Bitop

Bitop Review

What is Bitop?

Bitop is a cryptocurrency exchange registered in Singapore. It also has offices in the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It has been active since 2018. Bitop has secured MSB (Money Services Business) licensing in the US and is currently seeking MSB licensing approval in Canada. In June 2021, Bitop acquired the spot and derivatives trading crypto-asset exchange — Bifa.

Derivatives Trading

Bitop exchange offers digital assets and derivatives trading services. A derivative is an instrument that is priced based on the value of an underlying asset. This asset could be stocks, bonds and other interest-bearing securities, commodities etc. However, when talking about the digital asset domain, derivatives rely on the price of their underlying cryptocurrency. You can engage in derivatives trading connected to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Binance Coin and Bitcoin Cash here.

Additionally, this platform also supports spot trading. So, if this is your preferred mode of trading, this platform can still be for you.

Different Order Types

Bitop platform offers take-profit and stop-loss features to its traders. The margin ratio for take-profit is 300% whereas the stop-loss margin ratio is at 80%.

Copy Trade Module

Another interesting highlight on the Bitop exchange is the Copy Trades feature. This module lists other traders along with their performance statistics like past month returns, 30-day income, success rate, trading strategy etc. Users who prefer passive investing can follow these traders and mimic their trading strategy.

Here’s an image from the Copy Trade module:

Affiliate Program

Many exchanges launch an affiliate program with the intent to grow their userbase. Bitop too has an affiliate program. As an affiliate, one can earn a certain portion of their referred user’s transaction fee as commission. The portal follows a tiered rebate ratio for its affiliates and the cap limit is fixed at 15%.

Affiliates receive these rebates in their trading account as soon as transaction settlement takes place.

You can sign up for the affiliate program here.

Leveraged Trading

Since the portal offers contract trading with a focus on CFD (Contract for Differences), Bitop users can make leveraged trades. Currently, the platform only hosts futures with expiry dates and offers a leverage of 200x. A word of caution might be useful for someone contemplating leveraged trading. Leveraged trading can lead to massive returns but – on the contrary – also to equally massive losses.

For instance, let’s say that you have 100 USD in your trading account and you bet this amount on BTC going long (i.e., going up in value). If BTC then increases in value by 10%, you would have earned 10 USD. If you had used 100x leverage, your initial 100 USD position becomes a 10,000 USD position so you instead earn an extra 1,000 USD (990 USD more than if you had not leveraged your deal). However, the more leverage you use, the smaller the distance to your liquidation price becomes. This means that if the price of BTC moves in the opposite direction (goes down for this example), then it only needs to go down a very small percentage for you to lose the entire 100 USD you started with. Again, the more leverage you use, the smaller the opposite price movement needs to be for you to lose your investment. So, as you might imagine, the balance between risk and reward in leveraged deals is quite fine-tuned (there are no risk-free profits).

Additionally, Bitop is in plans to launch perpetual futures (i.e., futures without expiry dates) in the second half of 2021. As of now, the launch is estimated to be in the month of September or October.

Mobile Support

Most crypto traders feel that desktops give the best conditions for their trading. The computer has a bigger screen, and on bigger screens, more of the crucial information that most traders base their trading decisions on can be viewed at the same time. The trading chart will also be easier to display. However, not all crypto investors require desktops for their trading. Some prefer to do their crypto trading via their mobile phone. If you are one of those traders, you’ll be happy to learn that Bitops’s trading platform is also available as an app for iPhone and Android users.

US-investors

The Bitop Terms of Service clearly outlines certain eligibility criteria for registering on their platform. Failure to meet these criteria could lead to suspension or termination of user qualification.

Clause 2.1.2 mandates that the user must be “a natural person with full capacity for civil conduct prescribed by the laws of the People's Republic of China”.

The second condition, prescribed in Clause 2.1.3, requires the user to hold “a personal debit card account opened and validly held in a commercial bank within the territory of the People's Republic of China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan).”

So, if you’re from the US and would like to engage in crypto trading on Bitop, you will have to fulfil both these conditions. Overall, we are of the opinion that US investors are not allowed on this exchange.

Luckily for you, if you go to the Exchange List and use our exchange filters, you can sort the exchanges based on whether or not they accept US investors.

Bitop Trading Interface

Every trading platform has a trading interface. This interface is the part of the exchange’s website where you can see the price chart of a certain cryptocurrency and what is its current price. There are normally buy and sell boxes too, where you can place orders with respect to the relevant crypto. In most of the platforms, you will also be able to see the order history (i.e., previous transactions involving the relevant crypto). Everything in the same window on your desktop. Of course, there are also variations to what we have just described.

This is the spot trading interface at Bitop (without signing in though):

It is up to you – and only you – to decide if the above trading view is suitable for you. Finally, there are usually many different ways in which you can change the settings to customize the trading interface based on your own preferences.

Bitop Fees

Bitop Trading fees

Every time you place an order, the exchange charges you a trading fee. Typically the trading fee is a percentage of the value of the trade order. Many exchanges divide between takers and makers. Takers are the ones who “take” an existing order from the order book. Makers are the ones who add orders to the order book, thereby making liquidity at the platform.

At Bitop, takers and makers are charged 0.10% in trading fees, excluding volume-based discounts. For CFD trades, the trading fees are fixed at 0.20%.

According to our Empirical Studies Report — the most extensive industry report ever prepared on contract trading average fees, the global average contracts trading taker fee and maker fee was 0.063% for takers and 0.018% for makers in Q1 2021. Accordingly, Bitop is above average when it comes to both taker fees and maker fees.

Bitop Withdrawal fees

There are exchanges out there that charge low trading fees but then hit you on your way out with high withdrawal fees. According to the empirical study that we have performed on Cryptowisser.com, the global industry BTC-withdrawal fee is 0.00059 BTC per withdrawal.

On the date of writing this review (14 July 2021), Bitop supported only USDT withdrawal. However, it is in plans to kick-off multiple coin withdrawal functions in the near future. As far as the withdrawal fees are concerned, each withdrawal will be charged a miner’s fee of 5 USDT.

The network fees vary from day to day but are typically lower than the global industry average BTC-withdrawal fee. Consequently, the withdrawal fees you need to worry about when withdrawing from Bitop are relatively low and consumer-friendly.

Deposit Methods

Bitop does not accept wire transfers or credit card payments. So, in order to trade here, you must have cryptocurrency, to begin with. The only asset class you can deposit to Bitop is cryptocurrency.

However, if you really like Bitop but you don’t have any crypto yet, you can easily start an account with an exchange that has “fiat on-ramps” (an exchange where you can deposit regular cash), buy crypto there, and then transfer it from such exchange to this exchange. You can also use our Exchange Filters to easily see which platforms allow wire transfer or credit card deposits.