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Binance.com Review 2020 – Pros and Cons of Trading on BINANCE

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One of the assets you can trade on Binance is the company’s own cryptocurrency BNB (Binance coin). To support their own token, Binance treats BNB as a base currency against which you can trade many other altcoins. Usually exchanges use Bitcoin, Ether and Tether (BTC, ETH and USDT) as base currencies, but on Binance you can also trade against BNB. If you do so, you get a generous trading fee discount of -25% if you use BNB as base currency.

By the way, there are even more benefits related to BNB, such as Airdrops only granted to BNB holders.

About The Company

Binance is a “real” Bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading site, meaning you can actually buy and sell the underlying assets and not only trade cryptocurrency CFDs.

Its ICO was announced on June 2017, and phase I started on June 27 @15 hs (GMT +8). The original team was composed by Changpeng Zhao (CEO), Roger Wang (CTO), James Hofbauer (Chief Architect), Paul Jankunas (VP of Engineering), Allan Yan (Product DIrector) and Sunny Li (Operations Director).

When the operations started, the initiative was apparently based in Shanghai, but later was moved to Hong Kong where still is today. The servers, on the other hand, are hosted in the Republic of Korea and, Japan. The platform used to be available worldwide, but they decided to restrict access from Chinese IPs after their government banned ICOs.

As of December, 2017, Binance is consistently within the top 5 exchanges by trading volume on CoinMarketCap

Comprehensive Trading Product Offers on Binance

1. Cryptocurrency Exchange

Binance is one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchange market places, with a wide range of Altcoins. Users buy and sell the underlying assets – meaning all cryptocurrencies traded on Binance can be withdrawn to external private wallets. You can decide whether to use the Basic or the Advanced Mode, the main difference is that the advanced mode provides a more typical trading interface comparable to professional CFD broker platforms, but the functionality seems to be the same as in the Basic interface.

2. Margin Trading – up to 1:3 for BTC and Altcoins

Bitcoin and altcoin trading with leverage: Since July 2019, the crypto trading site finally offers margin trading – a feature many professional traders have desperately been waiting for. A professional platform that claims to be at the forefront of Bitcoin brokers should definitely also offer margin trading. The leverage of 1:3 is moderate but more than enough for reasonable professional trading.

3. Futures (BTCUSD) – up to 1:125

Almost simultaneously with the introduction of margin trading, Binance also opened futures trading on its platform. Bitcoin futures can be traded with a leverage of up to 1:125. Futures are either USDT margined or Token margined, meaning you can trade based on Tether account balance as well as with Token balances. Binance Futures come with as well as without expiration date.

4. Cryptocurrency Lending

One of the financial products of the Binance platform is the cryptocurrency lending system, where users can earn interest on loans they provide to others. The whole thing works within the framework of fixed lending products, with certain maturities and interest rates, for which you can register.

5. Savings Accounts & Staking Plans

Binance combines so many different services all in one place – they even offer interest accounts with high interest rates. On Binance you get as much as 7.20% per year within their “locked savings” accounts which is incredible if you think of what you get from banks, which is nowadays zero or even negative interest.

Another way to earn interest is to use Binance’s staking plans concerning certain altcoins. Within their “locked” or “flexible” staking plans you can use certain altcoins you own to earn staking rewards when participating in this kind of savings product with Binance. There are annual yields of even more than 12%.

6. Binance Visa Plastic Debit Card

For customers who are domiciled in Europe, Binance even offers a Visa debit card that can be used just like any Visa debit card for payments at millions of points of sale around the world. Unfortunately the card can really only be shipped to European residents.

Using The Binance Site

Demo Account?

Trading on the platform requires a deposit, but given the large selection of supported altcoins, you can opt for a cheap coin to test out the features.

Anonymous Account?

Binance does not restrict any provider (not even popular temporary email services), making it extremely easy to register anonymously. There is an option to upgrade, but a basic, unverified account will be enough for casual users.

Signing Up

The registration form comes with a captcha that resets after every unsuccessful attempt, but the challenge is much easier than the regular ones found on other websites. At the very beginning registering was complex because of a language barrier, when the site was only available in Chinese (even though it already aimed an international audience), but these days there is a good English translation in-place.

The easier-than-average captcha, at least after they provided an English version of it. Can you imagine a westerner trying to solve a Chinese-only version of it?

