Introduction
Binance is the most popular and well-known exchange to purchase cryptocurrencies, it has undergone tremendous development and progress these last two years and provided users with an all-in-one solution for trading when it comes altcoins and bitcoin on one platform.
Binance was founded and began operating at arguably the perfect moment, in July 2017, right before the immense and historical bull-run the whole cryptocurrency space was about to experience. Due to the enormous rush into the cryptocurrencies, Binance experienced growth unlike any other exchange, with so many new users signing up that they temporarily had to shut down registrations.
Changpeng Zhao, or more frequently referred to as ‘CZ,’ is the current CEO of Binance and is an active figure on social media where he will often make statements on Binance, cryptocurrency and bitcoin in general.
In 2017 there was intense competition between exchanges to offer the most amount of cryptocurrencies with the best liquidity and the difference between the exchanges was marginal. Through the years as Binance has improved their trading-engine, design, stability, products and liquidity, the competition has slowly dissipated and left Binance to reign as the king of altcoin cryptocurrency exchanges.
It does not stop there however, even when it comes to Bitcoin they have managed to develop into the largest spot exchange in the world, far surpassing Coinbase. They are also trying to climb the rankings when it comes to derivatives exchanges, offering high liquidity perpetual margin contracts, futures and even options.
In this Binance tutorial and review, we will look at how to use the exchange with all its features and find out how good the exchange actually is.
Creating an Account
Registering on Binance is very simple, all you need is an email and password and you will be asked to verify your email with a code sent to you.
If you do not wish to verify yourself through the standard KYC (Know Your Customer) procedures, you don’t have to, unless you want to withdraw or deposit more than 2 BTC in 24 hours.
If you want to receive a 10% lifetime discount on all your fees, feel free to register by clicking the image or button below.
KYC
In order to withdraw or deposit amounts surpassing 2 BTC in a 24 hour period, you will be required to verify yourself through the standard KYC procedures.
This includes submitting the following information:
- Country
- Full name
- Date of Birth
- Address
- Photo of ID
- Picture of yourself
Once you have completed these KYC steps, your 2 BTC deposit and withdrawal limit will increase to 100 BTC in a 24 hour period.
If your needs exceed that of 100 BTC in a 24 hour period, you can contact Binance support and they will help you to increase the limits. You may be requested to provide additional verification, such as proof of current address.
Note
If you have an unverified account you might still get requested to identify yourself if Binance were to flag your account for conducting suspicious activity.
Depositing
To deposit on Binance, click on ‘wallet overview’ as shown above.
Once inside the wallet, there will be a yellow ‘deposit’ button which will bring you to all the possible deposit alternatives supported by Binance.
Binance is one of the biggest on-ramps to cryptocurrencies in the world, so naturally, it supports multiple deposit methods to ensure that the customers find an easy and quick way to start buying bitcoin and other various cryptocurrencies.
We will take a look at all the various deposit methods.
Depositing Crypto
It’s very simple to deposit Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on Binance.
First, make sure to choose the correct coin you want to deposit.
Once that is done, copy your address and go to the other exchange or wallet where you want to send your cryptocurrency from.
Network Choice
If you are uncertain, I would recommend using the default settings. For example on Bitcoin, you can deposit with BEP2 or BTC network, go with BTC network as this is the default choice and accepted by all exchanges.
If you want to deposit another crypto, select another coin and you will receive a new address you can deposit to.
Ensure you only send the selected cryptocurrency to that specific wallet as all wallets are unique to the chosen crypto.
Depositing Crypto with Credit Card
You also have the ability to purchase cryptocurrencies directly on Binance with your credit card. Simply click “Buy Crypto” on the front page and select Credit/Debit card.
If you don’t want to pay directly through Binance, you can choose one of the following supported third party credit payment platforms:
- Simplex
- Koinal
- Mercuryo
- BANXA
Credit Card Fee Comparison
- Binance Direct Credit Buy
3.5% or $10 processing fee per transaction – whichever is greater - Simplex
3.5% or $10 processing fee per transaction – whichever is greater - Mercuryo
2,95% - Koinal
2,5% and 0% for purchases over $1 000
I’m really pleased with the selection of payment services on Binance that allow users to select competitively low fees amongst the different payment channels.
