BitMEX Experience 2021: The Crypto Exchange Test
10 Stars
BitMEX was founded in 2014 and aims to support investors in trading cryptocurrencies.
Despite the very limited number of tradable assets, the platform seems to be becoming more and more popular.
That's why we took a look at the provider and analysed it in detail.
Are BitMex experiences worthwhile? What can be traded on BitMEX and what about security? What fees do investors have to pay and what trading options are supported? What can the broker do and how does trading on the platform work?
The BitMEX test and analyses the most important features of the broker in the following review. The BitMEX test is about shedding light on the offer and the trading platform.
Our recommendation: Buy cryptos with eToro
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Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
What is BitMEX?
BitMEX is a trading platform for Bitcoin.
A few other cryptocurrencies are also offered, but you cannot withdraw them.
Moreover, the purchase of coins is not possible, but mainly trading with CFDs.
Only after a comprehensive analysis of the matter can a judgement be made about the broker.
BitMEX: Advantages and disadvantages
The operators of the trading platform seem to have focused on trading with Bitcoins.
You can only make deposits with bitcoins and no fiat currencies are supported. Support can only be reached by email and the service is only available in five languages.
Furthermore, fewer assets are offered for trading compared to other websites.
One advantage, however, is the good security measures.
There are also no fees to pay for account inactivity and no BitMEX fees to pay for credits or withdrawals.
BitMEX Review - The Offer
BitMEX is apparently a classic Bitcoin broker.
However, here you cannot buy or sell coins of the popular currency, but only use the cryptocurrency for deposits and withdrawals. The selectable assets depend on the trading type.
But margin trading, future contracts or perpetual contracts are available to investors.
In short, it is a CFD broker. CFDs, also called Contracts for Difference, are a type of bet where one bets on the price trend of an asset.
If the prediction is correct, the investor is paid a certain percentage of the investment.
If, however, one's prediction is wrong, the money invested is forfeited completely and is lost.
Because of the percentage difference between loss and profit, one has to be right about 70% of the time to avoid a negative balance on the client's account.
The trading option seems to be very speculative and is only recommended for experienced investors. One can lose one's saved money in a short time.
BitMEX also offers new users a demo mode of the platform so that you know how it works and how it is designed before you register.
Our recommendation: Buy cryptos with eToro
Incl. wallet
Buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the wallet
Paypal, credit card and instant bank transfer
Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
The BitMEX cryptocurrencies
A crypto exchange platform is all about the tradable cryptocurrencies. However, BitMEX seems to focus on bitcoin. However, one does not have the possibility to buy or sell coins of the popular currency, but one can only make deposits with bitcoins.
In addition, you can trade CFDs of various assets. The available digital currencies are listed here:
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Compared to other exchanges, the offer is very meagre. If you want to exchange cryptocurrencies with each other or acquire real crypto coins, you might want to trade on another exchange.
Open a BitMEX account & trade
You cannot buy cryptocurrency coins via BitMEX, but only deposit and withdraw Bitcoin. Opening an account is done with the help of a simple step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Register an account
All you have to do is enter an email address, your country and your name. Of course, you also have to choose your preferred password. You will then receive a confirmation e-mail in which you have to verify your mailbox.
Please note that technical updates can lead to changes in appearance and content at any time. Therefore, you should take a close look at everything before registering.
On the homepage, it is of course advisable to first set your mother tongue in the menu. However, this could be a problem for some investors because only five languages are offered.
After you have selected your preferred language, you only have to carry out the very simple account creation. This should not pose any major challenges for beginners or experienced traders. If they are, however, they do not seem to be suitable for trading on online exchanges at the moment.
Step 2: Make a deposit
After the redirect, you are directly on the trading platform and can make your first deposit. To make a deposit or withdrawal, connect your private wallet to the platform. You then select your Bitcoins and specify the amount to be transferred.
After verification, you will find a credit on your customer account after a short time.
Step 3: Select the amount and decide on a currency
Immediately afterwards, you can start trading. An overview of the best wallets can be found here.
In which assets he would like to invest his money. At BitMEX, one can only trade CFDs. This is an extremely speculative trading option that is similar to a bet.
One bets on the rise or fall of a price and receives a certain percentage paid out if the prediction is correct. However, many different trading goods are not offered via BitMEX.
Our recommendation: Buy cryptos with eToro
Incl. wallet
Buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the wallet
Paypal, credit card and instant bank transfer
Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
BitMEX Fees: The Fees
BitMEX Fees: The Fees
Another important point for investors seems to be the fees of the respective exchanges.
At BitMEX, the fees depend on the trading options and the maker or taker.
For perpetual contracts, traditional futures and upside/downside profit contracts, you always have to pay the same percentage BitMEX fees.
