Binance – Exchange The World

Well not literally rags, but you get the idea: They started small and became a behemoth. Binance WAS an up and coming cryptocurrency exchange eight months ago, until it stunned the crypto world by becoming the number one exchange in December 2017 with $2.8bln (BILLION) in trading volume. How did this exchange, which held an ICO in July 2017, become the hottest and most popular crypto exchange in less than nine months?

Through a mix of savvy marketing, useful interface, native coin (Binance Coin BNB, more on that later) and an abundance of listings Binance rose quickly and continues to innovate to this day (Binance chain anyone?). Binance was oringally based in China but since the #cryptocrackdown in September 2017 they settled temporarily in Japan and now find themselves based in Taiwan as of March 2018.

Technically Binance is a Chinese digital cryptocurrency exchange, but it offers a multitude of languages from Japanese, English, Russian, Spanish and a host more. More language support = more users, it’s simple but many exchanges do not bother to invest in this concept. That being said the bulk of Binance users are overseas so this is very much an international crypto exchange.

Would you believe me if I told you Binance had a great team? It’s such a common refrain in the developer and crypto space it’s become a wonderful meme. It’s worth mentioning the core team that brought us Binance has serious creds coming into the venture. CEO Chanpeng Zhao previously founded a high frequency trading system called Fusion Systems and was one of the original musketeers in Blockchain.info, the massive online bitcoin wallet. Not to be outdone Yi He, a co-founder, worked at OKCoin the head of branding and marketing for the virtual currency exchange. What am I getting at? The Binance team has a stong core, early adopters and believers of Blockchain and cryptocurrency. That says a lot about the exchange itself.

Binance Exchange Overview

Binance has made their name and grown their volume through a friendly user interface for beginners, various language support, a complete trading platform for advanced users and a copius amount of coins to buy and sell. So we have a lot to cover. If you use other exchanges you may find the above image oddly familiar. Yes Kucoin kinda sort of borrowed the basic Binance template. When you arrive to the Binance home page you are welcomed to the exchange with the active contests that are being held to spur more trading and new users.

I am not a huge fan of the dark colour scheme the site uses. I prefer a softer and lighter tone, but aside from that we begin with the registration process. If it ain’t eay users will be turned off easily. Start off with the basic email and password request. Binance has had incredible success bringing in news users and the referral ID you see during registration lets you reward someone who told you about the exchange. If you use twitter it’s almost impossible to miss these referral links.

Once you’ve completed this form and proven you are not a robot you simply have to verify your email address and you are in business. It takes less than five minutes, it’s easy. Let’s start splashing cash on digital money! Once you have successfully logged into your Binance account you will be able to adjust settings, track your assets, set up your 2FA (JUST DO IT!!), etc.

Markets and Trading view

Binance offers two options for cryptocurrency trading – basic and advanced. We will primarily focus on the basic UI. Unfortunately the “basic” feature is not all that basic, or user friendly. For any new user to trading the image avove (Basic) can be off-putting. A basic interface should have less moving parts and be more direct, making it quick and easy to buy.

From the basic view a user can view the order book on the left showing open sell (red)/buy (green) orders and the number in the middle showing the last price. In the upper right hand corner you will notice the trading pairs you can select from (BTC, ETH, BNB, USDT) and all the cryptocurrencies that can be traded listed below. You can create a favourite list clicking the star and search here.

To place an order use the central box beneath the graphs and you will note a Buy and sell box. You have the option of manually entering a price that you want to buy at or clicking a price on the Order book that will auro populate the price. You can then enter an amount you wish to purchase or use the 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% buttons to fill in the amount based on how much currency you have (In our image it’s BTC).

The main difference with the Advanced view are the colour scheme and the ability to do advanced Technical analysis like adding indicators (RSI, Bollinger Bands, etc) and trend lines.

Binance Coin – BNB

The Binance coin was issued during their Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in July 2017 and is based on the Ethereum standard ERC20. BNB can be used as a trading pair and also as a means of lowering fees paid. Even as an investment BNB has shown spectagular growth reaching an all time high of $24. As the years progress, however, the savings are drawn down leading to an eventual savings of 6.75% in 2021.

Binance also plans to use their profits to buy back BNB coins every quarter and destroying them thus reducing the supply and making them more valuable for holders (#HODL). Another reason traders and investors have flocked to Binance.

Binane Fees

The fee for each trade is 0.1% which can be reduced another 50% to 0.05% if you have BNB coins in your balance. That’s an incredible offer for traders, active and unactive alike. This is one of the many reason Binance has been able to draw in so many new users to quickly. There are no deposit fees, which is a norm for most exchanges. Below is a quick comparison with Kucoin, for which you can read our review here.

Kucoin Binance Bittrex Note Free Free Fee Trading Fees 0.1% (of asset bought) 0.1% (of asset bought) 0.25% on all trades If you have BNB, you can choose BNB to deduct 50% trading fee?temporary? BTC withdrawals 0.001 BTC 0.001 BTC 0.0005 BTC ETH withdrawals 0.010 ETH 0.010 ETH 0.0060 ETH LTC withdrawals 0.001 LTC 0.010 LTC 0.0100 LTC

Summary

The rate at which Binance has grown in the past year is astounding. With it’s recent move to Malta and the possibility of FIAT pairs in the near future, the sky is the limit for this young cryptocurrency exchange. Binance also has good ties and communication with the crypto ocmmunity in the forms of regular updates and announcements.

Regarding security Binance in general has been a model exchange with it’s use of 2FA, security notices and active communications. Recently Binance suffered a hacking attempt which saw hackers gather logins using phishing websites and then installing API access to the account. Amazingly the automated systems detected the behavior and did not allow the withdrawal of BTC. This was made possible by people giving the account and 2FA details to a fake website. Never do that. Ever.

The whole situation was caught, communicated and peoples affected were reimburesed. Over all it improved Binance standing, but also gives the investor a wakeup call on storing your coins on an exchange.

While not having the most user friendly interface, Binance has still managed to grow beyond anybody’s expectations through savvy marketing, a large offering of tradeable assets, good customer support, a clever Binance Coin that reduces trading fees and great security.

We recommend using Binance even if the basic trading interface is not so basic. Check out our other review of Kucoin exchange, another new kid on the block.

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