The world of cryptocurrencies has been expanding its horizon since Bitcoin was first introduced into the market in 2009. There was a time when people could only get their hands on this digital currency by mining it. Since this process was so time-consuming and initially inefficient, and there was no guarantee that one would get any crypto when they were done, a more efficient way was needed and this prompted the birth of cryptocurrency exchanges.
As crypto exchanges have become popular over the years, cryptocurrencies have become way more accessible. Among the hundreds of crypto exchanges available around the world today, Binance is one of the most popular ones.
This review is dedicated to Binance. We are going to explore its services, your payment options, fees, and everything else that matters. Without any further ado, let’s jump right in.
What is Binance and How Does it Work?
For readers who have just found their passion in the crypto industry, you need to first understand what a crypto exchange is and what it does. In this review, we will explore the Binance exchange from the time it opened its services to the public to all the features and services they offer today.
Let’s start.
Based in Hong Kong, Binance was launched in July 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer. This happened after Zhao’s company Beijie Technology had a successful ICO that raised $15 million. If you’re not familiar with an ICO (Initial Coin Offering), think of it as the IPO (Initial Public Offering) of the crypto industry. The founder rewarded initial investors with the exchange’s own cryptocurrency, Binance Coin or BNB. This crypto can be used to pay for fees on the Binance exchange as well as to trade cryptos.
Since its inception, Binance has expanded its operations globally and has really improved the user experience extensively. Interestingly, following struggles with the Chinese government’s views on cryptocurrencies, Zhao decided to run the Binance servers from other more lenient countries, and as such, this has enabled the exchange to offer a top-quality exchange service.
Today, Binance is not just a crypto exchange. Rather, it offers a wide range of services such as P2P (peer-to-peer) trading, wire transfers, spot trading, margin trading, crypto loans, charity, and a whole lot more. Also, from the Binance platform, you can buy or sell over 200 cryptos for fiat money. The list of available currencies is one of the longest you will find in any exchange and in recent years, Binance has even started dealing in NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
In 2019, the company launched a new trading platform named Binance Futures. It’s a new service that allows traders to speculate on the prices of cryptos rather than purchasing these digital currencies outright. The good news also is that US users can also trade on the Binance US site as this is compatible with US trade regulations.
Evidently, this exchange has grown beyond anyone’s expectations, and it looks like this trend is likely to continue.
Services Offered by Binance
Here are some of the services offered by the Binance crypto exchange:
Bitcoin Exchange
The crypto exchange is undoubtedly the biggest service Binance provides. In fact, this is what the company was intended for. This is the major group of services that control the overall operations of the platform and website.
The purpose of the exchange is, well, to exchange currencies. It can be fiat to crypto, crypto to crypto, or crypto to fiat. Thanks to the innovative approach from the developers, you can use multiple routes to exchange what you have in your wallet.
Credit and Debit Cards
This is one of the biggest jumps in the right direction for Binance as well as for the crypto industry. The lack of channels to acquire crypto has been a major pain point for years. Binance has eradicated it by including both credit and debit card purchases. As such, Binance has partnered with Simplex that provides a brokerage service via debit and credit cards. The great part is that you have the option to buy 31 different cryptos using your credit card. Despite the benefit, keep in mind that this service comes with a fee that can be as high as 3.5% on any US dollar purchase.
Wire Transfers/ SEPA
Another great service offered by Binance is peer-to-peer trading. Here, buyers and sellers of cryptos are connected directly and Binance charges a small commission on the transaction. To ensure flexibility, you can make fiat payments and there is a wide range of safe and secure payment options so you can trade with complete peace of mind.
P2P Trading
Another top feature of Binance is that you are also able to buy your digital currencies using fiat currencies, such as euros, AUD, and CAD, using bank transfers and SEPA (Single Euro Payment Area) bank account wire transfers. The main benefit of this is that no transaction fees are charged. On the downside, this service is still not adapted for USD deposits.
Brave
You can access the Binance Widget, Brave, for in-browser trading. With this widget, you can also sell and buy digital currencies through Binance plus you are able to manage and view your crypto portfolio at any time.
The crypto exchange is undoubtedly the biggest service Binance provides. In fact, this is what the company was intended for. This is the major group of services that control the overall operations of the platform and website.
The purpose of the exchange is, well, to exchange currencies. It can be fiat to crypto, crypto to crypto, or crypto to fiat. Thanks to the innovative approach from the developers, you can use multiple routes to exchange what you have in your wallet.
