Disclaimer

A couple of weeks ago, I was made aware of Bybit and asked if it’s something I would be willing to use and potentially raise awareness of.

I have used it a bit, I have chatted with staff, asked a few questions and I quite like what I found out.

Before you accuse the Goomba of being a paid shill, the only reward for me is a slightly higher returns on my ref link than normal. Needless to say, this is not a get rich quick scheme for me; I am sharing this review because I genuinely liked the offering, it differentiate itself nicely from other exchanges.

Let’s dive in.

Introduction

The company was created in March 2018 (exchange launched in December 2018) and is headquartered in Singapore and incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, let’s not be naive, we all understand the BVI offer friendly tax regimes and laws.

The website claims that it’s been founded by ex BAT and Morgan Stanley, a quick LinkedIn search returns a group of seemingly well educated junior to mid level staff with background in Financial Services or poker. That being said, it’s possible that the rest of the staff is not LinkedIn.

They market the exchange a best in class for transaction processing time and order matching with the ability to handle 100 000 tps. It’s hard to validate the claim as I don’t think the exchange has had to handle that many transactions yet but those who have fallen foul of the Bitmex overload should be paying attention here.

What do they offer?

Markets

They currently allow trading of BTC and ETH against USD as perpetual contracts (no expiry and same funding mechanism as Bitmex) up to x100 leverage. In the next couple of weeks, there is a plant to introduce XRP and EOS too. Note that they use the same mark price as Bitmex for ETH and BTC so you can use the Bitmex charts on TradingView.

IMPORTANT: if you don’t understand leverage, what is it and how to use it, please stop here and DYOR, look at CryptoCred‘s material for a start https://medium.com/@cryptocreddy/comprehensive-guide-to-position-size-and-leverage-2e27764ce9e0. I also advise to start on the Tesnet to experiment.

Where they are different from market leader Bitmex is that they offer the use of ETH or as collateral, so you can deposit, earn (or lose) and withdraw ETH. If you are familiar with Bitmex, you will know that you can only deposit and withdraw BTC.

One of the question you should ask yourself before jumping on a new exchange is what is the liquidity like. After 5 months, the exchage shows about $12–13M worth of volume with 60–80% for BTC. I’m being told there are plans to increase volume by onboarding market makers to increase liquidity.

Coincodex volume assessment

As for the spreads, its the same as Bitmex for BTC —50 cents — and it’s double Bitmex for ETH with a 10 cents spread

ETH orderbook

Security

Another question to ask yourself before jumping in is what security measures are in place. In my mind, an exchange without 2FA is a no-no and it’s becoming clear that sms 2FA is really not all that.

Bybit offers the sms based 2FA and the app based too (Google auth here), I personally recommend the second one and it’s good practice to back up your 2FA code too

2FA settings

OK, so I am pretty happy with liquidity and security, let fund this bad boy.

Funding

No issue here, simply navigate to “Assets” at the top and then on the relevant deposit button. I would advise to use the copy button on the pop up button rather than copy the address yourself.

Once the network confirmed the transaction, I got an email notification and the funds were available for trading.

Standard fare.

Fees

In passing, another thing you need to pay attention to is trading fees, nothing to report here, it’s a match with Bitmex.

Moving on.

Interface

One thing I think is going to do well for Bybit is the trading UI. The Interface in general is pretty clear and airy compared to the more stuffy or dated looking Bitmex. It reminded me a lot of the Binance interface with the same color accent, surely something appealing to new joiners. You can chose between day and light theme as well, someting which weirdly a lot of people put pretty high on their lists.

On the trading screen, you will find the usual widgets:

Chart

Standard fair provided by Tradingview

Order book and recent trades

Again, nothing eath shattering or bad here

Positions and Asset Overview

At the bottom, you will fin your position summary with different tabs for active orders, stops, history,…. Just below you can view the total balance of all your assets on the exchange included balances and realised and unrealised PnL. A very good summary which is an improvement on the Bitmex on in my mind.

A note, there seems to be a bug on Chrome, as at some point I wasn’t able to see my open position anymore while I could see it in IE.

Trade entry

This is the real piece of resistance in my mind as it makes entering trades with stop losses and profit taking so easy.

You can create market orders, limit orders and limit stop orders (a limit order is created once the price reach defined level) and you also get offered the option to enter your stops. Once done you get a nice summary of cost, final position, stops….

Once you have position you can very easily adjust stop losses, profit taking leaves through the position summary and that includes trailing stops and profits.

All in all, I found the trading interface to be really clear and easy to use. Another plus is that the mobile version is really clean and clear, as seen below.