Note
Buying from directly Binance will allow for slightly faster deposits, it will only take approximately 10-30 minutes.
Deposit Fiat
Binance supports 22 different fiat currencies, however what deposit methods are available vary based on the currency.
I would recommend everyone with a bank that supports SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) transfer, to use this as a deposit method for fiat.
By doing this, you will have a swift bank deposit with 0% fees and you will not have to create an account on Etana, which is a custody bank Binance uses for fiat deposits and withdraws.
It will also allow for Payeer, Advcash, Credit and Etana transfers when you have selected Euro.
If you are not able to use SEPA transfers, you will need to create an Etana account, which will then link up to your Binance account. Etana is a custody bank account which is also used by other large exchanges such as Kraken.
The minimum deposit/withdrawal through Etana is $150.
To learn more about setting up an Etana read the official Etana Binance guide here.
P2P Cryto Exchange
The final method to deposit crypto is to buy from the P2P exchange on Binance, it allows for both buys and sells to occur between other users. If you desire, you can apply to become a merchant and sell your Bitcoin to set prices.
I don’t recommend this method as it often is more expensive than credit purchases and especially bank transfers. It seems to most appealing to people that want to use a specific payment platform, such as WeChat or Alipay.
Trading
Spot Markets 
Derivatives Markets
Binance offers an immense number of coins to trade from, with over 150 different cryptocurrencies and over 450 different trading pairs. When it comes to the selection of crypto, Binance is truly unmatched.
Binance is the biggest cryptocurrency spot market globally. Due to its massive selection of cryptocurrencies, it can amass huge volumes that other exchanges such as Coinbase or Kraken are not able to compete with.
As far as derivatives exchanges, it is the second-largest when it comes to 24-hour volume and the fourth when it comes to 24-hour open interest.
Binance’s volume has been questioned in the past for being faked to some extent, however, there is no evidence that this is occurring at present or has happened in the past. All their popular products seem to be very liquid, and more large traders have moved over to Binance in recent years after improving their BTCUSDT liquidity.
As far as competition when it comes to buying and selling altcoins, there is none. Binance is the only exchange that has managed to keep so many cryptocurrencies fairly liquid for traders. Back in 2017, you would go around and check 2-3 exchanges to see where it was most suitable to purchase your desired altcoin, nowadays, you can save your time by coming straight to Binance.
Binance only has real competition when it comes to derivative margin products, primarily from exchanges such as ByBit, FTX and BitMEX.
Types of Trading Products and Interfaces
Spot Markets
Spot markets allow us to buy the actual underlying asset and not just contracts like derivatives. So if you were to buy Bitcoin, BNB (Binance Chain) or LINK (Chainlink) on Binance spot, you would buy each coin and own them. It would be possible to send them to other exchanges or cold wallets if you desired, such things are not possible with contracts.
Binance offers us the largest overall spot markets in crypto with a fantastic selection of cryptocurrencies. They also have fast listings when they notice the market is showing interest in something that has not been listed on the exchange, this means if there is a digital asset gaining popularity, chances are you will be able to trade it soon on Binance.
Basic Spot Buying
The Basic Spot buying menu allows us to convert any of our assets to another asset quickly.
I prefer using either the advanced or classic menu as I’m interested in seeing buying activity and previous orders to get an impression of the momentum and trading sentiment in the market before buying or converting anything.
Classic Spot & Advanced Buying Interface
Classic 
Advanced
There is no significant difference between the two, advanced interface allows us to utilize more of the screen and move the different elements around the screen to personalize it to your personal preference.
Other trading products such as derivatives will use the advanced interface. I prefer sticking to advanced so I can have the same interface no matter what I trade.