The Binance Trading Platform
Binance offers an easy-to-use trading platform that is also simple to navigate. On the Binance website, the first tab on the navigation bar is ‘Buy Crypto.’ As mentioned before, Binance offers a wide choice of cryptos including Bitcoin, BNB, XRP, Ether, and Tether trading pairs. You can also access crypto/fiat pairs on Binance’s fiat markets.
The next tab on the navigation bar is ‘Markets.’ This basically shows you the price change in different cryptocurrencies for the last 24 hours.
Right beside this tab, there is the ‘Trade’ tab. This is where the magic happens. To start with, you can choose between two interfaces for trading. One is labeled “Classic” and the other one is “Advanced”. As you may already have guessed from the name, the classic interface gives you an easy-to-understand UI with limited tools, while the advanced one gives you all the tools required to make informed trading decisions.
This is also the tab where you can convert your crypto. You can switch between Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Bitcoin Cash, or any other major crypto you can think of. You can also access P2P trading, strategy trading, swap farming, and margin trading from the Binance Trade tab.
Margin Trading
On the Binance platform, you can access margin trading which is available for selected trading pairs. Traders can trade with leverage of up to 10x on some coins. For convenience and flexibility, you can also choose between isolated margin, which restricts your potential losses to a single trading pair, or you can select cross margin, which risks your entire margin account balance.
Spot Trading
Spot trading is simply the act of buying and selling cryptos. It’s a transaction that takes place on the spot at the market rate. It’s great for the newcomers because there’s not much to understand or research about. You look at the graph and follow the prices and trade at the right time. With Binance, if you want to spot trade, you have the option of selecting one of 3 different interfaces. This is based on your experience so for example, if you are new to the online crypto world, you can select the Classic interface. This enables you to get a quick view of the market and trading pairs, making it much easier to switch pairs. Alternatively, you can access the Advanced view where you can access more advanced charting tools and price charts. If you are completely new to the crypto space, Binance has catered to you too as you also have the option to select the Basic quick trade option. Here you can simply convert your coins at the market rate, without the complexity of order books and charts.
Let’s move on now to leveraged futures trading which is also offered by Binance.
Binance Derivatives and Futures
Binance Futures was launched in 2019 and it lets you speculate on the prices of digital currencies without the need to purchase the crypto coin itself such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and more. The platform allows leveraged trading of up to 125x which is currently more than any other major platform. This means that if your trade ends successfully, you can multiply your profits by 125. Don’t forget about the risks too!
Another interesting thing about Binance Futures is that users’ funds are kept in separate trading accounts. This account will need to be funded with Tether (USDT) as collateral and your losses and profits are also calculated in USDT.
There is a maximum trading fee of 0.04% that is charged on any trade on Binance Futures.
Binance Financing
Binance also offers a choice of financing options. Here is some more information on the different available services.
Crypto Loans
Binance is a huge advocate of top-notch services as well as improving your quality of experience with crypto. As part of the process, it offers crypto loans to users. The loans are available in the form of USDT and BUSD and they are collateralized with ETH or BTC. In this way, you can easily access stablecoins while still maintaining exposure to your crypto holdings. This also gives you the ability to avoid the taxable event when you want to sell your cryptocurrencies.
Binance Visa Card
Did you know that Binance offers its own Visa card that you can use at over 60 million merchants all over the world? The great part is that you can spend your crypto holdings even in places that only accept fiat currencies with your card. When you make a purchase, your cryptos are converted to the relevant fiat currency with no fees.
Binance Pay
If you are familiar with using e-wallets, you will really like Binance Pay. It’s a contactless payment service that you can use to pay merchants, just like you do with your Binance Visa card.
Savings
With Binance Savings, you can make a return on funds that you are not using. You can select different account types such as locked or flexible account types. The locked savings accounts pay higher interest on fixed-term deposits while the flexible savings accounts yield variable interest rates.
Staking
If you are familiar with how the crypto world works, you might have heard about staking. Here you can earn returns on proof-of-stake and DeFi (decentralized finance) without any need for technical knowledge to stake these coins. Just like the saving accounts that Binance offers, you can opt into the staking service with a locked or flexible option.
Binance Smart Pool
This is similar to carpooling but with miners. A large group of miners can come together to mine larger blocks of crypto and then they split the rewards. It’s a great place for people who are keen to get into crypto mining without top-end hardware. An added bonus is that the hash power is automatically redirected to the most profitable crypto at the time. As such, users are provided with hands-free optimization.
Binance Liquid Swap
The Binance Liquid Swap is an AMM or automated market-maker platform. This is similar to Uniswap except the Liquid Swap is centralized. Here, you can trade digital coins with minimal slippage, or you can provide your liquidity in return for a share of fees.
