Best Bitcoin Exchanges For Trading

Bitcoin is a peer to peer electronic payment system created by an unknown cryptographer named Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency with its decentralized network of nodes and it can not be controlled by any central authority or any government.

The bitcoin has deflationary nature by its design due to bitcoin halving and its demand will increase as much as more people will know about it. Also, the maximum supply of bitcoin is limited to 21 million only.

The price of bitcoin is increasing continuously in the long term that attracts investors in order to earn a massive gain from bitcoin. So bitcoin users also called it the store of value of money.

In most cases, you will need a bitcoin exchange in order to buy or invest in the bitcoin. So please go through this article where you will know about the best bitcoin exchanges of all the time.

“In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes. I’m sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.”

– Satoshi Nakamoto

Also Read: What is Trading? How to Earn Bitcoin From Trading?

Bitcoin exchange is the marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of bitcoin in order to exchange bitcoins with other currencies (USD/EURO) or with other cryptocurrencies (ETH/XRP/LTC).

A bitcoin exchange provides users different features and services including wallets (for storing bitcoins and other currencies), staking or lending (to stake or lend bitcoins and other currencies in order to get free rewards), trading marketplace (to exchange bitcoins with other currencies).
Also Read: 5 Best Cryptocurrency Lending Platforms to Earn Money

At the trading marketplace of a bitcoin exchange, the users are allowed to place Order Limit and Market Order to exchange bitcoins with other currencies.

In the order limit, the user placed an order on the exchange that will execute the trade when the order limit rate goes below the current ask or above the current bid.

In the market order, the user placed an order on the exchange to execute the trade at the best available price on the exchange marketplace.

Also Read: How to Start Bitcoin Trading? Beginner’s Guide

In the early days of bitcoin, there is no marketplace where people can buy and sell bitcoin. The buying and selling of bitcoin are done peer to peer via bitcointalk. and other forums. Without any escrow provider, Peer to peer is a very risky way of buying bitcoin.

Finally, bitcoiners got their first-ever bitcoin exchange in history that was launched in March 2010 called Bitcoinmarket.com.

On 15 January 2010, a bitcointalk user named “dwdollar” proposed the idea of a new bitcoin exchange to everyone on the bitcointalk forum in the thread “New exchange (Bitcoin Market)“.

“Hi everyone.  I’m in the process of building an exchange.  I have big plans for it, but I still have a lot of work to do.  It will be a real market where people will be able to buy and sell Bitcoins with each other.  In the coming weeks I should have a website with a basic framework set up.  Please bear with me.”

– Founder of first Bitcoin Exchange, dwdollar

He further commented: “I am trying to create a market where Bitcoins are treated as a commodity.  People will be able to trade Bitcoins for dollars and speculate on the value.  In theory, this will establish a real-time exchange rate so we will all have a clue what the current value of a Bitcoin is, compared to a dollar.
This is only a small demonstration of what I have in mind and to show everyone I’m actively working on it.  Feel free to register and try it out.  You will get 10 phoney dollars and 10,000 phoney bitcoins to trade.  ONLY the limit orders work.  Market orders will come later.”

On 03 March 2010, dwdollar announced the first bitcoin exchange Bitcoinmarket.com going live for trading by posting on bitcointalk ” Finally an update!  The graph I added should auto update at around 5pm CST today.  The last three days on it are just an example.  Anybody can register and do some mock trading.  You can use the above IP address or redirect from my GoDaddy host at http://www.bitcoinmarket.com/ “.

Hence, http://www.bitcoinmarket.com/ was the first bitcoin exchange developed by the bitcointalk user dwdollar in 2010.

Today, There are a lot of bitcoin exchanges available for trading bitcoins in the world but not every bitcoin exchange is the best for everyone. So our team did a lot of research and found the following best bitcoin exchanges for existing as well as new users to start their trading.

