Binance

Binances offers two tiers of basic trading experiences:

1. Convert – This is essentially a quick asset swap interface for quick crypto conversions. There is no order book or charting features. It’s also the same portal for OTC, which we discuss in the Advanced Features section.
2. Classic – For beginner to advanced traders, the Classic view gives all the basic spot trading mechanisms, with a “Spot Trading Tutorial” video positioned at the top, and easy call out definitions when you hover over different areas. Charts may be configured in multiple time frames and with trendlines, text, and most standard charting tools, including stop-limits, and limit and market orders.

P2P Trading is Binance’s answer to BuyLocalBitcoins. Users gain access to Binance’s crypto network to buy and sell crypto assets with other investors. P2P transactions can be funded by a bank transfer or over 100 other payment options (availability varies by region). KYC verification is required for P2P trading.

Assets available in the P2P marketplace are USDT, BTC, ETH, DAI and Binance’s own BUSD and BNB. BUSD is their USD-backed stablecoin while BNB is Binance’s exchange token, which they use in multiple ways to provide liquidity and increased value to BNB holders.

Binance offers three types of staking:

1. Locked staking allows users to hold Proof of Stake (PoS) tokens in a crypto wallet to support operations of that particular coin’s blockchain while earning in-kind tokens. When the coins are staked, they cannot be used for trading and the returns are thus higher than with flexible staking. The longer you lock up the coins, the higher the return. You can withdraw early but you’ll lose the interest earned. Users can choose a lock up period from 15 to 90 days with a.maximum estimated annual yield ranging from 2.8% to 16%. Crypto available for staking on Binance include SUSHI, WAVES, COS, XTZ, and DOT, but these may vary. Current APYs range from 4.74% (WAVES) to 20.19% (SUSHI).
2. DeFi staking also enables you to earn interest by holding certain cryptos, but there is no locking requirement. So you can use those funds to trade at any time, just stop staking and reap the interest you earned thus far. Binance has a small selection of coins for DeFi staking, including BNB and DAI. Other coins were listed as “sold out” at the time of writing (BTC, BUSD, and USDT). The DeFi protocols users can interact with when DeFi staking on Binance include Curve, Kava, and Compound. Estimated APYs were between 7.49% (BTC) and 12.49% (BNB and USDT).
3. BNB staking provides Binance users various ways to earn money while supporting new projects in Binance’s token launchpad. The process involves the BNB Vault, which is a yield aggregator for BNB. Users essentially stake BNB tokens and earn rewards that come in the form of new tokens from the Binance-launched projects.

BNB Staking Vault

Binance’s native token, BNB, provides multiple benefits for users and the protocol as a whole:

• Users enjoy discounted trading fees when they use BNB as a payment mechanism. For spot trading, the per transaction discount is 25% less than with other methods of payment, with Futures it’s 10% less.
• Having BNB allows users to participate in token events hosted on Binance’s Launchpad.
• Many vendors accept BNB as a payment method

Binance provides video tutorials in each trading interface, in addition to maintaining a fully loaded “Binance Academy‘,’ which teaches all things crypto, trading, and Binance. They also deliver to its users institutional-grade analysis and reports.

While the advanced trading products may not be for the beginner, Binance gives a step by step education as you navigate the different tiers of trading experiences.

Binance.com fees are lower than any US exchange, by far. By using the platform’s native BNB token for transaction fees, users can save an additional 25%. If they use BNB and a referral, another 20% is “kicked back”.

Here is the Binance.com Fee Trading Schedule

Additional fee breakdowns:
Margin Borrow Interest Rate
USDT-M Futures Trading Fee Rate
Coin-MFutures Trading Fee Rates
Futures Loan Rate

There are 4 main ways of funding your Binance account:

1. Bank deposit
2. Credit or Debit Card
3. 3rd party payments with Paxos
4. Peer to Peer crypto payments using a bank deposit or 100+ payment options including PayPal, AliPay, and Cash App.

