance would give us a better idea of what they actually are.

Is Binance Legit?

Binance’s most obviously attractive characteristics are its extremely low fees and the impressive number of markets it works across. When fiats are added in the near future, that latter point will become even more enticing.

You can definitely see why Binance has attracted so many customers in such a short amount of time. If you wanted to hop on the bandwagon, too, and sign up with this exciting company, then I wouldn’t blame you.

However, I would advise waiting until Binance exchange becomes more of a well-rounded company before signing up. As of now, I can recommend using it for daily trading but simply can’t crown Binance as the best Bitcoin exchange at this moment.