Spot Margin
Before you begin margin trading on Binance, you will be required to click “open now,” whenever you selected “isolated” or “cross-margin” on the trading interface.
Binance offers spot margin trading for many altcoin pairs and bitcoin pairs, when it comes to the bitcoin pair, I would recommend using BTC/USDT as it has the highest liquidity. The deciding factor for whether Binance offers margin is dependant on the volume and interest on the specific product. Don’t expect to find spot margin enabled on very low volume coins.
There are two different margin alternatives available on bitcoin, on altcoins, it may differ what is possible.
What is unique with the spot margin compared to regular leverage on trading derivative products, is that there is a set leverage which you can not adjust for both isolated and cross-margin.
Cross-Margin means that your whole account can be used to maintain a position, generally, I don’t recommend this as I much prefer having isolated positions and managing my risk accordingly. Cross-margin will be set at 3X leverage automatically.
When using an isolated margin, you will only risk your current position and not everything in your margin wallet. This is the preferred margin method to use for most traders due to the ability to better control and manage risk.
The set leverage for isolated spot-margin is rather high, you will find it set at 10X leverage.
Note
Due to the unreasonable fixed leverage on spot-margin, I would consider trading derivatives where you can freely adjust margin. The downside is you will pay a funding fee every 8 hours while the position is open.
Transferring funds to the Margin Wallet
In order to use spot-margin, you need to specifically transfer funds from your spot wallet to your margin wallet.
This is likely done this way to make sure that the decision to start trading margin is done intentionally, by requiring an extra action for confirmation.
Borrowing
There are three modes when placing orders on spot-margin, normal, borrow and repay.
Normal is what you should be using, here you use your own collateral for trades.
When using Borrow, you will automatically lend the money when your order is executed and start paying interest. Naturally, this is the more expensive option and I do not recommend trading with money or cryptocurrency that is borrowed. Repay mode will use all profits to repay the debt you have automatically.
You can also add borrowed money as collateral without automatically making orders as above. Please note the hourly interest that you will have to pay when borrowing funds from Binance.
OTC (Over-the-Counter)
You can conduct OTC spot trades directly on Binance. OTC trades are trades between two parties, usually a trading desk and a customer buying or selling large quantities of an asset.
This is done because it can be difficult or time-consuming to buy or sell large quantities of bitcoin at a favorable price. The maximum amount to buy or sell is set to 250 BTC.
Note
250 BTC and below is not a huge amount considering we have very liquid bitcoin markets, so the quotes offered should be very competitive in order to be considered.
Derivatives
When it comes to derivatives, Binance is the second-largest western crypto derivative exchange behind BitMEX. It has the massive benefit of already having a large user base when it comes to growing new products that other pure derivative exchanges do not have.
Binance is currently offering three different derivative products.
Perpetual Futures
This is the trading product that you will find to be the most popular on all derivative exchanges. Perpetual futures will never expire or settle at a specific date, meaning you are able to hold a position open as long as you want.
Binance enables you to trade around 30 different trading pairs when using perpetual futures.
You will have to pay a funding fee every 8 hours, if your position is not open during the funding period, you will not have to pay funding.
Quarterly Futures
Unlike Perpetual Futures, quarterly futures have a specific settlement date where your position will be closed. The date the product is settled can easily be viewed by looking at the name, for example, BTCUSD Quarterly 0925 will be settled on September (09) the 25th (25).
There is also a countdown showing the ‘time to delivery’, which is when the contracts will be settled.
There are only four trading pairs when it comes to quarterly futures, and this is likely to do with they need to be sure that the digital assets with futures settling far in the future will have a liquid market the whole way through.
The following assets are available for quarterly futures:
- BTC
- ADA
- LINK
- ETH
Leveraged Tokens
The final derivative product Binance offers is called ‘leveraged tokens.’
Binance Leveraged tokens allow you to get leveraged exposure to an asset without worrying about margin maintenance, collateral or liquidation. These leveraged tokens will adjust their leverage automatically between 1.5X and 3X, the theory provided by Binance is that this will minimize losses and maximize profits.
