With Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies becoming an increasingly popular topic, it is common to see both beginners and experienced professionals in the financial market develop an interest in this niche.
After all, since its creation, Bitcoin’s appreciation has been so great that it is almost impossible to ignore.
Along with the great growth of the cryptocurrency market, there was also the establishment of several exchanges, each comprised of its own features.
In this article, we will talk about Binance, the largest exchange in the industry when it comes to trading volume.
You will know its strengths, disadvantages, resources, costs, and much more.
Getting to Know Binance
The exchange was founded in 2017 by developer Chengpeng Zhao, and in that brief period, it has already become the most popular in terms of trading volume and website traffic, surpassing even big names such as Coinbase.
Binance has its own cryptocurrency, called Binance Coin (BNB), which was initially sold for $0.1 per unit through Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to those who believed in Zhao’s business.
In the same way that Binance’s growth was meteoric, BNB also had its value appreciated, being currently quoted at $339.
Binance Coin can also be traded directly at Binance with other cryptocurrencies, granting interesting discounts on transaction costs.
In 2019, Binance created a spin-off dedicated exclusively to the American market, called Binance.US.
It basically offers the same services as its parent but is limited to the total number of cryptos traded, which is around 50+. On the other hand, Binance supports over 500 and counting.
Trading Options Offered by Binance
Binance is known for its wide range of options and trading styles, catering to the needs of basically all investors, whether they are more conservative, day traders, and even those who prefer to trade futures and derivatives. Below are some trading options available:
- Spot Trading: The spot market allows investors to trade more than 500 cryptocurrencies that are offered by the exchange, including Bitcoin, BNB, XRP, Ether, Tether, and more. The platform also offers Fiat-Crypto trading for several pairs through its specialized market.
- Margin Trading: This type is aimed at more aggressive traders and supports only a few selected pairs, allowing leverage of up to 10x in some coins. Binance offers Cross Margin and Isolated Margin modes, where the investor chooses to risk his entire account balance or to limit his losses.
- Futures and Derivatives Trading: This is an even more aggressive option, as it allows for leverage of up to 125x, one of the largest among all exchanges in the industry. As it has a very high risk, the futures balance is kept separately from the regular trading account and must be charged using Tether (USDT) as collateral. As regards Derivatives, Binance offers its Leveraged Tokens, allowing different bets and contracts on the prices of different cryptos.
How to Finance Your Account Funds on Binance
For those that are not very active traders, Binance offers them different financing styles for their idle account funds, allowing investors to earn extra yields without much effort. Let’s take a look at them:
- Staking: Through Defi coins, the user can obtain interest returns in the “flexible” and “locked” styles. The flexible type gives variable returns, opposite to the locked one that grants fixed deposits.
- Savings: Like staking, Binance Savings also offers flexible and locked interests on idle balances. Savings APY can vary between 2% up to 56%.
- Binance Smart Pool: Instead of using account funds to obtain interest returns, the Binance Smart Pool allows investors to direct hash power to shared mining pools, where the rewards are split and credited as cryptos to the group.
What are Binance Costs and Fees?
Binance probably has the most competitive fees of the crypto exchange industry, charging a fixed rate of 0.1% per transaction for most pairs on the spot market, which is quite below the 0.2% standard set by its competitors.
Those that trade on the futures market experience an even lower cost, starting at 0.02% for makers and 0.04% for takers. With those figures, you can easily see why institutional investors are more inclined to trade with Binance.
Trading with BNB grants a discount of up to 50%, which encourages users to obtain some Binance Coin to enjoy these welcome benefits.
As expected, the deposits are free of charge when made via ACH transfers, but there is a not so generous fee of 4.5% for deposits made with debit cards.
How Safe is Binance?
We all know that the crypto world will always be under the threat of hackers willing to break into exchanges no matter how big or small.
Binance goes to great lengths to provide the best defense system, including the very useful SAFU, which stands for Secure Asset Fund for Users, used to reimburse any type of damage caused to users.
SAFU has been used in the past when in 2019 Binance was invaded by hackers who stole around $40m, an amount that was fully refunded to users without delays.
Since it does not have its own digital wallet, Binance has a partnership with Trust Wallet, a leading company in the sector with more than 4 million users.
Another important security feature is the crypto address whitelist, allowing the user to list specific addresses that can have access to their account and blocking all others that are not part of it. Two-factor authentication (2FA) is also at hand, either via SMS or Google Authenticator.
It must be clear now that Binance is quite ahead of its competitor when it comes to protecting the users’ funds against hack attacks.
Pros and Cons of the Binance Exchange
Now that we’ve talked about Binance’s features and characteristics, we’ll simplify and list the most important pros and cons in the table below.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
|
LOW TRADING FEES |
INTERFACE TOO COMPLEX FOR BEGINNERS |
|
SUPPORTS MORE THAN 500 CRYPTOS |
BINANCE.US SUPPORTS ONLY 50+ CRYPTOS |
|
A GREAT VARIETY OF TRADING METHODS AND MARKETS |
NO DIGITAL WALLET BUILT-IN |
|
STATE-OF-THE-ART SECURITY |
HIGH FEES ON DEBIT CARD DEPOSITS |
|
DISCOUNTS WITH BNB TRADING |
|
|
ACCESS TO A HUGE LIQUIDITY POOL |
|
|
EFFORTLESS OPTIONS TO FINANCE ACCOUNT FUNDS |
|
|
SAFU FOR EMERGENCY DAMAGES |
|
|
MULTILINGUAL WEBSITE |
|
Conclusion
Despite having a few minor setbacks that need attention, Binance is undoubtedly the best option out there, as its low trading fees will have a very positive impact on the overall returns of your investments in the long run.
With so many exchanges across the market, it’s best to go with a renowned one that provides both safety and customer support, after all, your assets will be kept there. Therefore, picking Binance is the way to go.
