Last update: Jun 28, 2022

BitForex Review for Australia

Despite the constantly improving design and functionality, the most valued features of crypto exchanges haven’t changed with time — high liquidity, robust security, low fees, and a decent choice of markets.

  • BitForex


    1. Operating Since 2017
    2. Cryptocurrencies Supported 300+
    3. Fees Vary
    4. Deposit Methods Wire transfer, cryptos from exchanges, credit/debit cards, bank account transfer
    5. Fiat Currencies USD and EUR
    6. Verification Methods Email and phone
    7. Margin Trading Yes
    8. Futures Trading Yes

The crypto industry has formulated a few golden rules that apply to everyone who is about to enter the crypto game:

  • Start trading small.
  • Develop a reasonable cryptocurrency trading strategy.
  • Be prepared for extreme volatility,

And most importantly, find a reliable crypto exchange that suits your trading needs and get started on the cryptocurrency market with confidence. 

The thing is that there are over 500 active crypto exchanges, each coming with its distinctive set of features, target audiences, and investment plans. So, it can be tormenting to pick the best fit, especially now, when cryptocurrency exchanges have gone beyond the regular buy-and-sell services.

Interestingly, when combing through the features of BitForex, we got the impression the designer must have had deep insight into the market — the interface of the exchange ticks all the boxes. Now, let’s see what makes BitForex different from other “bits” like Bitfinex, BitStamp, bitFlyer, etc.

About BitForex

BitForex was established in the middle of 2018, which makes it a relatively young exchange if we count in crypto years. The exchange is a Seychelles-registered company with headquarters in Singapore and active operating teams across a few other countries, including Hong Kong, Germany, and Malaysia. It’s a global digital-currency platform available in over 180 territories worldwide with an impressive user base of more than 3,500,000 registered traders.

The launch of BitForex was an instant success — yet, the fact that it managed to jump to the top-10 high-ranked exchanges immediately after its release raised the eyebrows even of the most crypto-romantic figures at that time.

Moreover, Bitforex was openly supported by well-established names in the industry, such as Tron, Block VC, QTUM, and IT leaders like Microsoft and Lenovo, which allegedly invested around $20 million in this project.

Because of the attention it gained, there were juicy controversies that Bitforex adjusted volume numbers, but as the exchange passed the test of time — maintaining a steady position on CoinMarketCap — the allegations gradually faded out.

Still, the BitForex platform causes fierce debates among avid crypto-traders — they either adore it or detest its trading approach. Objectively, the exchange has a decent choice of trading opportunities, including spot trading, margin, and derivatives trading, a referral program, and its own native token.

Supported Cryptocurrencies and Payment Methods

The exchange offers a solid selection of 163 cryptocurrencies available on the spot market and nine perpetual contracts with leverage.

Apart from Bitcoin (BTC), the spot list includes a variety of market-dominant altcoins and tokens, such as Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ripple (XRP), Stellar (XLM), Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), etc.

The following trading pairs represent the futures market on BitForex: BTC/USD, ETH/USD, LTC/USD, BCH/USD, XRP/USD, EOS/USD, BNB/USD, GRIN/USD, and BEAM/USD.

When it comes to fiat currency, Bitforex doesn’t offer fiat-to-crypto pairs on its spot market, but it uses the U.S. Dollar as a base currency with futures.

However, BitForex allows users to make sleek entry-level purchases of BTC, BCH, ETH, LTC, and XLM using either USD or EUR. The exchange cooperates with the renowned provider Simplex, enabling debit and credit card payments.

Finally, don’t let the exchange name mislead you into thinking that BitForex supports trading forex. It doesn’t.

Trading Fees and Limits

Based on the choice of trading service, we can conclude that BitForex targets seasoned traders who make multiple transactions during the day. A competitive pricing schedule is essential for this category of users and BitForex has it — the exchange charges below the average standard, without any hidden fees and surcharges.

Trading Fees

BitForex doesn’t make a difference between maker and taker fees on the spot market — it incurs a flat fee of 0.1% on all available trading pairs. Trades with perpetual futures, on the other hand, will cost you either 0.04% or 0.06%, depending on your position as a maker or taker, respectively, but only for trading pairs that contain BTC and ETH. All other pairs on the futures market come with a fixed rate of 0.06%.

Deposits and Withdrawals

The exchange doesn’t charge for crypto deposits, while the fee for fiat purchases is set individually by the payment provider Simplex. Withdrawal fees depend on the type of cryptocurrency you’re transferring out. For example, it’ll cost you around 0.0005 BTC to withdraw Bitcoin, which is slightly below the industry average.

There is no minimum or maximum limit for deposits, but when it comes to withdrawals, there are certain limitations also, depending on the crypto. For Bitcoin, the maximum limit is 100 BTC per day. Also, when you activate a withdrawal request, you have to enable either SMS authentication or 2FA (two-factor authentication) first. Finally, note that if you have changed your account password, you’ll need to wait around 20 days for an update before being able to initiate a new withdrawal.

