Bittrex
Exchange Fees
Deposit Methods
Cryptos (250)
UPDATE 8 May 2023: The US branch of Bittrex has filed for bankruptcy. The following text is from a Reuters-article describing the situation:
May 8 (Reuters) - Cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex Inc filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, three weeks after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused it of operating an unregistered securities exchange.
Seattle-based Bittrex ceased operations in the United States on April 30, and it said the bankruptcy filing would not impact Bittrex Global, which serves customers outside the United States. The company's non-U.S. operations are based in Liechtenstein.
Bittrex's assets and liabilities were both between $500 million and $1 billion, according to a bankruptcy petition filed in Wilmington, Delaware court.
Bittrex said that it was still holding crypto assets of U.S. customers who did not withdraw funds before April 30.
Those assets are "safe and secure" and Bittrex said it intended to ask the bankruptcy court for a limited re-opening of customer accounts so that the crypto could be distributed back to customers.
However, to our understanding, the non-US parts of Bittrex remains operational.
Bittrex Review
What is Bittrex?
Bittrex is an exchange based in Seattle that started off its operations in February 2014. There were a lot fewer exchanges out there then than there is today… Bittrex still sees itself a global leader in the revolution of blockchain revolution. They refer to its platform as a platform for people who require “lightning-fast” trade execution, secure digital wallets and leading industry practices.
Blockchain Incubator
Bittrex also work as a “Blockchain Incubator”, meaning that they – in order to promote global innovation in the business – work with teams globally to help new tokens that have the potential to transform the way goods, services and operations are managed in the world.
US-investors
Bittrex is one of the more known exchanges in the USA. As they are based in the USA, they also permit US-investors from most states. America is in many ways the ruler of crypto right now. It has a very large number of platforms and a large part of the everyday crypto trading occurs on American exchanges or on other exchanges but involving American traders.
Bittrex Has a Referral Program - Or Do They Really?
As you are surely aware, most crypto exchanges offer referral programs to its users. Through these referral programs, you can invite users to start an account with the relevant platform, and when they do you normally receive a share of the trading fees that the platform generates from your invited users. A very peculiar feature of the Bittrex referral program is that you don't have a dashboard where you can track your referrals and their trading. When an exchange is not transparent with this type of information, it is normally because they are hiding user revenue from the referrers.
We have tried asking Bittrex about this issue but we are yet to receive a satisfying response. We will of course let you know when we do receive a response by posting it here.
Mobile Support
Most crypto traders feel that desktop 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 the trading platform at Bittrex is also mobile compatible. You can download it to/from both the AppStore and Google Play:
Bittrex Team
The main people behind the Bittrex exchange are Bill Shihara (Co-Founder and CEO), Richie Lai (Co-Founder and CIO – Chief Information Office) and Rami Kawach (CTO). These three individuals are all cybersecurity engineers, coming from well-established large companies in the tech-sector (Blackberry & Amazon).
Liquidity
The liquidity at this exchange is decent, but there’s a vast distance to cover in order to catch up with the top 10 exchanges in the world in terms of liquidity. Back in early 2019 (4 February 2019), Bittrex had a 24-hour trading volume of approx. USD 13 million, according to Coinmarketcap’s list of exchanges. This was around USD 158 million on the date of last updating this review (2 December 2021).
Bittrex Trading View
Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself see which trading view that suits you the best. What the views normally have in common is that they all show the order book or at least part of the order book, a price chart of the chosen crypto and order history. They normally also have buy and sell-boxes. Before you choose an exchange, try to have a look at the trading view so that you can see that it feels right to you. The below is a picture of the trading view at Bittrex:
Bittrex Fees
Bittrex Trading fees
Most crypto exchanges charge two different types of trading fees: taker fees and maker fees. The taker is the person who picks up an existing order from the order book. The maker, on the other hand, is the person who creates an order that is not immediately matched against an existing order on the order book. Makers are often rewarded for creating liquidity on the platform by a lower trading fee than takers. Exchanges that do not make a distinction between takers and makers charge what we call “flat fees”. Bittrex charges 0.75% for both takers and makers.
According to the largest and most recent empirical study on crypto exchange trading fees, the average spot trading taker fee is currently 0.221% and the average spot trading maker fee is currently 0.178%.
Compared to those average trading fees, Bittrex's is substantially above the industry average on both taker fees and maker fees.
Bittrex Withdrawal fees
This exchange does not charge any withdrawal fees themselves. However, as always, there are network fees involved when making a transaction. This means that the only fee you need to be concerned with when withdrawing from this platform, is the network fees paid to the miners. This withdrawal fee, or rather lack of withdrawal fee, is below the industry average and quite competitive.
Deposit Methods
Bittrex has long been criticized for not providing any fiat currency support, meaning that if you have money in your bank account and you would like to start trading crypto with it – you couldn’t do that here. There were some exceptions to that rule. One of which being if you wanted to deposit more than USD 100,000. However, on 31 May 2018, the exchange decided to permit corporate clients to deposit fiat currency. A deal with the New York Signature Bank made this possible. At the time of writing this review (March 2020), fiat currency deposits via wire transfer is possible for retail traders as well.
On 12 March 2020, the platform announced that they would now also allow credit card deposits (but only with VISA). On 16 June 2020, the exchange announced that also Mastercard is a possible deposit method now. The platform charges a 3% deposit fee for VISA card and Mastercard deposits.
Bittrex Security
One might ask why security is even a feature that we have looked for at the exchanges. Two reasons:
- Exchanges store a massive amount of valuable personal info. This can be anything from names to addresses, government ID details, taxpayer ID numbers and a lot more.
- Exchanges handle a lot of cash or crypto deposits and withdrawals.
Bittrex seem very committed to providing strong security, and proudly state that they “incorporate multiple layers of protection, using the most reliable and effective security technologies available to keep your funds secure”.
They also have a 99.95% uptime rate, which is great and shows how reliable the trading engine is.