Rank By Volume: 1

Security: Good

Privacy: Average

Customer Support: Very Good

Payment Methods: Credit Card, All supported Cryptocurrencies

Withdrawal Limit: 2BTC/Day For Unverified User, 100BTC/Day for KYC Verified User

Website: https://www.binance.com/

Binance is the bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies trading exchange founded by Changpeng Zhao in China in 2017 but later established its headquarters in Malta and Japan countries due to regulations issues in China. Binance had launched the live trading on its exchange platform in July 2017.
Binance is an international exchange with providing its services over 130 countries where it has a separate exchange for US users as Binance.us.
Binance is the first one that started the concept of Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) on its Exchange Launchpad in December 2017.
Binance also launched many different services for users like Lending, Staking, Marginal Trading, and Future Trading.
In April 2019, Binance launched its own decentralized exchange (DEX) powered by the Binance chain with BNB coin.
The Maker/Taker trading fee charged by the Binance exchange has ranged from 0.02% to 0.1% depending on your 30 days trading volume as well as your BNB coin holding on the Binance exchange.
Binance is almost very fair and transparent towards its users which is also attracts users to use binance exchange instead of others.

Pros

• The volume of bitcoin and other coins at binance is higher than others
• Beginner-friendly and good user interface
• It is available in both the web and mobile versions
• Binance has a good working mobile app with all features
• Low trading and transfer fee than others
• The bitcoin exchange binance has higher withdrawal limits up to 100 BTC for verified users.
• Binance has experienced team with long crypto working experience
• Only legit and working projects are listed on binance exchange
• Binance offers many other services like marginal trading, OTC trading, lending of crypto assets and crypto loans.
• The users of binance are rewarded from time to time with many offers on the binance like airdrops and trading competition, etc.

Cons

• Binance does not accept Wire Transfers
• Bitcoin withdrawal fee is high as 0.0005 BTC (~$5)
• API hacked 2 times that lost users trust a little bit

Create Account on Binance

Rank By Volume: 2

Security: Good

Privacy: High

Customer Support: Good

Payment Methods: Wire Transfer, All supported Cryptocurrencies

Withdrawal Limit: No Limits

Website: https://www.bitfinex.com/

Bitfinex is the bitcoin trading exchange platform founded in December 2012 by Giancarlo Devasini, Raphael Nicolle as peer to peer bitcoin exchange,
The Bitfinex bitcoin exchange is headquartered in Hong Kong where it is owned and operated by iFinex Inc.
Bitfinex provides advanced features and trading tools for the pro bitcoin traders to manage or operate their bitcoin trades on the exchange platform.
Additionally, Bitfinex also provides many other services like peer-to-peer financing, an OTC market, margin lending and margin trading for some specific selected digital assets.
The bitcoin exchange Bitfinex charges the Maker Trading fee from 0.000% to 0.100% and the Taker trading fee from 0.055% to 0.200% depending upon the trading volume of the traders in the last 30 days.
Most of the users of Bitfinex are from Asia especially Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea as Bitfinex supports most of the country’s bank transfers services there.

Pros

• Bitfinex is famous for its advanced trading tools for bitcoin traders with high volume.
• It has all features with a good user interface for beginners as well as advanced pro users.
• Bitfinex bitcoin exchange has no limit on withdrawal.
• It supports wire transfers from banks.
• Bitfinex exchange has high liquidity and volume of bitcoin.
• It also provides derivatives market to the traders.
• This exchange is very old and has big-whale traders of bitcoin.
• Bitfinex provides good anonymity and privacy to the users.
• The Bitfinex exchange provides a derivative bitcoin market as well as the bitcoin Over The Counter (OTC) market for traders.

Cons

• Exchange is hacked in the past that creates security concerns and lost users’ trust.
• It takes deposit fees whereas other exchanges not.
• Complicated signup and account verification process – takes up to 20 days
• Other coins trading pairs except Bitcoin has not enough volume.