MT5 fee

If you use BitForex synchronized with the MT5 platform, there is a separate fee for all types of sales and purchases, depending on the asset itself. For trading crypto, the fee is set to 0.08% of the total transaction value unless you hit a trading volume of 1,000 in a timespan of 30 days or store at least 50 BTC on the trading platform. Such large-scale players don’t pay anything.

BitForex Features and Special Products

You’ll notice the professional touch of the BitForex exchange immediately after your login. The exchange features a sophisticated design, which doesn’t give an impression of a cluttered platform despite the variety of trading options.

The order book stands on the right, the charting view is placed on the left, while on the bottom page, you can see all new trading offers. The exchange uses the TradingView interface as a charting tool, which is a familiar environment for crypto traders. It offers a range of clearly presented indicators, including Bollinger Bands, Average True Range, and Simple Moving Averages.

Moreover, BitForex ensures face-paced crypto transactions thanks to the advanced machine engine it utilizes, which is claimed to process nearly 1.6 million orders per second. Now, let’s round-up all trading activities you can take part in as a BitForex user apart from the standard spot market.

Perpetual Contract

Perpetual contracts are a long-established trading practice in the stock market and a perfect fit for the behavior of cryptocurrencies. They’re contracts between two counterparts who agree to complete a trade at a given time in the future. Unlike regular futures, perpetual contracts don’t have an expiry date, giving traders more space to speculate on the crypto price regardless of whether they plan to go short or long.

This class of futures contract makes more than half of the total trading volume of BitForex mainly because the exchange offers a very intuitive environment for executing perpetual trades. The interface differs from the spot market a bit — you’ll find all information about the active contract on the left side, the order book on the right, and your open contracts at the bottom.

The most attractive feature of Bitforex perpetual contracts is the insanely high leverage the exchange offers. If you trade Bitcoin or Litecoin, you can enhance your position up to 100x, while other supported cryptos can reach 50x (EOS) or 25x (XRP).

However, remember that margin trading is an exceptionally risky strategy reserved only for highly-skilled traders, even though the exchange has established reliable mechanisms to protect users against a  financial collapse.

BitForex MT5

If the built-in trading view doesn’t satisfy your trading style, you can link your BitForex account with MT5 (MetaTrader 5), which is the golden-standard platform for both traditional stock traders and seasoned bitcoiners. It offers highly professional technical analysis trading tools with over 30 types of price chart presentations and market indicators.

With your BitForex profile, you can directly top up your MT5 account with a selected number of crypto assets (BTC, ETH, XRP, and Tether (USDT)) and get access to 300 markets with high leverage.

Social Trading

Social or copy trading is another trending feature across modern crypto exchanges. It enables you to link your portfolio with the portfolio of more experienced traders, mimic their moves, and learn from their upscale strategies. The best thing is that on BitForex, you’ll pay no extra fees for using this option, except for the percentage your mentors receive for any realized profit.

EazySwap

Crypto-trading exchanges that operate as AMM (automate market maker) protocols revived the obscure decentralized exchanges by offering easy-to-use platforms and a solution to their liquidity issues. This trading approach is rather different from traditional exchanges because AMMs deal with another type of digital asset — smart tokens — and don’t act as a custodian or facilitator of the transaction.

Despite being a typical centralized establishment, BitForex offers a sub-platform with its own liquidity pools where users can easily swap the full range of ERC20 tokens. Since the new crypto waves are moving in a fully decentralized direction, Bitforex is actively working on expanding the scope of tokens available in this market.

CApp Town

CApp Town is another decentralized product of BitForex that allows access to a range of decentralized apps (dAPPs), not only in the crypto-trading niche but also apps from finance, real estate, and even the entertainment industry built on top of a blockchain.

The most popular infrastructure for creating such apps is Ethereum, but it’s not the only one out there. A few blockchain alternatives like EOS and Tron are gradually but surely entering the dApp landscape as well. The problem is that cross-chain interaction between protocols and apps of different blockchains is rather difficult. And that’s the very purpose of CApp town — to bridge crypto users with multiple blockchain-based apps.

The CApp project is still young, passing its teething issues due to the lack of regulatory framework but is a step forward to decentralized dominance in the virtual ecosystem. For now, BitForex users can enter Matrixport, CoinGecko, and a few other decentralized apps from a single checkpoint.

BF Sector

In the same DeFi (decentralized finance) spirit, BitForex has its own DeFi area where you can search for a DeFi token that is supported by BitForex but not officially listed on its spot market. So, if you see a “gem” in the array of new smart tokens, you can pull a trading pair containing that crypto to the spot market.

Ethereum 2.0 Staking

While the world is eagerly waiting for the new Ethereum version, where the Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol will be replaced with a more environmentally sustainable one Proof-of-Stake (PoS), BitForex users can become part of the transition and earn some profit.

