Binance Review

A trading cryptocurrency guide must provide reviews of all of the top crypto exchanges out there, so that you can find the best cryptocurrency exchange site for you. This review of Binance consists of four parts: general information, fees, deposit methods and security.

General Information

Binance is an exchange based in Hong Kong. There are loads of coin exchanges from Hong Kong. Hong Kong is in a way the Mecca of cryptocurrency trading. A non-exhaustive list of competitors to this exchange on its home turf is Bit-Z, KuCoin, Gatecoin, BitFlip and CoinEx Market.

Binance does not explicitly prohibit US-investors from trading on its exchange. In any event, all US-investors should still perform their own analysis of whether their home state imposes any legal obstacles to them trading at any of the top crypto exchanges that could be the best cryptocurrency exchange site for them.

Trading Alternatives – Basic & Advanced

Binance-users have the opportunity to choose between two different trading alternatives. The first one is called basic, and does not cater as good to people interested in more detailed technical analysis as the advanced version does. None of them can really be considered extremely easy-to-use though. The basic version’s trading chart looks like this:

As is evident from the picture, the basic trading chart is quite straight-forward and inherently easy to understand. Most of the crucial information is included in one page. Prices are to the left, graphs in the middle (with buy and sell options), and the history to the right.

The advanced version’s trading chart looks like this:

The advanced version offers a darker theme, where the charts take up more space. As in the basic version, the trade history is on the far right. The buy and sell boxes however, are here in the low right corner (instead of in the bottom center as in the basic version). It is of course up to each individual to decide which trading chart suits him/her best.

Binance Fees

The fees at any exchange are very important to consider. Every trade occurs between two parties: the maker, whose order exists on the order book prior to the trade, and the taker, who places the order that matches (or “takes”) the maker’s order. We call makers “makers” because their orders make the liquidity in a market. Takers are the ones who remove this liquidity by matching makers’ orders with their own. The maker-taker model encourages market liquidity as the makers providing the liquidity are often given a fee discount compared to the takers.

There are also a number of top crypto exchanges who don’t charge different fees between takers and makers. Usually, we call such exchanges’ trading fees “flat”.

Binance Trading fees

Binance offers a flat trading fee of 0.10%. Accordingly, Binance does not care about whether you are a taker or a maker. For investors who prefer to pick-up existing orders from the order book, this might be an attractive trading fee model. Binance’s trading fees are far below the industry average which is around 0.25% and thus constitutes a strong competitive advantage against the majority of other top crypto exchanges in the market and maybe even makes Binance the best cryptocurrency exchange site for you.

If you manage to achieve any of Binance’s VIP-levels (there are 8 levels), your trading fees will be lower. The VIP-level you qualify into (if any) is dependent upon your trading volume over the most recent 30-day periods, and your holdings BNB-tokens (Binance’s own token). If you’re in VIP-level 1, your trading fees for maker trades is lowered by 0.01% to 0.09% (and even lower if you hold BNB-tokens). If you’re in the highest VIP-level – VIP 8 – then your trading fees are only 0.02% for makers and 0.04% for takers. However, to achieve the eighth level of VIP you need to have traded for more than 150,000 BTC during the most recent 30 day-period. On the date of writing this review – 6 February 2019 – 150,000 BTC corresponds to roughly 500 million USD.

Binance Withdrawal fees

Binance charges a withdrawal fee amounting to only 0.0005 BTC when you withdraw BTC. Also this fee is far below the industry average. The global industry average is namely 0.000812 BTC.

As you surely know, withdrawal fees vary from cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency. The below picture shows the withdrawal fee for a small number of the cryptocurrencies traded at Binance:

Deposit Methods

Previously, Binance only accepted deposits of cryptocurrencies and no deposits of fiat currency was accepted. New crypto investors was accordingly restricted from trading at Binance. However, the exchange announced on 31 January 2019 that credit card deposits will now be possible under certain circumstances.

The exchange has joined forces with a payment service firm from Israel named Simplex. This makes it possible for Binance-users to purchase Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ripple with Visa or MasterCard-credit cards. This deposit method is however not possible for countries on Sanctions lists (such as Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, Lybia), nor residents of any of the following six US-states: New York, Connecticut, Washington, New Mexico, Georgia and Hawaii.

Simplex charges 3.5% per trade. So if you want to buy Bitcoin for USD 10,000, Simplex will take US 350 (plus a minium flat fee of USD 10) for enabling the purchase.

Binance Security

One might ask why security is even a feature that we at Cryptowisser have looked for at the different top crypto exchanges. The answer is two-fold:

• Exchanges store a massive amount of valuable personally identifiable information. From names to addresses, to government identification details, taxpayer identification number and a lot more; and
• Exchanges handle of course a lot of cash or coin deposits and withdrawals.

Examples of successful hacks are countless. The most famous is probably the Mt.Gox-hack that left thousands of users without a penny (worth $450 million at that time and x times more today). But many other exchanges have faced similar outcomes. We don’t want your exchange – and specifically not your funds at the exchange – to be subject of a cyber-attack! Our security score is the result of testing the webpage of each exchange at Observatory by Mozilla (https://observatory.mozilla.org/) which has helped over 125,000 websites by teaching developers, system administrators, and security professionals how configure their sites safely and securely.

Binance has a security score of B+. This is far above average when it comes to top crypto exchanges and could also be a factor making you conclude that Binance is the best cryptocurrency exchange site for you.

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