Create Account on Bitfinex

Rank By Volume: 3

Security: Very Good

Privacy: Low

Customer Support: Good

Payment Methods: Bank Transfer, Credit Card/Debit Card, SEPA Transfer, Xfers Transfer, Coinbase Card, Paypal

Withdrawal Limit: $10,000/day

Website: https://www.coinbase.com/

Coinbase is the most reputable bitcoin exchange in the world that was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Coinbase has headquartered in San Francisco, California.
The Coinbase provides the trading services for  Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Litecoin with fiat currencies in around 30 countries as this exchange supports direct bank transfers for fiat payments.
Coinbase is the world’s first bitcoin exchange to introduce the insurance system for users trades where users’ funds will be secure even after any hacking threat.
The exchange Coinbase normally charges 1.49% and 3.99% fee for instant buying/selling bitcoins with Credit / Debit Card and by Bank Transfers.
Most of the users of Coinbase are from Europe and the USA as Coinbase supports most of the countries there.

Pros

• Coinbase is famous for instant buying bitcoin with fiat as it supports direct bank transfers and all debit/credit cards.
• High liquidity and transaction volume of bitcoin
• Coinbase offers a free and reliable online wallet with insurance for users
• The bitcoin exchange Coinbase is regulated by the US SEC and fully trusted.
• Coinbase exchange has a good reputation and security.
• Only the most trusted top cryptocurrency is listed on the Coinbase exchange.

Cons

• Privacy risk as Coinbase exchange track the users’ activity and data.
• Bank transactions are very slow and sluggish.
• Coinbase exchange is not much beginner-friendly.
• It has limited countries support

Rank By Volume: 4

Security: Excellent

Privacy: High

Customer Support: Good

Payment Methods: Only Bitcoin

Withdrawal Limit: No Limit

Website: https://www.bitmex.com/

BitMex is a bitcoin derivative trading platform founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed with a team of finance and trading specialists.
The Bitmex exchange is headquartered in Seychelles where it is owned and operated by HDR Global Trading Limited.
It provides a leverage up to 100x for bitcoin traders. It also supports some other cryptocurrencies margin trading pairs like Ethereum, EOS, Litecoin, Ripple, Tron.
Bitmex has a future contracts market for bitcoin as quarterly contracts and 6 months contracts.
BitMex is a very secure exchange as it has one of the strictest withdrawal policies of any exchange and they only process withdrawals once a day and two members of the team have to manually validate them.
The BitMex bitcoin exchange charges the Maker fee of -0.025% and a Taker fee of 0.075% from the bitcoin traders in every trade.
BitMex does not take any private information of users and there is no KYC at all. You can just create your account on BitMex with your email id only. Also, there is no limit on the withdrawal amount in BitMex as you can withdraw as much as you want as well as you can also adjust the withdrawal fee as per your wish.
BitMex has higher liquidity and volume for bitcoin margin and futures trading than any other exchange in the world.

Pros

• The bitmex exchange is famous for its future trading and marginal trading with up to 100x leverage.
• Bitmex is never hacked in the past and it provides very good security.
• It stores bitcoins on a multi-sign cold storage wallet which is ultra-secure.
• The bitcoin exchange BitMex provides a high level of privacy to the users with no KYC at all and only takes email id to create an account.
• BitMex exchange does not have any withdrawal limits at all.
• It has good customer support with live chat is available within the user account.
• BitMex has a very good user interface and totally beginner-friendly.

Cons

• It allows only bitcoin deposits and withdrawals and not any other payment method is supported.
• Bitmex supports only very few coins on the exchange for trading.
• The bitcoin exchange BitMex does withdrawal only once a day at a specified time only.
• The biggest problem of BitMex is users have countered an error in placing orders while doing trades during a pump and dump.

Create Account on BitMex

There are a number of factors that must be taken into consideration while finding the best bitcoin exchange for trading. The following are the most important factors that are widely used by most of the users.

