Bitfinex Review – Are They Safe or a Scam?

If you are a new customer of Bitfinex, you will be expected to sign up for an account on the platform. To open the account, you will be shown a screen that lets you create a username and password and input your email address with their know your customer (KYC) process.

There is also an option for you to type in a referral code. Bitfinex has an affiliate program that allows individuals with an account to earn commission from new customers. They can send out links, and some websites also offer you a link or code that gives you a 6% Bitfinex trading fee discount on the platform.

Once you have entered in all your details and clicked the tab to open an account, they will verify your details promptly so you can use the online exchange. Bitfinex claims to maintain standardised compliance measures to work against money laundering and have counter-terrorism financing (CTF) laws to offer more security and ease of mind for those unfamiliar with the online platform.

74/100

Rating

Bitfinex Highlights

• Relatively low trading fees
• Easy to navigate user interface
• Accepts payments in crypto

Go to Bitfinex

Bitfinex is relatively easy to use in terms of user interface and website design features. The Bitfinex experience and rating are pretty good because they can be operated by new users and experienced traders efficiently. As an exchange, Bitfinex offers excellent liquidity. Meaning if you wanted to cash out your cryptocurrencies for fiat currency, the process isn’t complex but relatively swift.

In addition, this Bitfinex crypto platform is excellent in allowing you to easily exchange your digital coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum and many others with minimal slippage. The exchange offers several cryptocurrency pairs you can trade with to choose from. So it has a good variety for individuals who want to monitor a digital asset other than the most popular ones like Bitcoin or Ethereum. It is known to be the only platform where you can trade during peak activity and still perform when there are high volumes of orders coming in. It shows their stability is of a high standard and makes trading on the platform reliable.

We researched the range of products in this Bitfinex review and found that the platform offers a few accounts. These include the central online exchange platform where you can speculate and monitor the crypto position you are trading. Customers can also use a free-to-use mobile app with all the functionality of the Bitfinex desktop exchange but in a mobile device form for Apple and Android holders.

In addition, this platform has a feature called ‘Bitfinex Pay’, which lets users accept crypto payments simply and seamlessly. It means you have zero processing fees when using the service, and because the setup is relatively straightforward, you will also receive payments in your online exchange quickly. Several cryptocurrencies are accepted to be paid in, including the well-known Bitcoin and Ethereum, but you can also be paid in Tether tokens.

There is also an option to borrow from Bitfinex with their ‘Bitfinex Borrow’ platform. It works as a peer-to-peer or P2P marketplace that lets customers borrow funds from other customers on the site and provide their cryptocurrency assets as collateral. This platform allows borrowers and lenders to experience what P2P is like, and it does come with benefits such as flexibility in the loan amount and interest rates for each individual. It would suit your terms and situations, and there are high rewards at stake too. However, you need to be eligible and understand some risks that come with a successful loan.

What is Bitfinex? Bitfinex is an online exchange platform that is used for trading cryptocurrency. In addition to it being an exchange, it also offers a range of trading platforms for both traders and lenders. It offers margin trading, which comes in the form of the ‘Bitfinex Borrow’ platform. It allows you to trade with up to 10x leverage by borrowing funds from the P2P marketplace. This market provides a secure way for individuals to earn interest in their digital assets and fiat money as they provide loans to customers who want to trade with leverage.

There is also a mobile-friendly app that boasts the ability to trade on the go with ease as it includes all the details of the online platform. It’s helpful because many traders prefer to use an exchange when it suits them, and not having to carry a laptop around can increase the usability of the app and the platform altogether.

Bitfinex also has a paper trading feature. Similar to your Crypto Parrot account, It allows individuals to test their trading strategies in a simulated market environment without depositing real funds. It’s useful for those who want to practice their skills who may not be as familiar with the exchange, and it’s also suitable for traders who just want to speculate about the cryptocurrency market.

We researched the fees Bitfinex charged its clients, and compared to other online exchanges, it’s slightly below the industry average. If you are a ‘taker’, someone who takes up an offer, you would pay a fee of 0.200%. If you are a ‘maker’ or an investor who places trades, you are charged a fee of 0.100%.