Four different assets are available for leveraged tokens, each asset will have an option to choose between UP and DOWN. Somewhat intuitively, you will select DOWN if you believe the asset will decrease and price and choose UP if you believe the opposite.
Finance
Binance has taken steps to expand its exchange further to offer more services than their competitors with their Finance service options.
Savings
This is the finance service from Binance which I am most excited by and I believe it offers Binance a considerable advantage over any other exchange.
Savings allows us to transfer cryptocurrencies to the savings wallet and start earning interest.
This works because the cryptocurrency you put up for savings is borrowed by other users who pay interest on the money borrowed and you and the exchange then receive the interest as payment.
There are three main different types of savings alternatives.
Flexible Savings
Flexible savings pays the least amount of interest, but it allows us to easily cancel the savings period and transfer the cryptocurrencies back to the spot wallet whenever we want.
There are currently around 30 flexible savings products to choose from.
Locked Savings
This will allow you to earn much higher interest than flexible savings, but in order to do so your funds will be locked for the selected period of time.
You can choose to lock your assets for 7, 14, 30 or 90 days. The longer you lock them up, the higher your annualized interest rate will be.
There are currently around ten cryptocurrencies we earn interest from with locked savings.
It is possible to transfer your savings out of locked to flexible if you need to redeem your funds earlier than expected.
I would avoid using locked savings if your cryptocurrency is very volatile, and you might need to quickly sell or exchange it for another asset at a moment’s notice.
However, if this is not the case, and you plan to hold your cryptocurrency for a while, then I absolutely recommend using locked savings.
Activities
These have a limited availability but in return they will give you the largest returns in the shortest time-span.
Much like locked savings, these will be locked for the number of days specified for the chosen activity, which may vary.
Staking
By staking, we hold funds in a cryptocurrency wallet to support a specific blockchain network’s operations. In other words, we are locking our crypto the blockchain in exchange for rewards.
The main difference between staking and savings, with savings we are allowing the exchange to lend our crypto for in return for an interest rate, while staking is contributing to a chosen blockchains network.
There are to staking alternatives provided by Binance.
Flexible Staking
Much like flexible savings, this gives you the possibility to earn rewards by locking your crypto temporarily, and you can at any given time cancel your flexible staking.
Flexible staking will in general allow you to earn much more than flexible savings, however, the cryptocurrencies available for staking and those that give high returns tend to be more volatile.
PoS (Proof of Stake)
This method locks your cryptocurrency for a given period of time and contributes directly to the blockchain. There does not tend to be a lot of PoS staking available at Binance at this given time.
Because you are locking your cryptocurrency for a period, the returns on PoS staking is higher than flexible staking.
Binance Pool
This is a Bitcoin mining smart-pool that automatically switches between different currencies with the same algorithm in order to achieve the highest possible return for the mining pool.
The following cryptocurrencies are available for the mining pool:
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- Bitcoin SV (BSV)
The daily mining income is always settled in Bitcoin (BTC).
You can use the calculator on the page to see how much you will earn with your current mining power.
You can follow this guide on Binance mining to learn how to configure and set up your mining pool.
Binance Debit Card
This debit card provided in partnership with Swipe allows for direct cryptocurrency to fiat conversions as you pay for your items globally.
On Binance, you will have a card wallet, all cryptocurrencies transferred to your wallet will be available for purchases using the card.
If you are interested in using a Binance debit card, register your interest and be notified when it becomes possible.
Selected residents in France and Spain have already been invited to order their Binance Card.
Current supported countries:
If you are earning cryptocurrency somewhat consistently, either through trading, staking/saving, mining or other activities, having the opportunity to spend them directly to purchase goods would be very convenient.
Crypto Loans
You are able to borrow money on Binance in the shape of Tether USD (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD).
You can choose to borrow USDT and BUSD by setting a select amount of cryptocurrencies as collateral. Not all cryptocurrencies are available for this, only a selection of the six largest.