Binance Currencies and Payment Methods
Now that you have a pretty good idea of what Binance is and how it works, we can move on to exploring the different currencies and payment options that this exchange offers.
As stated, Binance is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. So, it’s only understandable that it offers more than 200 cryptocurrencies!
The major ones include Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ripple, Cardano, Chainlink, Solana, Tether, TRON, Dash, Cosmos, Binance Coin, Bitcoin Cash, and so on.
Although the list of available countries is not provided, you can see the depth of its services by simply looking at the available fiat currencies. This includes euro, United States dollars, Russian rubles, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, Hungarian forint, Turkish lira, Swiss franc, Thai baht, Indian rupee, Mexican pesos, Japanese yen, and plenty of other fiat currencies.
As for the payment options, you already know that you are free to use your credit/debit cards, such as Visa, MasterCard, and more. Also, cryptos can be traded for fiat currencies or other cryptos using bank and wire transfers through the SEPA banks.
Binance Fees and Costs
Binance offers a flat rate of 0.1% and for traders who use the exchange’s futures trading platform, the fees start at 0.02% and 0.04% for makers or takers, respectively. Another great advantage is that the native Binance token, BNB, provides an additional discount on the trading fee of up to 50 percent.
In terms of deposits, these are free unless there are blockchain fees that are always paid by the sender. When you want to make a withdrawal, there are fees that generally also correlate with the blockchain transaction. To offer a fair price, Binance updates its withdrawal fee regularly.
Binance Limits
There are two withdrawal limits at Binance. If you have completed the basic account verification process on the platform (Level 1), your daily withdrawal limit is 2 BTC daily or the equivalent. If you complete the entire verification process (KYC and proof of identification) (Level 2), you can increase your withdrawal limits to 100 BTC per day!
Binance – Supported Countries
On the Binance site and exchange, there is no mention about which countries are supported and so it is available worldwide. A great benefit is that even users from the USA can use Binance US. This comes after the exchange withdrew its main service from the country.
Binance Customer Support
Binance has done a fantastic job of deploying a choice of customer support channels. You can access the support channel from the support page, located in the footer section of the website.
The Binance website is completely multilingual and offered in a wide choice of languages such as Italian, German Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, and many many more. It is clearly evident that Binance is a global cryptocurrency exchange.
In most cases, you will need to submit a request or inquiry via the site’s email contact form. Responses are not instant so be ready to wait. Also, the site does offer a customer service bot chat but the responses here are simply automated so not always a big help.
Binance versus Coinbase
The exchange Coinbase also offers a trading platform called Coinbase Pro. Like Binance, Coinbase is a leading exchange and has an excellent reputation as well as has a high rate of adoption.
On the downside, Coinbase only supports 103 countries, so this limits its access worldwide. Also, the platform charges a 0.25% trading fee. This is a lot more than what Binance charges.
To learn more about Coinbase, click here.
Binance – FAQs
1. How Safe Is Binance?
The website has all the major security features such as SSL 128-bit encryption and 2-factor authentication. However, there was a hacking attempt back in 2019 and 7,000 BTC were stolen. According to Binance, these losses were covered by their insurance fund (SAKU).
2. Can I Buy Bitcoins On Binance?
Yes, you can. To top it off, you can buy Bitcoins with any supported crypto as well as with a credit card.
3. Can I Withdraw Fiat Currencies from Binance?
Currently, the option to withdraw fiat currencies from Binance is limited to RUB and AUD. You cannot currently withdraw euros, US dollars, and more. You can also withdraw cryptocurrencies from Binance.
Conclusion: Is Binance the Right Choice for You?
The fact is, Binance is a top crypto exchange, and its advantages out way its disadvantages by far. The combination of their team’s knowledge of how to build a trading platform and the exchange’s low fees make Binance a top player in the crypto space. In addition, Binance is always working on expanding and fine-tuning its services, so we are sure there is a lot more to come from this crypto exchange. To sign up with Binance, click here and get started now.
Skrill FAQs
How fast is it to buy Bitcoin with Skrill?
Skrill transactions are instant, so can complete your Bitcoin buying process within a few moments.
Do I need a Skrill Bitcoin wallet?
No, Skrill does not have a Bitcoin wallet. Skrill will only be used as a payment method on crypto exchanges and P2P sites. On the Skrill wallet, you only need your account.
How soon will my Bitcoin balance update?
Skrill transactions are instant. Your Bitcoin balances will depend on your crypto exchange or P2P crypto trading site.
Is Skrill the best way to buy Bitcoin?
This depends on you. But Skrill is quick, simple, secure, and charges relatively lower fees.