The only step required for setting up a functional account is clicking a confirmation email. However, a basic user has a limit of 2 BTC in daily withdrawals, and identity verification is required to lift it up. If the identity check goes as expected, the customer will see his limit raised to 50 BTC per day.

In order to get verified, 2FA or SMS authentication must be enabled. After adding that second layer of security, submitting a clear picture of your passport (national ID or driver’s license, alternatively) and waiting for no more than 72 hours, is all you have to do (the process most of the time takes less than 24 hours).

Using The Site: Funding The Account

Prior to trading, the balance must be topped up with at least a few coins. Fiat deposits are not accepted, but the site takes Bitcoin and more than 50 other cryptocurrencies. No fees are charged for funding an account and no minima are established on this matter, but it is important to keep in mind that virtually all coins have a minimum trade / order value associated.

refilling an account is simple, the user only needs to visit the “deposit withdrawal” section under the “Funds” menu, generate and copy an address for the desired denomination and, sending some coins. A history of deposits (and withdrawals) is kept for reference.

Account Types

Accounts come in two different levels, depending on whether the identity of its owner has been verified or not: L1 and L2. All users start as L1, with a daily withdrawal limit of 2 BTC, but they can change it to 50 BTC (L2) by undergoing a simple verification process.

No additional benefits come with verification, besides reducing the chance of a future identity checkout if the broker ever considers your behavior as suspicious.

Margin Trading and Bitcoin Futures Trading Account

Before you can start margin trading or Bitcoin Futures trading with Binance, you must click on activation links within your account. The link that allows you to open Margin Trading or BTCUSD Futures Trading should probably remind the user of the risk that comes with these types of trading.

Fees

0.1% Trading Fee

Only deposits are free, trading and withdrawals come at a cost. The trading fee is currently 0.1%, regardless of the coin, but it can be halved if paid with BNB (Binance coin, an altcoin backed by the platform itself).

Other incentives are from time to time offered to promote the adoption of BNB, but it is worth keeping an eye on the price index of the same (which has been consistently falling in the last months).

Withdrawal charges depend on the currency, but have in common being a fixed contribution. A frequently updated list of withdrawal fees by coin can be found here; Bitcoin, for example, has had the same 0.0005 BTC fee since a long time ago.

Using The Platform: The Dashboard

Binance offers two trading interfaces (differing on level of complexity, but similar in general terms), both listed under the “Exchange” menu.

In the trading page, you can find a list of trading pairs, a chart with information about the currently select pair, a few basic statistics and records (such as open orders, or funds) and a box to open orders.

There are more than a hundred trading pairs, with four major categories highlighted: Binance coin (BNB), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin (BTC) and Thether (USDT). USDT has the least pairs, with roughly five (BTC, ETH, NEO, BNB and BCC), while ETH and BTC have by far the most markets (roughly equal, 50+). BNB is in the middle with a couple more pairs than Thether, but considerably less than ETH and BTC.

The charts are interactive and can be viewed in full screen mode with a single click. Time is configurable, as well as it is possible to choose the kind of chart (defaulting to candlesticks) and to tune a couple of constraints.

A 30m chart in full-screen view

Opening an order is direct. First, you select the type of order: limit, stop-limit and market are supported as well as an OCO setting (One-Cancels-The-Other); second, put a price and fill a few other parameters; and, third, click on either buy or sell to place the order.

Advanced Orders With Margin Trading and Futures

With the new trading products – trading with leverage and Bitcoin Futures trading – Binance offers the typical advanced orders set consisting of:

• Limit and Market Orders
• Stop Limit Order
• Take-Profit-Limit Order
• Post Only option
• Good-Till-Cancelled
• Immediate-or-Cancel
• Fill-or-Kill

What we don’t find is a trailing stop order. So the order types could even be improved. But for many traders the provided order types will be satisfying.

Using The Platform: The App

Binance gave priority to having mobile support, and after roughly a month of having launched, apps for iOS and Android were made available.

The Android app has received many positive reviews, but the last update was heavily criticized. The reviews do not include information about what changed for bad, but it was enough to bring the overall rating down to just 3.3.

The iOS app is hosted on fir.im, which is basically a download link with no preview, feature description or user opinions. A quick guide about how to install this app was posted here.

Security On Binance

Security is an important concern for Binance, fact that can be noticed right after registering and every time you visit the “account” page, with a popup nearly pushing you to activate 2FA.