For example, if you want to borrow 2000 USDT, you need to have 0.317 BTC as collateral. You can borrow for up to 90 days and your annual interest will be 14.50%.
It is nice to have the option to do cryptocurrency loans, but I think the interest rate is rather high so I would personally look for other alternatives.
Leverage
The available leverage will vary whether you are trading margin-spot or derivatives, such as futures and perpetual contracts.
On margin-spot, your available leverage will be 10X on Isolated leverage and 3X on cross-margin.
When trading derivatives you will be able to have a stunning 125X leverage, however, the position will be limited to 50 000 USD.
As always, I recommend using a low leverage. Personally, I trade between 1X and 5X with isolated margin.
Trading Engine
Binance boasts that the trading engine can support up to a total of 1 400 000 orders per second. The exchange has been regarded as having one of the better trading engines amongst all of the cryptocurrency exchanges for a long time, able to match orders quickly and handle an immense amount of volume.
Late June 2020, Binance upgraded its trading engine by rewriting all the code from scratch to a brand new programming language. They say this has improved performance significantly and that it in theory should be able to handle 100 times the volume the exchange is experiencing today, if true, this is extremely impressive.
The trading engine’s stability has to be said to be up there with the best, I have previously experienced the website (not the engine) being offline in the previous years due to massive traffic, but this has been much better in the last two years.
A lot of western traders have been sceptical of non-western exchanges. Still, they have slowly trusted Binance with large quantities of their personal funds. The exchange has proven to have a reliable and fast trading engine, good liquidity, and commendable security practices that we will look at shortly.
Security
Binance does use both hot wallets and cold wallets, approximately 2% of their assets are stored in hot wallets while the rest is stored securely offline. When having so many features and conversions of assets and fiat deposits, it becomes necessary to have some hot wallets in order to process these requests quickly.
The good news is that these funds are secured through the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU). This is an emergency insurance fund that was created in 2018. Binance allocates 10% of all their trading fees into SAFU, in order to be able to protect users if something were to happen.
Binance being the biggest cryptocurrency exchange, has naturally been the target of many potential hackers. On May 7th in 2019, hackers successfully obtained API keys and 2FA codes from Binance users, primarily through phishing and the use of viruses.
The well-orchestrated hack which targeted mainly high net-worth users resulted in a withdrawal of 7000 BTC in one single transaction. The funds were taken from Binance’s hot wallets, which naturally are the only ones potentially accessible for hackers.
All the funds stolen were immediately covered by the SAFU fund, in other words, no users were affected by the hack. It is important to realize that no exchange unless agreed upon in terms of service, has the legal obligation to cover user funds in extreme cases like this. Which is why I commend Binance for covering all the losses without any objections.
At the same, it was the only reasonable decision. When the hack occurred, it was calculated that it would only take Binance around 5-6 months’ income to earn back the 7000 BTC loss, now it would likely happen even faster. Lost funds can be easily earned back, however, the loss of reputation as a secure and trustworthy exchange could make a much more significant impact on the future of an exchange.
Due to the quick handling of the situation by Binance, there was never a huge backlash that happened.
This was also partly due to Binance’s focus on improving security further after the hack had happened. Binance has since then been verified by DNV and UKAS, which conducted thorough audits with 114 criteria and 14 categories, including asset management, operational security, security policy and more.
There have been no other hacks except for the one mentioned, handling of the incident and the efforts and resources spent to ensure security post-hack has been assuring for the crypto-community and shows Binance seeks to lead the way on most fronts regarding cryptocurrency.
Overview
Binance offers two slightly different interfaces, classic and advanced.
I prefer the advanced interface as it allows me to customize things a little more than classic, but I think both are excellent and easy to use.
The user interface looks sleek and runs smooth, it is also very customizable, so you can set things up as you prefer. There are also different color schemes, and light/night mode on all the user interfaces.
You can also easily drag and drop the different interface parts when on advanced mode to customize where you want to see things.