Perpetual Contracts
currency | lever | Maker fees | Taker fees | Long foundint | Short founding | Founding interval |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bitcoin | 100x | -0.0250% | 0.0750% | -0.0049% | 0.0049% | every 8 hours |
Ethereum | 50x | -0.0250% | 0.0750% | 0.0100% | -0.0100% | every 8 hours |
Traditional futures
currency | lever | Maker fees | Taker fees | Settlement fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Bitcoin | 100x | -0.0250% | 0.0750% | 0.0500% |
Bitcoin Cash | 20x | -0.0500% | 0.2500% | 0.000% |
Cardano | 20x | -0.0500% | 0.2500% | 0.000% |
EOS token | 20x | -0.0500% | 0.2500%0.2500% | 0.000% |
Ethereum | 50x | -0.0500% | 0.2500% | 0.000% |
Litecoin | 33.33x | -0.0500% | 0.2500% | 0.000% |
Ripple | 20x | -0.0500% | 0.2500% | 0.000% |
Tron | 20x | -0.0500% | 0.2500% | 0.000% |
Apparently, there are no BitMEX fees for withdrawals or deposits to the account.
However, the Bitcoin network may charge additional fees for withdrawals. According to the operators, there is also no inactivity fee, as is often the case with other operators.
The website has a detailed listing of all BitMEX fees under the menu item "Fees" in the footnote.
BitMex features
The platform reportedly offers investors significantly higher Bitcoin/USD liquidity, compared to other brokers. The security measures are said to be the latest in the market and there are advanced APIs. The website is available in five languages: English, Chinese, Russian, Korean and Japanese.
In addition, a test mode of the trading platform is available to all new clients. However, one cannot customise the programs.
The BitMEX App
In this day and age, investors want to check their investments on the go and make new ones if necessary.
For this reason, many exchanges offer an application for mobile devices.
Officially, there is no BitMEX app for trading from a mobile phone.
If you search, you will find a few self-written programmes, which, however, have not been verified and do not come from the operators of the platform.
If you find the BitMEX app in the app store and download it, you get a normal-looking broker app.
On closer inspection, however, this turns out to be an offer from Bityard and confuses us as users even more. We could not understand the connection here and decided not to test the app any further.
This poses some dangers for users because they entrust their login data to strangers and carelessly publish them on the net. It is not verifiable at the moment whether the fake BitMEX apps are scams or not, but they are not licensed programs.
The operators of BitMEX also have two applications in the Android Store.
One is a payment system, but it was programmed exclusively in Japanese. Apparently it also includes a web wallet.
The second application seems to be a cash register programme. In the BitMEX app, you can pay with bitcoins and the transferred digital currency is stored in an internal wallet.
The operators apparently only charge a 1% fee, which is much lower compared to credit cards.
Both applications were produced by BMEX Inc. and are currently only available in Japanese.
As an investor, one should protect one's credit as well as possible and under no circumstances resort to third-party offers.
The danger of entrusting your login data and thus your money to fraudsters is present.
So if you want to trade with BitMEX, you should go to a computer and make your purchases and sales via the Webtrader.
BitMEX Experience: The payment methods
Of course, as an investor you also have to deposit money into your account.
At BitMEX, this can only be done via a personal wallet.
Therefore, you should already own Bitcoin before registering, because this is the only digital coin that is supported. Fiat currencies of any kind cannot be used via the platform.
currency | Bitmex means of payment |
|---|---|
Bitcoin |
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Bitcoin Cash | ✘ |
Ethereum | ✘ |
Litecoin | ✘ |
Ripple | ✘ |
other currencies | ✘ |
This is because it is only a Bitcoin exchange.
Therefore, you cannot use any other cryptocurrencies for trading. Any deposits made that were not Bitcoins are lost forever.
Before a credit is accepted, you have to confirm it on the Bitcoin network.
Only then can one make transactions with the digital money.
At the time of the test, no BitMEX fees were charged for deposits or withdrawals. Of course, this can still change in the future.
All withdrawals of Bitcoins into a private wallet are carried out every day until 1 pm UTC.
A short time later, you should find the transferred coins in your digital wallet.
Although there are no BitMEX fees for withdrawals, there are fees charged by the Bitcoin network. Of course, the trader has to pay these.
The story behind the BitMEX broker
BitMEX was founded in 2014 by three people. Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed are still the CEOs of BitMEX today. Two of them have a degree in computer science and Arthur Hayes in business administration.
The company now has over eleven employees and its headquarters are in the Seychelles.
It is a real-time CFD exchange for professional clients.
The website is visited by over 11 million people per month.
So far, however, no applications for mobile devices have been developed.
There are some BitMEX apps on the market, but they seem to have been programmed by some third party.
Meanwhile, the daily transaction volume is over 750 million US dollars.
Our recommendation: Buy cryptos with eToro
Incl. wallet
Buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the wallet
Paypal, credit card and instant bank transfer
Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
BitMEX Experience: Security
After entrusting your money to a website, you naturally want to have its security guaranteed:
- BitMEX's internal wallets are equipped with a special multisignature wallet. This is a security measure to prevent unauthorised persons from making withdrawals in the investor's name. Several independent approvals are required so that the bitcoins can be transferred. At BitMEX, these are the signatures of two different employees.
