BitForex Review for UK
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.
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BitForex
- Operating Since 2017
- Cryptocurrencies Supported 300+
- Fees Vary
- Deposit Methods Wire transfer, cryptos from exchanges, credit/debit cards, bank account transfer
- Fiat Currencies USD and EUR
- Verification Methods Email and phone
- Margin Trading Yes
- Futures Trading Yes
A few golden rules have been established by the crypto industry that are applicable to all who are about to get into the game.
- Start trading small.
- Develop a reasonable cryptocurrency trading strategy.
- Prepare for extreme volatility
Furthermore, make sure you find a trustworthy crypto exchange that can meet your trading needs. Then you can start trading in cryptocurrency with confidence.
There are over 500 active cryptocurrency exchanges. Each has its own unique set of features and target audiences. 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. Let’s look at what makes BitForex stand out from other “bits” such as BitStamp and BitFlyer.
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.
Other than Bitcoin (BTC), the spot listing includes a variety market-dominant altcoins or tokens like Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin [BNB], Bitcoin Cash [BCH], Tether (USDT), Ripple (XRP), Stellar XLM, Cardano (“ADA”), Polygon (MATIC), and many others.
The futures market on BitForex is represented by the following trading pairs: BTC/USD; ETH/USD; LTC/USD; BCH/USD. BCH/USD. BCH/USD. BCH/USD. BCH/USD. BTC/USD. EOS/USD. BNB/USD. BNB/USD. 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.
BitForex also allows you to purchase BTC, BCH and ETH in entry-level transactions using 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.
Transaction 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.
BitForex 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. Other pairs on the futures exchange have a fixed rate at 0.06%.
Withdrawals and Deposits
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.
Although there is no maximum or minimum deposit, there are some limitations for withdrawals. This depends on 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. Last but not least, if your account password has been changed, you will need to wait for an update within 20 days before you can make a 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. This is because such large-scale players are not required to pay any fees.
BitForex Features and Special Products
You’ll notice the professional touch of the BitForex exchange immediately after your login. The exchange’s sophisticated design doesn’t give the impression of being cluttered, despite the many 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 provides a range indicators including Bollinger band, Average Tru 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. These contracts are between two counterparts that agree to make a trade at a particular time in the near 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).
Remember that margin trading is a highly risky strategy and should be avoided by high-skilled traders. The exchange does have reliable protection mechanisms in place to protect users from financial collapse.
BitForex MT5
You can link your BitForex account and MT5 (MetaTrader 5) if the built-in trading views don’t suit your trading style. This is the best platform for both experienced bitcoin traders as well as traditional stock traders. It offers highly professional technical analysis trading tools with over 30 types of price chart presentations and market indicators.
Your BitForex account allows you to instantly top up your MT5 with selected crypto assets (BTC/ETH/XRP/XRP) and gain access to 300 markets that offer high leverage.
Social Trading
Another trending feature in modern crypto exchanges is social or copy trading. It allows you to link your portfolio and the portfolios of more experienced traders. You can also learn from their sophisticated 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.
BitForex, despite being a typical centralized platform, offers a subplatform that lets users swap 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 BitForex product that offers decentralized access to a wide range of apps (dAPPs), including apps in crypto-trading, finance, real estate and the entertainment sector built on top 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.
While the CApp project still has its early days, and is facing regulatory issues, it is an important step toward decentralized dominance of the virtual ecosystem. BitForex customers can access Matrixport and CoinGecko from one checkpoint.
BF Sector
BitForex’s DeFi area allows you to search for DeFi tokens not yet listed on BitForex’s 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.
Bitforex has recently made it possible to purchase the ETH2/ETH pair at a fixed rate. Users can stake ETH and get 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.
The official release of ETH2 will mean that there will be no differences between the coins, except in the production process. Users will be able to trade the staked amount at any moment.
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. There are many IEO events, and it can be hard to keep up with them all. 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 Sektor
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 charges against the exchange concerning fake volumes did not lead to 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 brief existence, it has not made traders subject to any financial fraud or identity manipulation.
From a technical perspective, BitForex employs the robust security measures to prevent scam and hacks:
- Keeps the majority of circulating assets in multi-signature wallets (offline cold wallets and hot wallets combined) distributed across various locations worldwide;
- Only 4 of 7 HSMs are required, which makes it impossible to hack the funds.
- Google Authenticator and 2FA support for account protection
- Uses anti-DDoS protections that automatically blocks server requests in real-time;
- Safer performance is achieved by smart load balancing.
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. It’s not necessary to wait for a reply longer than 24 hours.
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. This is why we tried to evaluate the pros and disadvantages of this product from an impartial perspective.
Pros
- High liquidity of most commonly traded pairs;
- A user-friendly interface simplifies complicated 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
- Incomplete transparency regarding the company’s establishment
- Service terms and conditions are unclear
- There are some cryptos that are not on 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 without any restrictions as an unverified user (yet email registration is required). 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. Your IP address is what triggers the alert.
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.
Here’s a list of the top cryptocurrency exchanges available in UK ideal for both beginners and advanced traders alike. The list includes prominent exchanges such as Coinbase.
However, if it’s your first time and 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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