If you prefer, you can still use the old interface for those of you that are nostalgic. Activate it by clicking ‘old website.’
Despite being very used to seeing the old one, I enjoy the look of the new one more. Even though I would like to have the ability to change its color to something slightly lighter without using the light mode, which I find to be too bright.
I would say out of the majority of crypto exchanges Binance is one of the more professional and better-designed platforms. Despite having a lot of features that other exchanges don’t have, the navigation is relatively easy.
Understandably, some newcomers might find things a little confusing at first. Still, there are plenty of FAQ sections and official tutorial in the academy section to help guide new users.
When conducting trades through the margin or futures wallet, you will have access to helpful historical data.
Futures is the most detailed as it will show you things such as winning days, losing days, win rate, average loss, etc. These are unusual stats to find without using external tools, so I think it’s great it has been integrated. I would like to see this type of data presented for spot accounts as well.
Advanced Orders
Binance offers most of the advanced standard orders as other exchanges, though the different functions availability depends on what you are trading.
In order to use all the order functionality offered, you will need to trade futures contracts.
Below we will roughly describe what is available, if you want a more detailed approach, please check out our guide on advanced orders and functions.
- OCO Orders
When using the spot and margin markets, you will notice something called OCO, which stands for One Cancels the Other.
This is unique to Binance as other exchanges have taken a different approach to their advanced orders. This is combining a stop-limit order with a limit-marker order, with the same quantity. When one of the orders is executed, the other one is immediately canceled.
This can be confusing, so let’s illustrate how this works.
If the price is $9800 and you believe it’s at a resistance level and you want to buy at $9700 but you also want to buy at $9850 if the price starts breaking the resistance.
You can use OCO orders here to place a limit order at $9700 and a stop limit buy order at $9850, the first one of these orders that get hit, will be executed and the other one will get canceled, so you don’t have to worry about filling up your orders twice.
Note: you will be using this with spot and margin markets, but not with the derivative futures markets which allow for more ordinary order solutions, which is preferable for most traders.
- Limit Orders
Limit orders provide liquidity for the market and are referred to as maker orders and they do not get filled until the market price reaches your specific order.
- Market Orders
Market orders take liquidity from the market as they immediately execute and get filled, these are called taker orders.
- Stop Orders
This includes limit stop orders, market stop orders as well as trailing stop functionality.
- Take Profit Orders
It executes when the price moves in a favorable direction to the trader in order to secure profits.
- Trailing Stop / Call Back Order
It allows us to set a stop from the current price, which will then follow the price if it moves in a desirable direction, creating a higher/lower stop that is favorable to the trader.
- Post-Only Orders
Post-Only mode ensures that your limit orders will never execute as market orders.
- Reduce-Only Orders
Will only be permitted to reduce your position.
Fees
Binance has VIP levels to determine fees, as long as you are a registered user, you will be classified as VIP 0 when starting out.
You can upgrade VIP levels with one of two actions, either having a 30-day trading volume (measured in BTC) surpassing each level’s minimum requirements or having more BNB (Binance Coin) than the required amount for each level.
You don’t have to fulfill both of these, only one is enough to move up your VIP level.
The first thing that’s important to notice is that Binance does not offer maker rebates. When using limit orders, you will have to pay a fee instead of receiving payment from the exchange for providing liquidity.
I can’t say I’m a fan of this fee structure, as this puts people that are relying on limit orders for their trading at a disadvantage. In general, the fees without any discount is too high compared to its competitors.
If you are trading on Binance, make sure you are using a referral link and are paying your fees automatically with BNB, as this will give you around a 40% percent reduction in fees.
Just by doing this, your taker fees (market orders) will be at a better level than all of the major competitors, the disadvantage is that the maker fees will still be higher.
If you are mostly using market orders, then the fee structure is well suited for you at Binance, however, if you are primarily using limit orders other exchanges will provide a rebate for you when you do so. One of the reasons
Binance can survive with higher maker fees because they provide services and products other exchanges do not, so in all areas that are not derivatives related, they don’t have any real competition.
