HitBTC Review – Are They Safe or a Scam?

Like most cryptocurrency exchanges, registration is fast and easy – taking only a few minutes and containing the usual KYC procedure. This is a global trading platform, available in many countries including the UK, India and Australia. Due to regulatory restrictions, this exchange cannot operate in the US.

There are a large mixture of crypto pairs and crypto/currency pairs on offer. Our HitBTC review uncovered a huge range of pairs, from BTC/USD to ETH/BTC and XMR/BTC.

HitBTC follows a strict internal AML and Know Your Customer procedure to keep users safe and follow industry standards. During our KYC, we just needed to upload an ID document, take a selfie with a handwritten note, and ensure your face was clearly visible. Our verification time took 3 days which is below the average.

It is also possible that HitBTC has struggled with high trading volumes. There have been many complaints in HitBTC reviews about the HitBTC site crashing in recent months and they may be attributed to the high levels of cryptocurrency trading this year during the recent Bitcoin bull run.

The platform is quite easy to navigate and finding charting information is so easy. The dark background looks sleek and you can take a position right within the chart. The user interface is clean and simple, but possibly lacked a modern touch, often feeling a touch dated. The interface certainly suits seasoned traders, as there really is too much information on show for a novice trader to take in at once.

The mobile app retains all the same functionalities as the browser version and looks exactly the same too. There is multi-lingual support for several countries including Indonesian, Spanish, and Portuguese.  Our reviewers thought the app was very clean and sleek.

Our HitBTC review concluded that this is a highly liquid cryptocurrency exchange. We were able to make instant orders and it appears that has lowered transaction costs too. Most uniquely, we found some altcoins that were near-impossible to find anywhere else online.

We did, however, encounter some slow deposit and withdrawal speeds during our HitBTC review. It took almost two weeks for our deposit to reach our trading account and then around 20 days for our withdrawal to be cleared.

So what HitBTC crypto accounts are available at this exchange? This review of HitBTC determined that the exchange offers 3 account types:

• General accounts – General accounts let crypto investors deposit cryptocurrency for free – perfect for a newbie. There is a daily withdrawal limit set at EUR 5,000 worth of cryptocurrency and we noted that FIAT transactions were not at all available for this particular tier.
• Verified accounts – For the next tier you still have free cryptocurrency deposits.  The “Verified” account has a daily withdrawal maximum of EUR 25,000 in cryptocurrency. FIAT deposit/withdrawal is available at this tier and is limited to around 2,000 (USD or EUR) per week and about 10,000 (USD or EUR) per month.
• Qualified accounts – In what is essentially the pro account, you’ll now need to pay for any crypto deposits. If you feel that 25,000 worth of cryptocurrency is not a big enough withdrawal for you, then you’ll need to look into this account. The FIAT limit has been raised to 10,000 (USD or EUR) per week and 50,000 (USD or EUR) per month for both deposits and withdrawals.

General and verified accounts have fixed Maker fees of 0.1% and Taker fees of 0.25%. The Qualified account has the option of discussing a personalized fee structure instead.

In 2020, this online cryptocurrency exchange launched margin trading of up to 12x leverage. The accounts can also access demo mode from within the trading window – here users can test trades, functionality, and explore the platform without risking any capital. Skilled traders can also use demo mode to test out their robots – we particularly liked that feature for experimental traders.

HitBTC provides users who prefer on-the-go trading with a mobile app for both Android and iOS devices. The mobile app leverages a very impressive engine and we deemed it ideal for real-time clearing and features some serious encryption protocols. The HitBTC mobile app offers 24/7 cryptocurrency trading with a full range of tools and the same markets as the web platform.

The web platform is web-based and there is no third-party or in-house developed PC platform available. The HitBTC platform does offer a sleek looking marketplace and plenty of tools to satisfy even the most experienced of traders.

The online platform is also highly robot-friendly with an API that is low-latency. We found the API during our HitBTC review to be totally stable and utterly perfect for the algorithmic trader. Our HitBTC review showed us that this broker provides extensive documentation on API usage on their platform and experienced traders should have no problem setting up trading bots.

When you register an account at HitBTC, you’ll have starting fees of 0.09% and one trade will need to be at least 10BTC volume each month if you want to lower those fees. We found it is possible to lower the fee to 0.08 or even 0.07%.

Like many brokers and exchanges, HitBTC uses a maker-taker model for their trading fees. Large traders are rewarded though – trades of over 50,000 BTC would receive a 0.01% reward. Even takers are rewarded though – If a taker was trading at 1000 BTC they would pay over 0.05% while the minimum trading fee for a taker is 0.02%.

There are also no deposit fees at HitBTC, however, there are withdrawals. The account holders are charged fees to withdraw but the fee is fixed at 0.00085 BTC currently. So whether you withdraw 10 BTC or 10,000 BTC, the withdrawal fee remains the same. We would consider this to be about average with the market really.  Our HitBTC review also saw OTC trades charged fees of only 0.1%.

While we found customer support does appear to be 24/7, they aren’t super responsive, nor do they provide amazing means of contact. There is an online support webform, not unlike any other cryptocurrency exchange, and we managed to locate two email address

They also have an active social media presence – including twitter and Facebook – and also have a Telegram channel.

Many queries we had could be answered in the FAQs section which was filled with well-curated articles covering a range of topics. Which is great because response time at this crypto exchange is dreadfully slow unfortunately. A large number of tweets have made it to this exchange’s twitter page complaining of slow response times and it took 9 days for us to receive responses from the web form.

Like a few popular cryptocurrency exchanges online, HitBTC is still an unregulated crypto currency. The exchange is British owned but based out of the Seychelles and holds no UK deposit insurance. It is also unfortunate that there is no information on how this exchange actually holds client funds. We also can’t determine what percentage of client assets are held in an offline wallet. However, to this day, this exchange has had no reported instances of criminal activity, no HitBTC scams, or any sort of hacks against their systems.

We also noted during our HitBTC review that this broker has temporarily suspended crypto exchange services in Japan and will detect Japanese IP addresses. This is in accordance with the rules set forth in the Japan Payment Services Act and at the moment, Japanese residents will be unable to use this bitcoin platform.

Despite a lack of regulation, HitBTC does provide plenty of industry standard security features that should help you trust this exchange. Two-Factor Authentication can be turned on, and should, and is provided via the Google Authenticator app. HitBTC also allows users to protect their login with a YubiKey device – a USB-like device that boasts zero account hacks.

The security tab of the website also allows you to check your activity based on IP and location – you can see if any fraudulent activity has occurred. We also like the ability to whitelist withdrawal addresses to prevent a potential hacker from cashing out your balance.

This HitBTC review uncovered even more security features such as an automatic logout, active sessions monitoring, and KYC/AML compliance. We were quite impressed with the level of detail in the education resources with screenshots that were clear and the information that is provided in easily digestible portions – perfect for the novice crypto trader.