Binance Vs. Bittrex
A competitive advantages analysis of two of the biggest crypto exchanges by AlphaTradeZone® Research Team.
In the past few years, a new fashion emerged on the stock’s horizon with the cryptocurrencies craze, which continues to expand as we speak. If you’re a trader or an investor, then you’ve surely heard of Binance and Bittrex — two of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges at the moment.
There are two main types of exchanges, that serve as a way to trade between fiat and cryptocurrencies.
1. Crypto to Crypto Exchanges:
Marketplaces for exchanging cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash between each other in pairs.
2. Fiat to Crypto Exchanges:
This is where the journey starts for most traders and investors. With Fiat currency, you can purchase every available crypto in the exchange.
Both of them offer a wide variety of altcoins and plenty of benefits. Choosing one is often up to personal preferences, as neither can be labeled as better than the other one.
The idea of this article is to provide readers with information about each platform, which would allow you to make an educated choice of which one is suitable for you.
Bittrex
The Seattle-based cryptocurrency exchange company was founded in 2014 by Richi Lai and Bill Shihara. Bittrex is one of the top exchanges in the world, based on volume in 24 hours. Besides, the company is well known for its safety features that guarantee users a piece of mind.
Founders:
Richi Lai (CIO of Bittrex): Back in the days, Mr. Lai worked as a leader in the Amazon Information Security Team, where he managed the security operations of the platform on a worldwide level. He was responsible for Vulnerability Management, External Threat Intelligence, Application Security and much more. Previously, he was a security engineer for Microsoft, alike his partner Bill Shihara.
Bill Shihara (CEO of Bittrex): Before founding Bittrex, Mr. Shihara was a security engineer for Amazon, Blackberry and Microsoft.
Rami Kawach (CTO of Bittrex): Yet another security professional who used to work for Amazon, before joining Bittrex as Chief Technology Officer. Prior to that, he worked as Director of Engineering at Qualys and Microsoft.
Platform’s Features:
Deposits & Withdrawals:
The company has implemented a sophisticated system that allows for quick deposits and withdrawals, providing customers with the opportunity to trade in a matter of minutes.
Trading:
The trading system has been tailored to the needs of their exchange, allowing users to execute orders in real-time. Moreover, third-party products can be synchronized with the platform for easier use.
Compliance:
Bittrex is known by customers for its safety and reliability, something that could never be achieved if they weren’t compliant with all U.S Regulations regarding currency exchanges.
Security:
The company knows how important security is in terms of a client’s trust and they’ve put all efforts in ensuring the safety of their wallets. Bittrex offers a variety of authentication methods to provide users with additional protection.
I. Account Creation & Withdrawal Limits
Account creation on Bittrex is a seamless process that requires a few clicks on their website. Simply, click the “Sign Up” button in the top corner, write your password, e-mail and you’re done. After that, you have to confirm your e-mail address and you’ll be able to log into your account.
When you’re done with that, you’ll be redirected to a page that will give you information about deposits and withdrawals. There you must add some personal information such as a name, address, etc.
From there, you must verify who you are by providing official government documentation, along with a piece of photographic evidence. Unverified accounts won’t be able to withdraw large amounts of funds.
Bittrex Allows you to Create Two Account Types:
- Basic Verified Account: You can withdraw up to 3 Bitcoin each day or an altcoin’s equivalent of that amount. The site requires only basic personal information.
- Enhanced Verified Account: With this account, you can withdraw up to a hundred Bitcoin each day if you have two-factor authentication enabled. Moreover, you need to provide some government information and photographic evidence of who you are, through the third-party application Jumio.
II. Company Fees
The following fees are applied for using the services of the exchanges:
Deposits:
There are no charges for deposits.
Withdrawals:
Each coin comes with a network transfer fee. That’s why exchanges require a small charge to cover that fee. You can check the withdrawal fee individually for each coin.
Trades:
Each order made on the exchange costs a 0.25% fee. If the trade has not been completed, the funds will be returned to the account, once the order has been canceled.
Security:
When it comes to money, security is an important feature and for Bittrex, it is something that defines the brand. They have implemented a multi-stage wallet strategy to secure the movement of the coins.
Their website uses a complete SSL protection to ensure the safety of the shared information. Similar to other exchanges, you can enable two-factor authentication.
Furthermore, There are Two Types of Whitelisting that Limit the Ways to Access Your Account Significantly:
IP Whitelisting:
Users point at specific IP addresses and the platform allows account activity only from these addresses.
Wallet Whitelisting:
Users can make withdrawals only to pre-defined crypto wallets.
Cross-chain recovery service is another feature that’s popular amongst users. The exchange gives a warranty for deposits over $5,000 to recover them in case they were accidentally transferred to a wrong coin.
As long as the request is sent within seven days of the deposit, the funds will be restored to the account. Unfortunately, there’s a 0.1 BTC flat charge for every recovery.