The good news is that 10% of all the fees spent will go directly into the SAFU fund, created to protect users and traders if something extreme were to happen which put customer funds at risk.
Withdrawing
In order to withdraw, you will have to go to your spot wallet.
Find the desired coin and click “withdraw.”
If you find the spot wallet to be filled with too many coins, try activating “hide small balances,” it will make it easier to overview your significant assets. You can also convert small amounts of other cryptocurrencies (also called dust) into BNB, which is a great feature to clean up your spot wallet.
As with deposits, you will have two alternatives BEP2 or BTC network. BEP2 will have slightly lower fees but is not supported by all exchanges. If you are uncertain what to choose, go with the BTC network as this is accepted by all exchanges and leaves no room for user error.
If you do choose BEP2, please be certain if a MEMO is required or not. For example, if you are sending BNB to another account on Binance you will require a MEMO. This is used when there are shared wallets for customers, so you need a MEMO to identify your funds in the shared wallets.
If you need to find your MEMO on Binance, go to deposit and choose the desired coin, for example BNB, you will see a BEP2 MEMO address next to the BEP2 address.
Support
Binance provides support 24/7 through a live chat. When using their Binance support function you will first interact with a bot that tries to provide you links or answers to the specific question you have formulated, if the bot is unable to answer your question, you will proceed to interact with the Binance support team.
If you are struggling to use the Binance support chat for some reason, try using a different browser or open it while being logged out of your account.
Binance does have an official telegram channel, however, there is no direct support provided here. Just a place for users to talk and ask questions in an open forum.
Binance does have a reasonably detailed and easy to use FAQ, which should be able to answer most questions.
You are also able to submit a request instead of chatting with the support team. The benefit of using the submit a request feature is that it allows you to upload attachments to help describe or show the issues you are experiencing.
Overall the support provided by Binance is good, and you will be able to find answers reasonably quickly. Still, I miss in the early days of Binance when I could receive support on telegram, since that time the telegram channel has evolved into a general chat channel with 100K people writing nonsense for the most part.
Binance DEX
The Binance DEX is a completely decentralized marketplace that conducts transactions directly on the blockchain and not through an exchange. The benefits of decentralized exchanges are you are in complete control of your assets and there are no exchange fees, only network fees.
There are many exciting developments when it comes to decentralized exchanges and decentralized finance in general, unfortunately, the Binance DEX is unable to capture that.
The problem is that the products available on Binance DEX are a selection of a few products that are already available on Binance with far better liquidity. There is no real incentive to trade on the DEX over the regular exchange.
The way forward to improve the DEX would be to add the new DeFi (decentralized finance) products that users are interested in, not just ordinary altcoins that we already can trade with far better liquidity.
However, if you are still interested in the DEX, you can follow this official Binance guides to get set up: Creating and accessing the DEX Wallet.
Binance Testnet
Binance offers three different testnets:
- Spot Market Testnet
- Futures Market Testnet
- DEX (Decentralized Exchange) Testnet
Spot Market Testnet
The spot market is not very straightforward to set up and is intended primarily for API users, if this is interesting for you can find out more here on the Binance testnet site.
The Futures Market Testnet
This testnet as it allows you to trade the most popular derivative products with leverage and experiment with the advanced orders and trading mechanics without any risk, visit the binance futures testnet here.
I usually think it’s great to offer testnets, however, the futures testnet does not offer a realistic trading environment since the price action is purely dictated by the testnet users, which creates a very synthetic environment.
You can see on the image above how the price action is ridiculous and not realistic, so I wouldn’t recommend using this to learn how to trade, but only experiment with leverage and order functions.
If you want to use the testnet you will need to create a new account as the testnet is separate from the real exchange.
If you need to deposit additional tesnet BTC, in can be done through a testnet faucet.
DEX Testnet
This testnet was created to help users understand how Binance’s decentralized exchange works, which is slightly different than the centralized exchanges which most are used to.
