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BitMex.com Review – Pros and Cons of Trading on BITMEX 2019

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Bitmex.com is one of the largest Bitcoin trading sites in the world, founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Samuel Reed and Ben Delo. The Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange has gained more and more popularity over the last few years. In summer 2018 the daily trading volume surpassed, believe it or not, 1 million BTC.

There is one major difference to most other Bitcoin trading sites: It only accepts deposits in Bitcoin, no USD wire transfers or so. Bitmex.com is specialized in sophisticated financial operations such as margin trading, which is trading with leverage.

How to Trade Bitcoin on BitMex

In this review you’ll quickly get to know the site interface, what type of transactions can be made on the platform, which pairs can be traded and everything you need to start:

Total Beginner? If you’re completely new to the kind of margin trading BitMEX offers, our more in-depth guide for beginners about BitMEX Bitcoin Trading might be helpful for you. This post explains the BitMEX trading concept from scratch for trading beginners, if you have no clue at all how you should use the platform and it’s orders section.

Sign up at Bitmex.com

First of all, let’s have a short look at how to create an account on BitMEX. The specialty at this point is, that at Bitmex.com you can create an anonymous account, which doesn’t have any connection to your real name, in case you use an anonymous e-mail address for this purpose.

Create an (anonymous) Account:

First, we have to click on the “Register” button. This will take us to the next page:

Fill in with your info (e-mail address) and set up a password. You will receive an email to confirm your registration, and you’re done.

How to Navigate:

This is the main screen. On the left side, there is a panel where you can place an order, check your current position and see contract details. (We’ll be back on that later). In the central platform area the BTC deposit address of your account is placed (BitMEX only accepts deposits in BTC). On the top right, you can access your account & security options, where you can set a two-factor authentication.

On top in the middle, the other cryptos which you can trade on Bitmex.com are displayed as tabs. Your trading history is on the bottom of the platform interface, with the current positions on the first tab and the active orders on the third:

The arrangement of those widgets within your account can be changed by clicking on the button placed right on the top bar (to switch from basic to advanced display). This gives you full control of what you want to display:

How to make a Deposit/Withdrawal:

To make a deposit, select “Account” in the top bar and then “Deposit” within the drop down menu. This will open a QR Code window to complete the transaction.

BitMEX only accepts deposits and withdrawals in Bitcoin. If you don’t own Bitcoins yet, you have to purchase them in another exchange. To make a withdrawal, you have to insert the amount and BTC address to complete the transfer.

How to analyze the Graphs

For each currency pair which they support, Bitmex provides a chart section with a lot of features, making the traders who enjoy graphical analysis as happy as they can be.

You can see the bitcoin chart on the advanced interface; you can expand it, leaving only the left panel visible or even create a new window for it:

The chart section offers all tools you need to analyze the price action. You can set different time periods, change the type (line, candlesticks, and more), apply several indicators on it (in this example, we have Bollinger Bands, and EMA applied on the chart, and Chaikin Money Flow under the graph).

How to place an Order on BitMEX.com

After your deposit is confirmed by the Bitcoin network, you arrange the trading platform widgets according to your personal preferences and make chart analysis with the tools available; finally you will be able to actually place orders on the BitMEX.com trading platform.

You can use several Order Types:

• Limit (the order is fulfilled if the given price is achieved);
• Market (the order is executed at current market price);
• Stop Limit (like a stop order, but allows you to set the price of the Order once your Stop Price is triggered);
• Stop Market (this is a stop order that does not enter the order book, remain unseen until the market reaches the trigger);
• Trailing Stop (It is similar to a Stop Market order, but here you set a trailing value that will be used to placing the market order);
• Take Profit Limit (this can be used, similarly to a Stop Order, to set a target price on a position. In this case, you want to gain, and not to cut your losses);
• Take Profit Market (same as the previous type, but in this case, the order triggered will be a market order, and not a limit one)

Where to check your Orders and current Position

All your orders can be easily viewed in the trading platform interface. There are tabs where you can select your Active Orders, see the Stops placed, check the Orders Filled (total or partially) and the history log. On the Active Orders and Stops tabs, you can cancel any order that you want, by clicking the “cancel” button.

You can also see all your currently open positions, with an analysis if it is in the black or red.

How to use the BitMEX Leverage Section

Hint: DO NOT USE leverage if you are a beginner. Bitcoin Margin Trading is only recommended for experienced traders, because of the risk of higher losses. You should really know what you are doing when lending money for bigger positions.

BitMEX allows its traders to leverage their position. Leverage is the ability to place orders that are bigger than your current wallet balance. This could lead to a higher profit in comparison when placing an order with only your wallet balance. Trading in such conditions is called “Margin Trading.”

Inside margin trading, you have two sub-types: Isolated and Cross-Margin. The latter type of trading should be made with extreme caution because you can lose all your wallet money, and not only the money used to place the order. In the first type, you can select the amount of your wallet you want to use to hold your position after the order is placed.

In BitMEX trading platform you can set your leverage level by using the leverage slider.

We have to say that for total beginners using the platform can be a bit tricky since the system works differently to other broker platforms. Therefore we’ve created an in-depth beginners guide for how to actually use it. On BitMEX, different to other brokers, you generally always trade on margin, no matter if you choose leverage or not. Our beginners guide shall help you understand why that is.

Another useful guide we’ve written is one particularly about margin trading strategies to use in BitMEX.

Margin Trading Fees:

The taker fee is 0.075% which gets multiplied with the leverage. So 10x leverage would cost 0.75% fees.

Critics of Bitmex

On this reddit page you find some criticism and opinions about Bitmex, so be aware of brokers having up and downsides and always some unsatisfied customers as well.

Further Information

The BitMEX.com platform has a “References” section which covers any questions from a platform overview up to detailed explanation and examples of each order type or trading fees.

I hope this overview helps you to get started quickly on BitMEX.com Bitcoin trading site!