Ease-of-Use:
What makes the platform stand out from others is the user-friendly trading interface. It uses an automated monitoring system, which allows for quick deposits and withdrawals.
Available Trade Types:
- Stop orders
- Limit orders
- Immediate-or-cancel orders
- Market orders
- Fill-or-Kill orders
- Good-till-canceled orders
Pros and Cons of Bittrex
Pros
- Around 300 digital currencies available
- Supports crypto-to-crypto & fiat-to-crypto trading
- Easy-to-use
- Advanced security features
- Two-factor authentication available
Cons
- Not mobile-friendly
- High trading fees
- Customer service requires improvement
Binance
Our analysis continues with Binance, a digital currency exchange based in Malta, that began trading in July 2017 after an initial coin offering. A year later, the company took the leads in terms of the trading volume. In addition, they have launched their own cryptocurrency Binance Coin and a blockchain platform with the brand’s name.
At first, the exchange was headquartered in Shanghai, but due to the severe regulations, Binance moved their whole operation to Japan. It didn’t take long before the Japanese officials warned them to stop all operations, which led to another transition in the EU-based country Malta.
Founder
Binance’s founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world of cryptocurrencies. “CZ,” as he’s widely known, is the CEO of the company, who established Binance as a leading currency exchange in a matter of months.
His first steps in the cryptocurrency world started in a company called blockchain.info, before joining OKCoin as a Chief Technical Officer. At that time, OKCoin is the leading Bitcoin exchange in China. Unfortunately, his work for the company ended in less than a year and he went on launching Binance.
Thanks to the ICO boom in 2017, “CZ” launched his crypto exchange and raised $15 million during the offering. From there on, it’s all history.
Account Creation
Signing up is a seamless task that requires only a couple of minutes of your time. Traders with unverified accounts can withdraw up to 2BTC a day. Verified accounts, also regarded as level 2, have a 100BTC limit per day. However, you must provide photographic evidence of who you are to get approved.
From there on, you can add money to your account. For the purpose, go to“Funds” > “Withdrawals/Deposits”. By clicking on “Deposit”, you will receive a wallet address, which can be used for funding.
Once you have added money to your account, you can start trading and investing in a variety of cryptocurrencies. The company offers a variety of currencies and ICO listings, so there’s a lot of choices.
II. Binance Fees:
Currently, the platform charges 0.1% fee on each trade made by users. However, users who own Binance Coin (BNB) will get a discount to their trading fee up to 25%. Holding BNB in your account means that trading fees will automatically be taken from the total amount of the altcoin available in your wallet.
Withdrawal fees depend largely on the type of coin you trade with. For example:
When it comes to depositing, there are no limits, but unverified accounts have withdrawal limitations.
Security
As we’ve already noted above, security is one of the most important features when it comes to working with money. The developers of the platform have implemented a multi-tier protection system and two-factor authentication.
Over a year ago, hackers attempted to steal people’s accounts by converting their altcoins to Bitcoin. Then they purchased Viacoin to increase its stock price and sell their supplies at high prices. However, the automated security systems of Binance caught the hackers and prevented their attack. Luckily, no funds were missing from the user's accounts because of the measures taken by the exchange.
The attack was possible due to the fact that people entered their details on a fake mirror website. After this event, Binance was praised for their quick actions and the work of their security systems.
Customer Support
What separates Binance from other exchange platforms is the customer service they offer to clients. Users have a variety of options to contact the team behind the platform and get their problems solved in a timely manner
You can use a Telegram channel to communicate with officials or use the ticketing system to send your questions to the team. Moreover, you can contact the customer service team using the social media accounts of the company.
Binance Pros and Cons:
Pros
- Mobile-Friendly — iOS & Android
- Seamless Account Creation Process
- Competitive Fees
- Two-factor Authentication
- Qualified Customer Service
- Huge portfolio of cryptocurrencies
- Binance Coin
Cons
- Advanced User Interface — Not Accessible for Beginners
- Does not accept fiat deposits
- Limited trading options: Limit orders, Market orders, Stop orders
- Comparatively low liquidity
Summary
In this article, we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of Binance & Bittrex. To summarise the given information above, we’ve created a small comparison table:
As you can see, both platforms have their ups & downs. At first glance, you might think that Binance is the better of two. Lower transaction fees, mobile-friendly platform & Binance Coin are some of the advantages that the exchange has to offer.
On the other side, there’s Bittrex with years of experience and a solid reputation on the market. Their platform offers an enhanced user interface (UI), that comes with a variety of tools and actions, suitable for advanced traders.
If you’re looking for quality service when dealing with cryptocurrencies, then Bittrex and Binance are the right choices for you. We hope that this article has given you enough information to make an educated choice between the two platforms.
Thank you for reading!
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AlphaTradeZone®
