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Bittrex Review – One critical issue you should be informed about!
Bittrex is a US-based crypto-exchange firm that has becoming substantially popular amongst the traders since it was established in December 2014. It is one of the most preferred exchanges in altcoin in the market, which can be attributed to its steady growth.
Another major factor contributing to the success of the exchange is the founding team of security experts, which is devoted to maintaining a clean, quick, reliable and safe exchange. With a number of cases of collapsed and hacked exchanges in the market, traders are thankful for a secure platform that doesn’t lose their funds.
The exchange was founded by Bill Shihara – The CEO, Richie Lie, Ryan Hentz and Rami Kawach and is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. The firm makes it a point to oblige by the regulatory standards of the US money laws, which is quite apparent in the way the firm is set-up and structure.
Signing Up with Bittrex
Premium-tier verifications are slightly elaborate and require some more additional details to uncover the broader spectrum of services. For instance, the enhanced verified tier allows the clients to make fund transfers (deposits & withdrawals) in fiat wire for more than 10,000 dollars.
Variety of Altcoins
An array of altcoins is available to the holder of a verified account, this is much more than any other exchange has to offer. More than 250 altcoins are offered from trading against Ethereum, Bitcoin and fiat currencies in the form of Dollar – Tether and BitCNY.
The exchange takes substantial measures to add up-and-coming altcoins to its roster after carefully verifying their code sources and delisting inactive coins.
While some inactive coins may have managed to slip past the verifying process, Bittrex’s goal is to improve the quality of it’s over coin repository. If a newly completed ICO, a blockchain that is just launched or even a newly branched fork, you are almost certain to find it on Bittrex
Hard Fork Coins
Bittrex carefully reviews all coins from imminent hard forks or airdrops before offering full support and debiting client’s accounts. Most of the times, as soon as the networks are steady enough, several coins generated from hard forks are made available to the clients for the purpose of trading
One such instance is the recent Zclassic coin fork, which was handled professionally to support the latest ZenCash coin. Another emergin Bitcoin Gold hard fork is still under the vetting process, but once it’s through the verification, BTG will be added for trading similar to Ethereum Classic fork of ETH and Bitcoin Cash fork of BTC.
Trading, Withdrawals, and Fees
Bittrex is yet to make leverage and margin trading available, it only offers spot trading for all the coins listings. That said, the exchange is currently developing a new trading engine that will enable margin trading and advanced order types in the near future.
The current trading engine smoothly stitches automated trading features together which includes stop loss, instant buy or sell, technical charting tools and GTC to meets the needs of its clients. Clients continually praise the exchange’s trading interface for its fast loading time and zero lags.
Fees and Volumes
Compared to the industry average, the trading fees charged at Bittrex are on the higher side, slightly. Furthermore, there are no rebates for high -volume trades nor incentives program for takers and makers. A flat 0.25% commission is levied on all trades.
Though the fees are slightly higher it has done little to hamper the number of customers that sign up for the exchange. The exchange has seen an apparent rise of its trading volumes since the year 2014 and it’s now in the league of Poloniex – the reputed altcoin exchange with the topmost trading volumes
In just shy of three years, the exchange’s volume of trades have gone up from as low as 0.1% to 0.5% of that of Poloniex’s volumes. That said, Bittrex has quicker withdrawal times and much more reliable order execution as compared to Poloniex despite relatively lower trade volumes.
Security
That’s the unmatched selling point of Bittrex? It is it’s unparalleled security measures which are its major selling point, which gives it an edge over the competitors. The founding team which is made of computer security professionals with more than 40 years of combined experience, but the security on the top overall its developmental decisions. Three years after the exchange started its operations, Bittrex has achieved the rare milestone of never having gone through any breaches of any kind or even losing any customer funds.
Bittrex has a smart strategy to ensure the safety of funds, what the exchange does its maintain an elastic, multistage wallet strategy that at any given point keeps almost eight to ninety percent of clients funds safely offline. Meanwhile, on the client -side, two-step verification is a must to process all withdrawals as well as API calls, if it’s not activated, a limit on the withdrawal is levied for the clients without 2FA set up. This shows that the exchange puts ample emphasis on safety, and it is a factor that is at the forefront of the firm’s mission.
Having said the above, a customer did recently contact us to let us know that his account was hacked. Allegedly the hackers were successful in gaining access to his Bittrex account and change the 2FA settings without a need for an email security check or verification. The user was in essence locked out of his own account. The exchange did not respond to this as of the time this review went live. So a word of caution – don’t use Bittrex without the 2FA procedure enabled, as someone may get hold of your account details and can, by all means, lock you out of your own account.
Customer Support
On occasions, certain accounts will be temporarily suspended in the face of an impending completion of a review. This procedure has attracted acute criticism from the owners of the frozen accounts, who have taken to the online forums to put forth their complaints online.
Apparently, this has been the case for quite some time for now, with only a minimal response from the exchange’s team. On the whole, according to Bittrex, only around 0.1% accounts are affected by closures, outright bands, and suspensions. However, in the last few months, more than 50% threads have been opened in various Bitcoins forums in relation to this matter.
One way to avoid such an inconvenience, it’s best to have your credentials within short reach in your account I flagged. Most grievances found online are from client’s up-and-coming markets; Bittrex’s low-tier specifications seem to cater to the unserved markets.
Even with top-notch security offerings that the exchange is acclaimed for, Bittrex’s major letdown is its customer support. As per public opinion in terms of speed and the responsiveness to support ticket is negligible when it comes to verification, follow-ups and customer -service related issues that are under review.
Conclusion
Although the exchange can be considered as a quality choice for novice traders and traders looking for a strong, secure platform which offers the trading opportunities in several cryptocurrencies, it’s inadequate customer support and recent freezing of accounts have negatively impacted the exchange, making it a questionable choice.
It’s not too seldom that exchanges compromise on customer support and satisfaction in order to continue operating and expanding in various verticals across the ever-changing cryptocurrencies space. But in this case, the public outcry seems too loud to ignore and the exchange must work towards it.
We would advise to trade with Bittrex with caution at the moment and don’t deposit any amount in the account that you can’t afford for it to be put on hold for a certain period of time. This is the bitter truth for almost any Bitcoin exchange out in the market.
Bittrex exchange review
Pros
- Good support
- Variety of altcoins
- Smart security
- Easy to use
Cons
- Long verification process