• Fees: You will find different fee structures for different exchanges on their services. Most of the bitcoin exchanges charge 0.2% to 0.25% fee on trading services. Most of the exchanges do not charge for the bitcoin deposit fee but they do charge for withdrawal fee as bitcoin transactions are not free. There is also a different fee structure for credit card and bank transfer payments on bitcoin exchanges.
• Exchange Rates: The bitcoin exchange rate should be very close to the global average index rate. You can compare your local bitcoin exchange rate to the global price index rate providers like Coinmarketcap.com and Coingecko.com. You can also compare the rates of different exchanges at tradingview.com.
• Liquidity or Volume: Liquidity and volume is the most important factor in order to choose the best bitcoin exchange. Every trader wants an exchange with more liquidity and high volume, so he/she can do trades easily with large amounts at the same rate. If there is less spread in the exchange market orders then far better is the exchange.
• Payment Methods: The bitcoin exchange should accept your preferred payment method. Many exchanges accept credit card and bank transfers but many do not, so you have to find the most suitable exchange that fits best for you for doing your payments.
• Withdrawal Limit: Different bitcoin exchanges have different limits for bitcoin withdrawals per day. The bitcoin withdrawal limit also varies with your level of identity verification on the exchange, so you need to check about the withdrawal limits of your exchange that you want to use.
• Security: In the bitcoin and cryptocurrency world, it is a common thing to listen about the hacking of an exchange. There is no popular exchange of bitcoin that was not hacked once, so it is very important to check about the security issues and security threats occurred in the past with an exchange. You should do your own research on the security of the exchange in order to find the best bitcoin exchange for you.
• Speed: You should check about the speed of the bitcoin exchange to process deposits, withdrawals, and other possible transactions. You may suffer from losses or missed profit in your trading if the bitcoin exchange takes too much time like days or weeks to process your deposit and withdrawals or other transactions. That’s why you have to choose a bitcoin exchange that processes deposits and withdrawals very fast.
• Privacy: If you care about your privacy then you should check about the privacy terms of the bitcoin exchange. You need to sure that the bitcoin exchange is not disclosing your privacy to the public in anyways. Peer to peer decentralized bitcoin exchange is a little bit better than others in case of privacy protection. You can also use anonymous bitcoin wallets also that can never disclose your identities and makes your privacy too secure.
• User Interface: Bitcoin exchange with a good user interface attracts more users as they are easy to use. You need to avoid an exchange with bad user interface because you will suffer a lot by using its services. You have to find a bitcoin exchange that provides a comfortable user interface for you.
• Regulations: You should choose the SEC verified regulated bitcoin exchange in order to avoid capital loss in frauds or scams.
• Customer Support: The bitcoin exchange provides its customer support for fastly solving problems of the customers. If you suffer from bugs or errors and other types of problems then you need a good support from the exchange in order to solve your issues as early as possible. You should avoid an exchange that does not have a good customer support.

• Liquidity: Bitcoin exchange allows a lot of people to place their offers at the same marketplace together which creates a good liquidity market of bitcoin for bitcoin users. It is the most important factor that investors need in order to exchange their bitcoins at a better rate with large amounts.
• Bitcoin Storage: Bitcoin exchange provides a secure wallet to the users for storing their bitcoins there. Bitcoin investors and traders can deposit and withdraw their bitcoins from the bitcoin exchange wallet at any time.
• Trading Crypto Assets: Bitcoin exchange enables users to place their offers on their bitcoin marketplace for trading bitcoins with other currencies.
• Fast Bitcoin acquisition: Bitcoin exchange provide users the world’s fastest money market with very high throughput that can handle a large number of transactions per second without any lagging. Bitcoin exchange markets are opened for 24/7 without any vacations continuously forever.
• Safety and Security: Bitcoin exchange provides users a safe and secure environment or platform where someone can exchange or trade bitcoins with other unknown people without any risk of scam or fraud.
• Easy management of Crypto Assets: Bitcoin exchange provides users better features and easy user interface by which they can manage their bitcoins as well as other crypto-assets very easily.