Minimum deposit amounts vary by coin and there are no fees for deposits.

• Withdrawals are allowed to external wallets and cost very little.
• Fees: With some coins like BTC, BAND, and ONT, you have multiple options for networks to use for withdrawals, with varying fees.
• Minimum withdrawal amounts also vary by coin. 

There are two levels that determine the maximum amount of Bitcoin that you can withdraw daily, Each level involves different verification procedures (discussed in following section):

1. Level 1 – Withdrawing up to 2 BTC per day to an external wallet requires no verification.
2. Level 2 – Withdrawing up to 100 BTC per day requires a photo ID or driver’s license, a handwritten note with “Binance” written down with the day’s date, and a picture of your face. Verification generally takes between 24 and 72 hours.

For crypto level access – Users wanting only to deal with digital assets on Binance.com need only provide an email address. In the case they should want to withdraw more than 100 BTC per day, they’ll have to get verified (explained in the previous section).

Fiat verification levels are not transparent with Binance.com. This may be due to the fact that they deal with over 60 fiat currencies and different regions may have different requirements. Binance says that they do align with KYC/AML requirements when users want to deposit fiat currencies and that for SEPA verifications, which provide faster payments, users must provide everything from name, address, BOD and email, to facial identification, official ID, and proof of residence.

What are AML and KYC?
As part of a range of Anti Money Laundering regulations mandated nationally and internationally, KYC involves the requirement of companies to verify each customer’s identity during the onboarding process. Verification is achieved by submitted identification, proof of ownership, and personal information such as name, address, date of birth, email address, phone number and tax I.D. number.

Margin trading allows traders to borrow against their holdings and use those funds for trading purposes. Binance.com supports both Cross Margin and Isolated Margin Modes:

• Cross 3x Margin trading involves just one margin account which accepts any supported trading pairs. The assets in cross margin accounts are shared by all positions so liquidation of one account could lead to liquidation of the others.
• Isolated 10x Margin Mode – All trading pairs have independent, isolated margin accounts. Each position opened is independent for that trading pair. When more margin is needed, users just fund their account as there is no automated funding with isolated margin trading. Risk is isolated in each margin account so when/if liquidation occurs, other isolated margin trading accounts are affected.

Over the Counter Trading (OTC) at Binance enables crypto trading of large amounts with 70+ coins (including trading pairs not listed Binance.com), fast settlements, and 24-hour chat service.

Before you begin futures trading on Binance, you’ll need to complete a Binance Futures Service Agreement. Futures products offered include:

• Coin-M Futures, which have no expiry and offer up to 125x leverage.
• USDⓈ-M Futures have no expiry with 125x leverage.
• Binance Leveraged Tokens enable higher exposure and offer multiple, daily returns.
• Binance Options provide “unlimited risk and unlimited profits” and are available on Binance’s mobile app.
• Vanilla Options allow traders to have the right (but not the obligation) to buy or sell an underlying asset at a predetermined price, in a specific timeframe. They are priced and settled in USDT (Tether) stablecoin. This enables traders to be direct buyers and sellers when issuing or buying options, without a broker involved.

When Decentralized Finance (DeFi) broke loose during the summer months of 2020, Binance was highly proactive in integrating DeFi coins earlier than US Exchanges (except Coinbase, which unexpectedly added a few DeFi coins to the amazement of many traders who’d been waiting for them to list much more notable and liquid coins). 

As usual, Binance was on its feet and rode the initial DeFi wave, quickly listing the latest hot coins. In this way, they were able to generate some of the transaction revenue from that initial period of increased DeFi trading. This was a first hint of decentralized protocols capturing some liquidity and trader activity away from centralized exchanges. 