To start using the DEX testnet, you first need to create a wallet that can be done here: Binance DEX wallet creation.
Since it’s decentralized, the account/wallet creation is a little different, so it can be wise to run through it once on the testnet before going to live to get comfortable with how things work.
As an anti-spam measure, Binance requires you to have 1 BNB in your Binance account to receive testnet funds. However, the price action is similar to the futures, so I would only use it to get used to the wallet creation and different advanced orders.
Once you have created your wallet, you will need to unlock it. Follow the methods shown in the offical Binance DEX guide.
Whether you are using Binance testnet or the real DEX, the procedure will be the same.
Binance Mobile App
The Binance mobile app is one of the highest-reviewed mobile apps from all the crypto exchanges. It has managed to implement a lot of options and usability and still keep the design clean and relatively easy to navigate. I would recommend a mobile with a large screen if you are trading, it makes it far easier to click precisely and quickly.
You can also set price alerts in the app, so it makes it easy to keep track of the price action in areas of interest.
The different menus are well organized and the trading interface utilizes the screen area well and gives the trader a good overview. I prefer not to trade from apps but nonetheless, it can be a valuable tool for many traders to either check up on things while on the go or do some trades or adjustments through the mobile.
You can download the mobile app from the links below.
Binance Desktop App
I have not seen many exchanges offer a stand-alone desktop application, and has been something Binance has been providing for a while. So what’s the point of a desktop app you might ask, the answer is simple; performance.
If you struggle loading the interface in your browser, you feel the exchange is sluggish or simply require the best connection at all times because you trade seriously on Binance, then I would recommend giving the desktop app a go.
The setup files can be download directly from Binance through the links below for both Windows and Mac OS.
Binance Review Summary
Binance managed to come hot out of the gates in 2017 and quickly became acknowledged as the number one exchange to buy cryptocurrencies, leading the charge in the alt-coin frenzy at the time.
Since 2017, many things have changed, however, Binance still reigns as the king of the cryptocurrency exchanges when it comes to spot markets.
There has not been any other exchange able to provide so much innovation when it comes to expanding their cryptocurrency platform. Binance now serves not only as a place to buy cryptocurrency but also to trade derivatives in the futures markets, staking crypto and earning interest through lending in your own savings wallet.
With a new crypto debit card slowly being released, it shows that they intend to serve a purpose not only as an exchange but also as the same role as banks have in our traditional lives, providing a solution for all our crypto-financial needs.
When it comes to liquid spot markets, Binance is the number one exchange at this time and judging by its and the competitors growth in spot markets, this is very unlikely to change in the near future.
As for derivative futures markets, it remains competitive, but due to fees I would still rank ByBit and FTX in some areas over Binance in this specific segment, however, the liquidity they have managed to make in their futures market is impressive.
I would be surprised if Binance does not continue to grow its derivatives markets. However, if you have a referral and use BNB for discounted fees the derivative markets are more than fine to use on Binance, and I would place it arguably in the top three of all exchanges when it comes to derivatives and number one when it comes to spot markets.
Binance offers its users one of the smoothest and most stable mobile apps and a stand-alone desktop app if you prefer trading without having to tie up resources on your browser.
The many different alternatives to deposit makes Binance an ideal on-ramp for new users worldwide, as one of the options is sure to suit somebody no matter what local constraints or regulations the user is experiencing.
As one develops and creates new features, it is only natural that not all features provide users with an equally excellent service. For example, I believe the DEX has potential, but as of right now, it provides users with not much use, seeing as the pairs and products are not really what users want or desire.
I would also like to see a reduction in taker fees (fee for limit orders), even with a referral and BNB discount, it still marginally higher than all of its main competitors.
Despite the small areas of improvement, we see a constant development from Binance and they keep pushing the envelope of what we can expect from crypto exchanges in terms of services, trust, and functionality. I believe the future for Binance remains bright and it will be one of the top crypto exchanges for a long time.
All exchange reviews may be subject to change if the exchange becomes better or worse after the review has been published or the information becomes outdated.