- In addition, all investments are stored offline in a special memory.
- Last but not least, BitMEX stores all withdrawals and matches the keys beforehand. In case of discrepancies, the account is frozen immediately.
- To protect the system against hacker attacks, BitMEX uses the Amazon Web Service "world-class security".
In addition, to access any of the company's systems, you need the right access data, including special tokens. - All parts of the system do not communicate with each other, except through authorised and monitored channels.
- The operators also use a special security system for trading. It is called KDB+ and is used by many banks specialising in high-frequency trading. At BitMEX, every order, withdrawal and deposit goes through the programme's risk check.
Own protective measures
As an investor, you can also equip your account with a private PGP to encrypt communication.
You should also not save your access data on your computer, because in the event of loss or theft, the new owners could carry out transactions in the name of the investor.
However, you can also use two-factor authentication.
For this, you need a mobile device and a special application.
You synchronise your mobile phone with your account and a random series of numbers is generated each time you try to log in.
Afterwards, you have to enter the code on the website. Each sequence can only be used once and is invalid after 30 seconds.
Our recommendation: Buy cryptos with eToro
Incl. wallet
Buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the wallet
Paypal, credit card and instant bank transfer
Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
BitMEX Experience: Customer service
As soon as you have a problem, you often contact the customer service directly. However, it sometimes seems better to read through the FAQs first.
Often operators offer step-by-step instructions for common problems in this section. research on the internet and on forums can also bring the hoped-for success.
Sometimes other users have already had the same difficulties and investors could present a solution.
BitMEX only offers contact by e-mail.
There is no telephone number for direct exchange on the entire website.
Since the platform is only available in five languages (English, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese), conversation.
In this area, the platform seems to perform worse than other licensed exchanges.
Of course, you can try to get in touch via social networks. BitMEX has its own Twitter, Reddit and IRC account and the BitMEX blog.
BitMEX experiences and user opinions
One of the first steps when looking for a new exchange should be reviews from other users.
BitMEX reviews can give you a good idea of the platform even without registering.
Former users complain about high losses and happy investors tell about their successes.
Of course, there are also some false BitMEX experiences. Here it is up to the investor to filter them out and not pay any further attention.
Some positive voices think highly of the offer and would definitely recommend it:
"Very high volume, cheap fees, fast. Ideal for those who want to leverage on Bitcoin, both buying or selling. It's a bit complicated to understand the way it works, but they are reliable and professional, with very good support."
Of course, other investors also speak out against the platform.
"BitMex is a winning house for the owners, they have accumulated billions though their loosing customers. They are totally unregulated, they can bet against their customers, they can do whatever they want to manipulate BTC and other prices. If you think you want to play their game better put your money in a roulette. You have more chances for winning. BitMex is a major reason for crashing BTC prices by shorting and dumping. No transparency, no accountability. If you want to lose your precious coins go ahead and lose them all at BitMex."
BitMEX testimonial
Often BitMEX reviews are very one-sided and you should find the healthy middle ground so that you get a fairly accurate picture of the possibilities.
Is BitMEX a scam?
Once you take into account the results of the different areas in the test, it is clear that there is a very high probability that it is not a scam.
BitMEX appears very professional and one can trade without any problems via the trading platform.
The three managing directors and founders are real people. They have often appeared on television as experts on the subject of cryptocurrencies, especially Arthur Hayes.
The operators of the website also place a very high value on security and it is pointed out on the site about the risks when trading.
One can find detailed descriptions of the individual trading options and the platform offers a demo mode.
Here, new investors can buy and sell at will without having to invest their own money.
BitMEX Experience - The Conclusion
If one deals with the BitMEX offer for a longer period of time, one can almost certainly say that most exchanges offer significantly more cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies for trading.
However, operators do not charge deposit, withdrawal and inactivity fees. However, deposits can only be made with bitcoin and no other payment methods are allowed.
For this reason, the platform seems to be intended more for experienced traders than for beginners. The service is also only available in five languages and the customer service can only be reached via an email address.
In conclusion, one can only say that the advantages and disadvantages are in balance and that it is an average exchange.
Our recommendation: Buy cryptos with eToro
Incl. wallet
Buy and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the wallet
Paypal, credit card and instant bank transfer
Regulated provider
Real cryptos or CFD trades
FAQ
The provider is an online broker where you can speculate on shares, forex, cryptocurrencies and other assets.
In our test, BitMex was moderately convincing. The trading options and customer support are good, but not outstanding.
The minimum deposit at BitMex is set at 250€. The amount of one's own investment should depend on one's own liquidity, as well as on the chosen asset and one's own risk appetite. In general, you should never invest money that you actually need elsewhere, as profits can never be guaranteed.
The platform is convincing here. Withdrawals are processed very quickly and are in your account within a few minutes to 2 working days, depending on the selected withdrawal method.
You should always know what you are investing in. The provider offers an academy where you can constantly learn more and receive detailed information about all trading options. If you have the necessary know-how, as well as the occasional bit of luck, nothing stands in the way of early profits.
