Bittrex Exchange Review

What is Bittrex?

Bittrex is one of the most popular crypto-to-crypto exchanges present on the market since 2013. Moreover, the founders of Bittrex, including CEO Bill Shihara, were security professionals with previous experience at Amazon and Microsoft. The company operates from the United States with headquarters in Seattle, WA.

Although Bittrex has a generally favorable reputation, it is not officially regulated or licensed under US securities laws. If taking into account the strict regulatory environment in the United States, is Bittrex legit? As the exchange management emphasized many times, their business is fully compliant with SEC and CFTC rules. In addition, there have been no legal complaints or investigations of Bittrex business activity. Overall, the company seems to be transparent and we do think that it can be trusted.

How Secure is Bittrex Exchange?

Perhaps what truly makes Bittrex stand out is their approach to the security. At the moment of this writing, Bittrex has never been hacked.

Bittrex stresses that the platform utilizes the state-of-art security technologies. More specifically, Bittrex relies on the elastic, multi-stage wallet strategy to make sure that the most of the clients’ funds are secured offline (cold storage). Besides, the exchange also provides the customers with the tools to enhance their account security. Namely, one can enable the 2FA, apply IP and crypto address whitelisting. So, is Bittrex safe?  Our answer is yes.

Opening an Account at Bittrex

Registering the account at Bittrex is a pretty standard procedure, but it has some things to note. To have the Bittrex account, the user in the course of registration will have to verify the email address and also the IP address. IP address verification will happen each time one tries to log in with a new device. Bittrex will give a notice and will ask to provide the account credentials once more.

As soon as all the initial checks are done, Bittrex will grant the access to its services. However, according to the US regulations, no withdrawals are allowed until the client passes the ID verification.  In order to do so, the user will have to upload the valid ID, i.e. passport, identity card or driver’s license. Additionally, it would be required to take a selfie and upload it as well on Bittrex.

At the moment of this Bittrex review 2018, the ID verified accounts have the daily withdrawal limit of 1 BTC (or the equivalent amount). To increase the limit, it is required to enable 2FA in case it was not activated earlier. Verified accounts with 2FA will enjoy maximum withdrawal limits – 100 BTC or the equivalent per day.

Deposits and Withdrawals at Bittrex Exchange

At Bittrex, all the transactions were conducted by using the cryptocurrency wallets solely, until recently. Despite being the crypto-to-crypto exchange, with one of the latest updates Bittrex enabled the USD markets, deposits, and withdrawals. Making the payments in USD is currently possible via wire transfers and only upon providing the proof of living/operating in the eligible location. To be eligible, one has to reside or operate outside the US or inside the US – in California, Washington State, New York State, Montana.

Our Bittrex review also found out that there are no deposit fees on this exchange. For cryptocurrency withdrawals, Bittrex charges the network transaction fees which is different for each digital currency. The size of such a fee is displayed on the withdrawal page before the operation is completed. For instance, for Bitcoin this fee is 0.0005 BTC.  On top of that, there is a minimum withdrawal amount for each coin on the platform. Bittrex informs that this amount must be greater than 3 times the fee. In the case of Bitcoin, the minimum withdrawal amount is 0.00150001, to give an example.

As for the USD withdrawals, Bittrex does not apply any commissions.

Bittrex Supported Cryptocurrencies Review

Bittrex offers one of the widest selections of tradable cryptocurrencies – over 200 coins linked to 4 markets Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, and USD (pairs with BTC, USDT, ETH, and TUSD only). Overall, we calculated around 300 currency pairs available on the platform. Furthermore, Bittrex in one of its blogs promised to add even more pairs with USD in the nearest future.

In addition, Bittrex charges a low 0.25% flat fee for all the trades on the exchange.

Bittrex Reviews: Trading Platform

Trading on Bittrex platform should not be a daunting task. The platform has a nice design and it is easy-to-navigate. Bittrex software comes with an advanced charting for each pair. One can view the chart in 11 timeframes, switch between 15 chart styles and 6 chart types, utilize 26 technical indicators and 17 drawing tools. However, there are indeed some drawbacks of the platform to mention – there is a lack of the order customization, absence of the margin trading (Bittrex is working on it) and no mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Good news is that Bittrex recently announced a new partnership with invest.com to launch a brand new trading platform. From this joint venture, we certainly can expect the vastly improved functionality and new advanced features to be introduced. Stay tuned to the updates on this one.

Customer Support

One of the major challenges that crypto exchanges face is to provide great the customer support. As for the Bittrex, their client support is available 24/7 not only by email but via the live chat too. Besides, Bittrex also provides assistance through its FAQ section.

The Bottom Line

Bittrex certainly reserves a place among premier cryptocurrency exchanges. Given the transparency and the high degree of security it offers, it is unlikely that someone will ask – is Bittrex scam? It is definitely not. Moreover, Bittrex charges low fees which add extra credit. The exchange constantly works on improving the quality of its services. Previously Bittrex was often criticized for not having the fiat on its platform. As you can see, they started introducing the fiat payments and trading with USD and more currencies are coming soon. With a new trading platform planned, Bittrex may expand its customer base even more down the road.