Recently, Bitforex offered the ETH2/ETH pair at a fixed price, allowing users to stake ETH and gain ETH2 in exchange. The exchange will use the staked ETH to take part in the ETH2 node validation and share the profit with investors depending on their contribution. The minimum entrance amount is 0.1 ETH.

Note that after the official release of ETH2, there will be no difference between the two coins — just in the mechanism of production before and after the PoS era. In the meantime, users can trade with the staked amount at any point.

BitForex Turbo

Finally, on BitForex, you can find a valuable listing platform with a variety of premium IEO projects and keep track of all updates — release dates, pre-sales, and allocations. IEO events come and go in large numbers, so it’s difficult to follow all of them. Yet, the BitForex Turbo system will give you a clean organizer not to miss a promising opportunity.

BitForex API

Other APIs use Post mode while their Quote API uses get mode. SignData, API access credentials, request times, and method request server addresses must all be signed to allow API queries that are not API-related. Spot’s API can handle a variety of data types including ticker, depth and cancel an order.

BF Sector

This is a separate trading zone for NFT tokens, Polkadot, Defi. When you trade on the BF sector, you facilitate the creation of an open and immutable blockchain.

Is BitForex Safe to Use?

The allegations against the exchange regarding fake volumes never turned into an official court investigation. Over time, Bitforex proved itself to be a trustworthy marketplace with millions of loyal customers scattered around the globe. In its relatively short years of existence, it has never imposed traders to any kind of financial scam or identity manipulation.

From a technical perspective, BitForex employs the robust security measures:

  • Keeps the majority of circulating assets in multi-signature wallets (offline cold wallets and hot wallets combined) distributed across various locations worldwide;
  • Requires 4 out of the total 7 HSM (hardware security modules), which makes it impossible for hackers to breach the funds even if they manage to enter the system;
  • Supports 2FA and Google Authenticator for better account protection;
  • Uses anti-DDoS protections that automatically blocks server requests in real-time;
  • Employs smart load balancing for safer performance.

All in all, Bitforex has one of the healthiest security systems in the entire industry but it lacks governance transparency and regulatory backup by an official financial institution.

Customer Support Team

The general feeling is that BitForex delivers high-standard customer support even though they don’t provide a direct phone line. If you face any issue throughout the registration or trading process, you can reach out to the BitForex customer team through a ticketing system, email, or rely on their chatbot for common issues. The good thing is that you won’t wait longer than 24 hours for an accurate response.

Also, BitForex features a carefully-designed FAQ section where you can find all details about fees, available markets, withdrawals, payment methods, and limits  — organized, part by part.

Finally, don’t underestimate BitForex Telegram Channel — it can be a great source of news and trading tips.

Pros & Cons

As we mentioned at the beginning, users’ opinions and BitForex exchange reviews are rather conflicting among the large user base. That’s why we’ve tried to weigh the pros and cons from an unbiased perspective:

Pros

  • High liquidity of most commonly traded pairs;
  • User-friendly interface that simplifies complex trading features;
  • Low trading fees.
  • Users can pick their favorite digital assets and send them from the best cryptocurrency hardware wallet to the wallet address provided.

Cons

  • Lack of transparency about the company establishment;
  • Unclear terms of service;
  • Some popular cryptos are missing from the list.

FAQs

Does BitForex provide a mobile app?

Bitforex has a mobile app available for both iOS and Android devices. The app offers a compact and clean trading view and more importantly, it supports nearly all trading features you can find on the original web platform (bitforex.com).

Can US citizens trade futures on BitForex?

Even though BitForex isn’t licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or any other regulatory body across the States, no specific statement points out that US traders can’t use the futures market.

Is KYC necessary on BitForex?

Bitforex has a very loose policy regarding KYC verification. It allows you to use its services as an unverified user (yet, email registration is required) without any noticeable restrictions. The exchange will ask you to undergo ID verification only if the exchange notices abnormal IP address behavior and if your trading volume exceeds $10,000+ per day. Remember that it isn’t the amount that primarily triggers the alert but your IP address.

Conclusion

BitForex is a next-gen crypto exchange that comes with a full package of services under one roof. This, combined with the affordable fees and clear design, makes BitForex a promising destination for a full crypto experience, especially for those who want to stay busy on the blockchain and diversify their portfolios.

Tap here for a list of the best cryptocurrency exchanges in Australia. The list includes well-known exchange platforms such as Coinbase.

However, if you want to keep a low profile and make a one-off Bitcoin investment without reading Bollinger Bands, it’s perhaps better to turn to a brokerage-like crypto exchange.

 

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author Marco Vela

A crypto obssessed digital marketer passionate about making a difference in the world. When he's not behind the computer he can be found hiking, camping and relaxing with his dog.