Risks:

1. Hacking: Bitcoin itself is a hacked proof most secure digital currency on the internet but the bitcoin exchanges are not much secure. Almost many of the popular bitcoin exchanges got hacked once in their lifetime. This is a really very big risk of losing your bitcoin by hacking while using a bitcoin exchange.
2. Account Seize: If you are using a bitcoin exchange then you have no control over your bitcoins as keep in mind that Not Your Private Keys Not Your Bitcoins. The bitcoins stored on the bitcoin exchange are under full control of the exchange as they can do anything with your bitcoins, but the main problem is that exchanges can also seize your account if they find anything illegal from you and then you will lose your bitcoin totally. So the banning or seizing accounts is one of the big problems that have to be faced while using a bitcoin exchange.
3. Volatility: We know that the bitcoin price is very volatile in nature that creates a big issue for bitcoin users. Bitcoin was gain a value of $3000 to $19000 from October 2017 to December 2017 and then came back to $3000 at the end of 2018.
4. Privacy Threats: Bitcoin exchange will take your all identity information while you create your account there or using their services. So the bitcoin exchange can leak or sell your all private information that reveals your identity to the government of data analysis companies. Hence your privacy is not secure when you use a bitcoin exchange.
5. Exchange Bankruptcy: Remember if you are using an exchange then your bitcoins are in full control of that exchange. Thus the exchange can do anything with your bitcoins like gambling in markets with altcoins and leveraging or giving as a loan to other users. So if the bitcoin exchange got bankrupt then you will lose your bitcoins as the exchange is no more able to pay you your bitcoins back to you. In this situation, if the bitcoin exchange you are using is not regulated then nobody can help you to get your bitcoins back. Sorry for your loss.
6. Rate Manipulation: As the bitcoin exchange owns a lot of bitcoins amount of a number of users then exchange can also manipulate the market rates secretly as their all trading information is totally private. So the bitcoin rate manipulation is one of the big issues to be faced by users while using bitcoin exchanges whereas users can trade peer to peer in order to avoid the risk of using these centralized bitcoin exchanges.
7. Delisting coins: If you are using an exchange and you bought some other coins on the exchange, then there is also a big risk of delisting of those coins by the exchange, where delisting caused a big loss in the value of those coins that results into your big loss. Hence delisting of coins is the common thing for exchanges but users suffered from big big losses while this event occurred.

Precautions:

• Do not store your whole funds on the bitcoin exchange. Bitcoin itself is the most secure digital asset in the world but bitcoin exchanges are not secure and can be hacked anytime in the future, so please only keep an affordable amount on an exchange that will not affect you too much if you lose it.
• Manage your fund and diversify it. Keep your fund risk free by doing good management and try to store your fund on the different platforms. Do not put your all eggs into one basket.
• Do not create multiple fake accounts on a bitcoin exchange. Don’t be over smart by creating multiple fake accounts on a bitcoin exchange, there is great possibility that exchange can ban your all accounts and can also seize your fund store there. So don’t do these stupid things and try to avoid it, please create only one single legit account by providing your right information.
• Try Small Amount First While Transfer Coins: When you wanted to deposit/withdraw or transfer your bitcoin from a bitcoin exchange, then firstly you have to try with a small amount for testing, if there is no issue found then you can try with a large amount. Please do not be lazy because you can save your big losses by following these rules honestly.

