If you’ve already gone through the process of buying some Bitcoin or Ethereum from an exchange such as Coinbase, and are now looking to buy some altcoins, then an altcoin exchange is where you need to be. It can be quite a chore deciding which ones you can trust and know if they are legit or not. In this Binance Review we’ll cover everything you need to know about making your first cryptocurrency purchase on Binance. We’ll be covering the fee structure, how easy Binance is to use, the supported currencies and countries and answering the question – Is Binance Safe?
Binance is a fairly new exchange located in China. Despite being a fairly new exchange it is one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges at the moment due to it’s high number of available coins, speedy transactions, low fees and relative simplicity of its interface. In fact, it’s matching engine is capable of processing around 1.4 million transactions per second, which makes it one of the fastest exchanges on the market. It works as a crypto to crypto exchange and does not offer any fiat exchange, unlike Coinbase or Coinmama.
How to use Binance
The very first thing you’ll need to do is to sign up. For a level 1 account there is no need to verify it. This allows for a 2 BTC daily withdrawal limit. We’d highly recommend setting up 2 factor authentication for whichever account level you have and if you have an Android phone then we’d suggest using the Google Authenticator. This will all be prompted during the sign up process and is very easy to do.
A level 2 account gives a 100 BTC daily withdrawal limit but will require photo ID verification. This is where you simply upload a photo of your ID and Binance with approve that you are who you say you are. There are even higher limits available but for that you’ll have to contact Binace directly.
Once you have a working account, you’ll need to add some funds to it. For this example we’ll assume you already have some Bitcoin in a wallet available to you.
If you visit the Funds tab in the top menu, then click on Deposits / Withdrawals. This will bring up a page of all of the current cryptocurrencies that Binance supports. You need to then find Bitcoin in this list and click on the Deposit button on the right hand side of the page.
This will give you a Binance wallet address that you can send funds to and begin trading.
How to Trade on Binance
The top menu will give you the option to view the trading interface. You can choose between the basic and the advanced version. The basic version looks like this:
And the advanced version looks like this:
Whilst both of these may seem quite confusing to a beginner we think their layout and the general user interface is very good. It’s about as simple as they can make it whilst offering a lot of information.
Even the basic version obviously isn’t particularly beginner friendly but after a few minutes of reading around and you should have a good enough understanding to be able to make your first trade on Binance. To make it even easier, we’ll go through the basics here.
The left hand side of the screen will give you the recent trades, the green are what people have bought and the pink are what people have sold.
The middle section is split into two halves. The bottom half is your buy and sell options. You can set specific prices using the limits tab or you can buy at market price. You are given the option to buy with 25, 50, 75 and 100% of your total currency holdings.
The upper part is dedicated to the trading graphs that can be customised with different times and layouts. These graphs are compared to the currency that you have chosen to buy your altcoin in. For example if you want to buy Cardano (ADA) with Ethereum (ETH) then your graph will be the price of Cardano compared to Ethereum.
To change the currency that you are buying in requires you to go to the right hand side of the page. Here you will find the currency pairs and be able to easily switch between the options whilst also choosing your favourites. The current options are Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB) and Tether (USDT).
The bottom half of the right hand side of the screen is dedicated to displaying the market and your trade history for that specific crypto pair.
We’re going to skip the breakdown of the advanced view as beginners can get by without using it. If you are a more advanced user then you might want to know that only limit and market orders are available at the moment. Quite a disadvantage to some users.
Overall, trading on Binance is very good. It may take a little while to learn if you’re an absolute beginner, but it is far from difficult.
Fees and Limits
Binance is known for its low fees. At the time of writing this Binance only charges 0.1% on any transaction made by a user. But if you decide to pay this fee with Binance Coin then you get a 50% discount. This makes it one of the best cryptocurrency exchanges to trade with low fees.
It has a slightly more specific process for charging withdrawal fees. This is done on a specific coin basis and therefore changes with each currency. For example, 0.0005 is the fee when withdrawing Bitcoin. 0.005 for Ether. 1 for Cardano. 0.01 for Litecoin. You get the idea. A more in depth breakdown of the fee structure can be found here.
There isn’t a limit on the amount of crypto you can deposit but withdrawal limits do apply. Like mentioned before different stages of Binance identity verification are required to withdraw greater amounts of currency.
Binance Coin
As you may have noticed, Binance have their own coin. This was issued during their own ICO and at the moment it is used to pay fees. But Binance has bigger plans for the coin and has said that it will eventually be used to create a decentralised coin exchange where it will be one of the base currencies.
Supported Cryptos
One of the best parts of Binance is the huge number of currencies that they have available for trading. Here’s a quick list of some of the available currencies on Binance:
The best way to see the huge range of coins available is to go to the Binance website itself.
Safety and Security – Is Binance Safe?
If you have signed up to Binance you will see that it employs a two factor authentication system used to make your personal account as safe as possible. However, the safety of the site as a whole is a little less clear. Binance do not provide much information on how users funds are being stored.
In early February 2018 there was a Binance outage that was claimed to be an upgrade of their security system. Assuming that this is to be believed then that is a positive point to the safety of Binance. If however, the rumours are to be believed and it was some form of hack then we’d be less convinced of their security systems. Either way, Binance say that no one’s data or coins were affected.
We’d highly recommend that if you are keeping any amount of cryptocurrency on an exchange, that you take it off and store it in a wallet. We’ve run through the best Ethereum wallets here, many of which can be used for other altcoins. Better yet, buy a hardware wallet, such as the Ledger Nano S.
Customer support
Another slight down side of Binance as it currently stands is the customer support. There is no live chat or phone number, but instead only a ticket system. There has been generally a positive response in regards to the competence of the replies and the team seem to be able to offer professional and timely support.
There is also a rather helpful FAQ section of the website that will likely answer a lot of questions you might have.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Binance is one of the best crypto to crypto exchanges around today. It has an engine capable of some of the quickest and smoothest transaction available. It’s fees are very low and it has a huge library of coins to trade. Whilst it’s customer support could use a little work and a bit more transparency with how they store the coins would be nice, Cryptos Decoded would definitely recommend Binance.
We would also recommend to take as many safety precautions as possible. Like with all cryptocurrencies, you are not able to retrieve any lost or stolen coins so we’d recommend storing coins on Binance (or any exchange) for as little time as possible. Instead move them to your own private wallet where you know they’ll be safe.