If you decide you want to short sell, meaning you buy crypto and sell it in the hopes it will drop in price, you will not be allowed to sell more than 70% of your full position.

When depositing funds into your exchange, there are a few methods that you can use to do so. Depending on which method you choose will determine if you are charged fees or not. If you deposit a cryptocurrency or a stablecoin token, you won’t be charged a deposit fee. However, if you decide to use the bank transfer method, you will be asked to deposit a minimum of 60 USD or EUR and be charged a 0.100% fee.

Some assets will also charge you a withdrawal fee, but others won’t. Similarly, you will have to pay a fee to withdraw the funds into your bank account with the bank transfer method. In addition, if you decide to withdraw a digital asset towards another Bitfinex user’s address, that is free of charge.

You may be asking, is Bitfinex safe? And do they have a reliable point of call if you need assistance? Our research found that this exchange has a customer support service that is available 24/7 for traders. They offer an email response service, but it can take up to 12 hours to receive a response, which, in such a volatile market, can be too long of a wait.

As of April 2021, Bitfinex also launched a live chat customer support service to improve the user experience further. It’s helpful if you have more of an urgent request and want support then and there. But, as the live chat has only recently come about, they’re currently available Monday to Friday from 11:00 AM UTC to 3:00 PM UTC. When writing this Bitfinex guide, the platform states they plan to expand their live chat hours, but that is something for future development.

But for now, they can still rely on the around the clock email service, and they also can communicate to customers in more than one language. Including English, simplified and traditional Chinese, Russian and Spanish.

Bitfinex boasts that it is the home of professional trading. It offers a bespoke service to meet the needs of professional investors and traders. They also have a help centre screen that will take you to different links like how to get started on the platform, trading and lending overviews, and other resources. They believe that cryptocurrency trading should be available to everyone as their mission is to give users the ultimate trading experience.

The platform also includes high-quality trading tools and innovative technology in addition to their service support for users. They wanted to make sure that there were enough tools and guides on the exchange for customers to help develop their trading skills and boost their cryptocurrency confidence.

Bitfinex was founded in 2012 in the British Virgin Islands by iFinex Inc., headquartered in Hong Kong. Bitfinex was initially only a P2P margin lending platform for Bitcoin around the world. But as the company developed, so did the online exchange.

Although Bitfinex is owned and operated by iFinex inc, like most cryptocurrency exchanges, it is not yet regulated or licensed by any major international bodies. It is, however, overseen by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which issues regulatory orders, but nothing has been put in motion yet.

For an online exchange to have a regulator, it brings comfort and reassurance to the users of that platform. But the focus of regulators is usually on anti-money laundering (AML) rather than trading. Cryptocurrencies in the UK are only regulated for that purpose, and there isn’t something put in place that governs the exchange platform activities.

As mentioned, many crypto exchange platforms aren’t regulated, but that doesn’t take away from their continued efforts to ensure customer satisfaction and increased safety measures.

In 2015, the platform announced they were a victim to one of the first Bitfinex scams. It wasn’t going to be the last hack that the company would face, but it was the smallest in terms of how many Bitcoin units were stolen. That may beg the question: is Bitfinex reliable after that event? In 2016 they suffered from another security breach where an even more considerable amount of Bitcoin was stolen.

But they reacted well by halting all crypto trading and withdrawals as they monitored the hack. Although the company has had some financial and security difficulties over the years, they have bounced back with an improved security system.

Bitfinex has advanced its security measures using bare-metal servers with premium hardware to have complete control of its core infrastructure. The servers also help during high volume trading times. The platform also uses two-factor authentication, or 2FA, as it acts as a second level of security between an attacker and the logins, password changes, application programming interface (API) key creations and withdrawal confirmations of the customers. The 2FA is used with Google Authenticator on Android and Apple devices, and it’s also used with the Physical Security Key using FIDO Universal 2nd Factor (U2F).