Binance Exchange Review

Binance is the brainchild of Changpeng Zhao, a developer who first raised $15m to start building a cryptocurrency exchange platform back in July 2017. For crypto-traders, Hong-Kong based Binance is highly competitive and appeals to crypto-involved folks of all experience levels, with high-volume traders benefiting from their great exchange rates.

Boasting a global user base (excluding the US), a top-notch reputation in the crypto-sphere, and a bunch of awesome 3rd party tools connected to improve their services, Binance has become the biggest centralized cryptocurrency exchange in the world. That’s right, based on trading volume, web traffic, average liquidity, and the amount of quality market pairings available, they are the world’s best and biggest. High-five to them!

So, what makes Binance shine?

The Positives

• P2P trading is a very tidy feature for those enjoy DeFi. On this part of the platform, buyers and sellers of crypto are connected directly rather than through a central server
• Credit/Debit card payments for 31 difference cryptocurrencies and a 3.5% premium for USD purchases
• Wire transfers allow people to buy crypto directly with fiat using SEPA and bank transfers with zero transaction fees. The downside, it’s not available for every currency, and USD is excluded
• Their spot trading UI is split into three levels of complexity, with the basic quick trade view designed from novice traders, the classic interface for those with some experience, and an advanced portal for those with a lot of trading confidence. The platform also offers margin trading, futures (using Tether), and derivatives
• Binance Savings is a great tool for making a profit from idle funds by putting them into ‘flexible’ or ‘locked’ account types which yield different interest rates. Of course, there is another side to this, which is the Binance Crypto Loans program
• Binance Staking is another way that users can make money without necessarily having to day trade cryptocurrencies
• For crypto-miners, Binance Smart Pool is an interesting service allows miners to join larger mining groups that split rewards, with hash power switching to the most profitable cryptocurrency to mine at any given moment, hands-free
• A Binance crypto-visa card allows users to spend their cryptocurrency in shops where only fiat currency is accepted. Instant crypto-to-fiat conversations are done with zero fees
• Binance Liquid Swap is a centralized equivalent of Uniswap, offering liquidity pools for their users
• Binance has a SAFU reserve fund, which basically means that they take 10% of the trading fees they charge and put it in a big insurance pot, so that in the event of a hacking, their users will be compensated. This was used in May 2019 when hackers stole $40m worth of Bitcoin
• Binance’s interface is one of the most user-friendly and intuitive of all crypto trading platforms today. Although crypto trading is quite complicated for beginners, with Binance it’s easy for beginners to get started.

The Negatives

• Many claim that the customer support offered by Binance is lacking. Long delays, poor communication, and no option for phone support, are a few of the complaints
• Binance have began making things easier for beginners, but some still feel that their system is overly complicated in comparison to competitors like Coinbase
• An exchange of this size has not yet integrated stocks, commodities, or forex

Which Cryptocurrencies can you find on Binance?

Below you will find some of the cryptocurrencies available on Binance (however, this is not an exhaustive list by any means and the listed cryptos are constantly changing, with new ones being added, and redundant ones being removed). 

0x	Aave	Aeternity	Algorand	Cardano
Chainlink	BitShares	Celer Network	BlockStack	Band
Stellar	Storj	NEO	Ocean Protocol	Decentraland
Loopring	Kusama	Status	Numeraire	Filecoin
Ankr	Elrond	OmiseGO	Reserve Rights	iExec RLC
Enjin Coin	Orchid	Polkadot	Polymath	Loom Network
Tellor	Tezos	Quantstamp	Raiden Network	VeChain
Zilliqa	Tierion	Waves	aelf	Chiliz
AirSwap	Bitcoin Cash	Augur	Litecoin	Everipedia

Some information about fees

• Depositing crypto is free
• Trading fees are fixed at 0.1%, though these fees are reduced when using their native BNB Token
• Whilst not a fee specifically, it’s worth noting that there is a daily trading limit of 2BTC for level 1 traders, and 100BTC for level 2 traders. The levels relate to user verification
• The futures trading platform offers incredibly low rates of 0.02% / 0.04% for makers and takers, respectively
• Withdrawal fees are regularly updated to be competitive with other exchanges

The final say

Here at Decentralized News, we’ve watched Binance climb the charts over the last three years and are not entirely surprised to see it top many of the categories that exchanges are measured by. Low trading fees, over 800 trading pairs, great security (and insurance in case of a hack) Binance is doing the right things to keep and win traders. Every day, billions of dollars of crypto pass through the exchange, so it’s no surprise to see that they finally introduced zero-fee fiat deposits in early 2020 (to certain countries). The future looks bright for Binance exchange.