Binance Exchange Review

What is Binance Exchange?

Binance is a multi-lingual crypto-to-crypto trading exchange, offering its services from July 2017. Perhaps, Binance is one of the hottest and most ambitious crypto startups in the recent years. After raising $15 mln in ICO for their BNB token, the company quickly gained traction globally – especially in December 2017. Additionally, the key person behind Binance is Changpeng Zhao, the founder and the current CEO of the exchange.

Although the company was initially founded in China, the growing regulatory tensions forced the company to relocate its headquarters and servers from the country (and Japan too). Therefore, when traders first heard about this, they started asking – is Binance legit? We can quickly assure you that Binance left China not because of the law problems, but simply because the regulatory environment turned out to be hostile for the exchange. Moreover, the company is absolutely legitimate and is trusted by crypto traders worldwide.

Now the binance.com exchange operates through several offices around the globe, namely in Taiwan, Malta, Russia, Germany, India, Singapore, Vietnam and South America.

How Secure is Binance?

With the increasing hack concerns, good crypto exchanges pursue the security as the primary target. Thus, is Binance safe?

All users can activate the two-factor authentication on their accounts, which is considered the industry standard. At the login stage, Binance also helps the traders to double check their website link to make sure they are on the correct page. Moreover, the users may also generate the Anti-Phishing code to prevent any risk of dealing with the fake Binance websites and emails. In fact, Binance keeps its entire security framework under lock and key.

Although it may come as a surprise, yet Binance website security has been recently tested in March 2018 hacking attempt. The automated systems caught all the perpetrators before any clients’ funds suffered. For several months, the hackers were collecting the account information of Binance users via the phishing sites while also installing the API access on the hacked accounts. The criminals tried to convert all of the clients’ altcoins into Bitcoin, purchasing Viacoin with the latter. Indeed, this was made in order to pump and dump their own Viacoins. In addition, they tried to steal the BTC too. Yet, the fraudulent scheme was uncovered and utterly failed. Furthermore, Binance announced that it would pay $250,000 to everyone who catches the thieves.

The top-notch security layers of the platform played its role, so the hackers should think twice. However, we strongly advise the users to be cautious with their information.

Opening an Account at Binance.com

The procedure of account registration at Binance is quick and straightforward. After the account is opened, the user can start trading at Level 1 account without any verification requirements. However, the daily withdrawal limit for such accounts is 2 BTC. In order, to raise the limit to 100 BTC (Level 2), one has to submit the necessary KYC documentation, e.g. national ID or passport. However, there is also an option to get even higher limits and such requests are settled with Binance customer support.

Deposits & Withdrawals at Binance.com

At the beginning of this Binance review 2018, we mentioned that Binance is a crypto-to-crypto exchange. This means that any funding or withdrawal is conducted only in the digital currencies. Thereby, fiat currency transactions are not supported by Binance.

Traders can make deposits and withdrawals with more than 130 virtual currencies, like BNB (Binance Coin), BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC, IOTA etc. It is worth noting that all the deposits are free of charge, whereas the withdrawals entail the certain fees. In addition, there are certain minimum withdrawal amount for each cryptocurrency that traders should consider. For example, for Bitcoin the minimum withdrawal is 0,002 while the transaction fee is 0.0005 BTC.

Binance Trading Fees

Speaking of trading costs, we can confidently state that Binance offers arguably the lowest fees among top-tier crypto exchanges. At the time of this review, the exchange charges the 0.1% fee for every trade conducted. Moreover, if the traders use Binance coins to pay the trading fees – they automatically gain 50% discount in the fees. Simple math tells us that the fees at Binance can be as low as 0.05%.

Binance Exchange Supported Cryptocurrencies

Now let’s pass to the scope of digital currencies that Binance offers. Essentially, there are 4 tradable markets –  pairs with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether and Binance Coin. There are around 50 cryptocurrencies that can be traded with these four. Besides, we should mention that Binance provides some exclusive coins which are rarely available elsewhere – IOTA, Bitcoin Gold, Walton Coin etc. On top of that, Binance hosts many ICOs and as the result – quickly adds the new coins/tokens to the platform. This clearly gives Binance clients an advantage.

We should also mention that Binance offers spot trading only – no margin trading is available at this exchange.

Binance Trading Platform

In order to deliver its services, Binance developed its own proprietary platform. Apart from the web-based option, one can download the Binance platform on Windows, Mac and also on iOS and Android mobile devices. Before we get into describing the software features in this Binance review, we should outline that it is accessible in 2 variations: Basic and Advanced.

The Basic version is displayed in the light single screen dashboard. It is hard to say that the platform is user-friendly, when it comes to the interface. Yet it is on the acceptable level. As for the functionality, Binance basic platform offers two chart types (candlesticks and depth), 11 time frames and some in-built technical indicators like MA, volume indicator etc. Additionally, there are 3 types of orders one can place – Limit, Market and Stop-Limit. One can also check the trade history in the box on the right.

When it comes to the Advanced version, the only thing that sets it apart from the Basic one is the more detailed technical analysis functionality. More specifically, there are 13 charting tools and 16 technical indicators. Besides, the Advanced platform can be opened in the full screen unlike Basic one. In all other aspects, both platforms offer the same features.

Binance Bonuses

From time to time, Binance holds various promotions to reward its clients. Currently, traders can take part in the following offers:

• Binance Referral Program
• CLOAK Competition

As we discovered, Binance provides up to 40% of the commission every time the referred person completes a trade. The initial value of the commission sharing is 20% for the accounts that hold the balance of less than 500 BNB. If the traders hold the account with 500 BNB or more – they are eligible for 40%.

For its second promotion, or should we say competition, Binance is giving away 5,000 CLOAK prize  to traders with the highest total CLOAK volume in CLOAK/BTC and CLOAK/ETH pairs. The amount is going to be distributed among the 20 best performing traders.

Customer Support

It goes without saying that good customer support is worth its weight in gold. Talking about Binance in this area, their client support is the point of argument for many Binance reviews. In our opinion, the agents are resourceful and answer the inquiries in a timely manner, but there is a real lack of communication options with the support. The trader can submit tickets via online form only, no live chat or phone number to use. We hope that this is due to the fact that Binance is a relatively new crypto exchange. Apart from direct customer support, users can benefit from FAQs and different articles.

It is also worth noting that the website is available in multiple languages, such as English, Chinese, Vietnamese, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, French and Korean.

Binance.com Opinion

Many sceptics ask, is Binance scam? We would surely disagree to assume so. Despite the fact that Binance operates less than a year at the moment of this writing, they achieved favorable reputation and delivered a good quality of crypto trading services so far. For crypto-to-crypto trading, Binance is definitely among the leaders in the industry – especially if taking into account very low trading fees. However, those who prefer the fiat currencies to be traded with cryptos will be disappointed and should consider other exchanges.

As with many exchanges out there, the customer support is not ideal. Binance is on the right track, but they have to implement certain improvements in this regard. Same goes for the platform, as we felt that Binance software truly lacked a good selection of orders to place. Overall, it is a highly promising crypto exchange.