Pushy 2FA popup

On that very same page, a history of connections is presented, including date, IP address and estimated location from where the login took place.

The company itself claims to be concerned about security, as expressed on this reddit post, highlighting how their platform was built from the ground up with top-notch security in mind (among other things). However, (on the very same thread) they also seem to avoid talking about the fund insurance topic on purpose.

The site has never been hacked, but an error of one support agent raised alarms between their users. An email asking people to refund IOTA was thought to be phishing, but later everything was clarified. PGP encrypted emails would have helped to bring calm earlier, but unfortunately communications are sent in plain text.

A public cold wallet address is not available either. A user asked about it on their official reddit channel, but after 10 days no answer has been given.

There are no email or SMS notifications, but custom notifications can be configured using the API and third party services.

User Experience

Besides the critique to the last rolled out actualization of their app, Binance users started to complain about problems with 2FA and order management on December, 2017.

The first complain was about being locked out after playing around with two-factor authentication, for which an official announcement was made on their reddit channel, asking to the people affected to fill a ticket and (optionally) post it in a comment.

The second issue prevented customers from cancelling open orders, with a lengthy thread devoted to it on reddit. One of the users said that his account had been frozen due to a technical issue apparently caused by Binance itself.

Reviews on TrustPilot are mixed, tending towards negative. The average score is just 2.28 (as of December 2017), but it is worth mentioning that a few 1-start reviews are one-liners, very poorly framed.

Customer support is slow to respond, as it can be noticed after a quick Internet search. The supposed fastest channel (ticket system) is said to take more than 24 hours to get back to the users. Other support alternatives offered include a telegram group, a reddit channel and a Twitter account.

How To Sell Your Bitcoin In Binance?

There is one area for which Binance is not ideally suited. And that is the cash-out of Bitcoin or other coins into fiat money. So if you intend to sell your Bitcoin in Binance and cash the money out to your bank account you will quickly come to a point where you don’t know what to do. The reason is that the main platform of Binance.com is not made for crypto cash outs into fiat money.

Binance is a cryptocurrency-based service platform that doesn’t really offer a bridge to the fiat world. We say not really as they do have an area for P2P exchange of cryptocurrency against different fiat currencies. But the offers there are limited and you’d need to find someone who exactly matches your offer.

But you cannot just go into the trading area of Binance.com, set a sell order, get USD for it and cash it out to your bank account.

However, Binance has an extra platform for that purpose, called Binance.je (Binance Jersey). As financial services bridgeing fiat money and cryptocurrency are always subject to very different regulations than purely cryptocurrency-based services, it obviously makes sense for the company to have to separate platforms for those different purposes.

On Binance Jersey KYC is mandatory right after registration. Then you can connect your fiat money payment method with your Binance Jersey account and make deposits from and withdrawals to your bank account.

On Binance Jersey you can buy, sell, trade and cash out just a few leading cryptocurrencies: BTC, ETH, LTC, BNB, BCH and BGBP. Trading has basic functions, there is no margin trading or Futures, only spot market exchange. But they have stop loss orders.

Conclusion

Binance is the most comprehensive cryptocurrency platform in the world. No other trading platform offers as many different products as Binance such as altcoin exchange, margin trading, Bitcoin Futures trading, cryptocurrency lending, P2P crypto exchange and even interest accounts. It seems there is no financial services related to cryptocurrency that Binance doesn’t have in their repertoire.

Binance is a good choice for altcoin traders, the low fees are a big plus and the mobile apps allow to trade on the go (essential for daily trading). However, there are better, more stable options out there.

Their coding-from-scratch approach seems to have caused a couple of headaches in their early days, but a lot of issues seem to be solved.

With the introduction of margin trading and Bitcoin Futures in July 2019, the crypto broker appeals to an even broader audience of traders. Now it’s a place also suitable for professional traders who are used to trade price changes (CFDs) on margin.

As described earlier above, you can even cash out your Bitcoin to your bank account, but you need to use Binance’s extra platform which they have for that very purpose. Downside is that you need to make an entire new signup with their crypto-to-fiat exchange platform Binance Jersey, which is effort-wise not different to signing up with any other Bitcoin exchange from zero, like with Kraken, CoinMama or Coinbase – if you shouldn’t have an account with one of them yet.