NOT YOUR KEYS NOT YOUR COINS

• Fees: It refers to the value of bitcoin that is deducted as service cost by the bitcoin exchange while doing a transaction or trade on the bitcoin exchange. It is basically the fees of using trading services of the bitcoin exchange.
• Limit Order: Limit Order is the buy/sell order placed by the user on the exchange that will be executed when the market rate goes below the current ask or above the current bid.
• Market Order: In the Market Order, the user placed an order on the exchange to execute the trade at the best available price on the exchange marketplace.
• Stop Limit Order: A Stop Limit order is a type of conditional order that is placed below the current market price or above the current market price by creating a condition that it can only be executed when the stop price is triggered by the market price.
• OCO Orders: An OCO order refers to “One Cancels the Other” order that allows users to place two orders at the same time. In the OCO order, both limit order and a stop-limit order are combined together where only one of the two can be executed.
• 24h Volume: The total sum of market trades that occurred in the last 24 hours is represented as 24h volume.
• Trading Chart: A Trading chart is a graphical representation of trading history data of everyday price actions, in which “the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart.
• Order Book: It is a sheet of information containing all the limit orders in the ascending/descending order by price.
• Market Trades: These are the executed trades at the current market price.
• Buy and Sell: Buy means placing a bid to get a number of coins at a specific rate in the market. Sell means giving a number of coins to others at a specific rate in the market.
• Order History: It is the history of all types of orders placed by a user in the past, it contains both executed as well as canceled orders before execution.
• Open Orders: It is the list of all types of orders that are not executed till now but can be executed in the future.
• Coin Listing/Delisting: Coin listing means opening the trading pairs of a specific coin that did not exist on the exchange market before. Coin delisting means removing the existing trading pairs of a specific coin from the exchange market.
• Arbitrage Trading: It is the type of trading in which users trying to gain some profit due to the difference in the market rates of different exchanges.
• Marginal Trading: It is the type of trading in which users allowed to use the leverage on their trades.
• Lending/Staking: It is the type of service offered by most of the exchanges that allow users to lend or stake their coins on the exchange for the fixed time in order to gain some profits. In lending users coins are locked for a specific time and they are not allowed to do anything with them.
• Last Price: It is the price of the last executed limit order or last market trade price on the exchange market.
• 24h Change%: It is the change in the price of a coin trading pair in the last 24 hours which is from just 24 hours ago to now.

There are a number of bitcoin exchanges throughout the world available today but the above-listed bitcoin exchanges are proved to be the best and most trusted over long time in history. The majority of users are using these above-listed bitcoin exchanges, and these bitcoin exchanges have good reviews from the users.

Also, every user has different requirements and goals for using an exchange, so after reading this whole article now you have the idea that how to find the best suitable bitcoin exchange for yourself.

A great thanks to the Whalepool bitcoin traders for sharing their experience and knowledge with Bitcoinik by which it is possible to deliver the best possible information to the readers.
Whalepool as a community seeks not just to provide platforms for traders to gather and exchange ideas on, but also to educate and welcome new traders to the scene.

FAQs

1. Is Bitcoin Exchange safe to store bitcoins?
   – No, Almost all the reputed bitcoin exchanges are hacked in the past and lost a number of bitcoins stored in their exchange wallets. So do not store your bitcoins at exchanges rather store them in the secure bitcoin wallets like hardware wallets and paper wallets. Bitcoin exchanges are only used for trading and buying bitcoins and not for storing bitcoins for a long time.
2. Can I buy bitcoin without using a bitcoin exchange?
   – Yes, you can easily buy bitcoin peer to peer by directly contacting a bitcoin seller near you. Also, you can use your cash as well as any other payment method accepted by the bitcoin seller in order to buy bitcoin if you are buying bitcoin in peer to peer way.
3. Are all bitcoin exchanges the same?
   – No, they all have different approaches to maintaining security and convenience in bitcoin transactions processing. They are coded differently and are also hosted on different blockchains.
4. Is there any site to check the rates of all bitcoin exchanges?
   – Yes, there are many websites that track the rates of almost all popular Bitcoin exchanges and also provide the average rate of bitcoin throughout all the bitcoin exchanges. CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko are the popular names that provides the rates of all bitcoin exchanges.
5. Is there any site to check the real volume of bitcoin exchanges as their reported volume is mostly found fake?
   – Yes, Fake volume refers to the bot trading volume on the bitcoin exchange. So there are not many websites that provide us the real volume of exchanges as Coinmarketcap and Coingecko provided volume is also not real at all.
   BitcoinTradevolume website is one of the most accurate real bitcoin trading volume providers. It provides the almost real bitcoin trading volume of every bitcoin exchange.

Also Read: How to Earn Bitcoin? 13 Different Ways to Earn Bitcoin Free

NOTE: We prefer everyone to do your own research and do not follow blindly any source of information. We do not provide any financial advice for trading and investing anywhere, so we are not responsible for any loss or profit. Our main motive is to provide the best possible legit information to the readers, so our all provided content is for information purposes only.