Since that time, Binance has put in place a full suite of its own DeFi offerings, including:

• Binance Earn – Shows all your earning opportunities within Binance along with your balances. Kind of like a statement.
• Binance Pool – This is a platform for Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) cryptocurrency miners and merge miners (which mine sidechains of Ethereum and Bitcoin). Binance supports the miners and allows users to buy rights to a localized pool of miners and earn daily payouts, among other benefits. 
• Crypto Loans – You can borrow up to 20 different cryptocurrencies, including privacy coin Monero (XMR), as well as several fiat currencies. Loan terms range from 7 to 90 days, with over a dozen cryptos supported for use as collateral.
• Liquid Swaps – Users can become liquidity providers and give liquidity to the exchange by giving collateral (in crypto) that converts to a token pairing. By providing liquidity for a token pair, you can then earn tokens each time you make a transaction with that trading pair. The payouts are determined by how many and which tokens are in a specific pool. The larger the transaction, the lower the fees and the more stable the prices. Essentially, it’s a way to earn some tokens and also help the platform, but with risks because the tokens you are providing liquidity for often have little liquidity and strongly fluctuating prices. It’s a cheaper way to participate in DeFi over Ethereum based protocols, with gas fees running in the tens of dollars per transaction (Ethereum is gradually rolling out ETH 2.0 as a scaling solution to mitigate these fees.).
• Binance Visa Card – Binance users can convert and spend their crypto with a quick transfer from a spot trading wallet to the card and spend it at over 60 million merchants across the globe. It has zero fees and gives 8% cash back on purchase.

Binance Visa Card benefits

Navigating Binance’s trading products is easy and intuitive, with guides for each product readily available.

• Binance.com provides 24/7 customer support through their chat page. They also provide extensive resources including an extensive FAQ and Binance Academy. 
• Reviews on Google Play and the App Store are positive overall. 
• Customer support is available in 11 languages.
• Binance.com was hacked for $40 million in 2019, after which CEO CZ Binance tweeted that users funds were SAFU. He meant SAFE, but the acronym lived on and Binance developed a Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) after the fact to ease the worried minds of Binance traders. The SAFU fund insures against hacks by setting aside funds outside of the exchange.

Binance has a massive social following with 77,000 followers on their China Telegram channel alone (over 355,000 in all their Telegram channels) and 1.4 million Twitter followers, to name just a few social platforms. They also own CoinMarketCap, have an global Alexa search ranking of 862, and their website is translated into 26 languages.

At the time of this research, we did notice that Binance’s VK account (VK is Russia’s biggest social media platform), was suspended due to “organizing suspicious contests or activities”. 

Special note on scammers

When engaging with Binance, you must be aware that there are many, many Binance scammers that open groups and offer giveaways where people have to send them a bit of crypto in order to get their prize. It’s tricky because Binance.com does hold giveaways all the time. 

On Telegram especially, fake “Binance Giveaway” accounts can collect tens of thousands of followers before getting reported and taken down – these unsuspecting users end up interacting with a bot that will take their money, with the empty promise of a bigger giveaway prize. Always be sure to note the URL of the website you are visiting and be very wary of Telegram groups posting giveaways and selling trading advice. As crypto is the wild west of finance, Telegram is the wild west of social media.

• Binance is not as transparent as a US exchange like Gemini, who must comply with NY state law and the SEC. As a result, Binance is not alway that forthcoming. The location of its headquarters has been a hotly debated talking point, but in reality the team is most likely largely remote. 
• The exact verification details for KYC and account set ups were not crystal clear and could use more transparency.
• Binance.com has no public status page for checking platform outages.
• CZ Binance, CEO of Binance, is a highly respected public figure in crypto markets and is very active and responsive on his Twitter feed.

• Dollar cost averaging Recurring buys are not available on Binance, but is a common feature on most US exchanges. It is, however, available on Binance.us.
• Self custody Not available. Binance gives ample resources on securing your own wallet.
• Automated trading – No, but there are a plethora of 3rd party services that do so.
• Automated tax reporting  – Not available but there are a number of external services that take your transaction data to provide reports on gains/losses for tax purposes.

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