Bibox Exchange Review 2021 - Is It Safe?

Bibox is a partly decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. It was launched in 2017. The huge contribution to the development of this platform was made by the management team that worked with successful Chinese exchanges OKCoin.com and Houbi. It is stated that the platform is capable of processing 10 million transactions per second.

Allegedly Bibox has raised at least $48 million through ICO although the company representatives claim that this figure was even higher. The exchange supports over 90 cryptocurrencies. The trading pairs are based on BTC, ETH, USDT, DAI, and BIX (Bibox native token) markets.

1. Basic Facts and Key Features
2. Bibox Fees Review
3. Registration and Setting the Security
4. Is Bibox Safe?

Basic Facts and Key Features

As it was mentioned in the beginning, Bibox is considered to be decentralized. Usually being decentralized means that there's no third party to store the assets of traders, the storage of personal data about the users is not required, and the servers of the exchange are distributed which makes it harder to hack the platform. Nevertheless, it's clear that the decentralization of Bibox is limited. For instance, this exchange requires identity verification for users wanting to trade in large amounts (over 2 BTC per day). The platform requests such data as passport/ID photo, location, country of residence. Anonymity is not the case with the use of Bibox for active traders.

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Unlike many other decentralized exchanges, Bibox has an intuitive user interface that makes this exchange an easy choice for people who don't have much experience in trading cryptocurrencies. The website is available in seven languages: English, Chinese, Turkish, Vietnamese, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. The exchange shows the ambitions of the international trading platform.

One of the key features of this exchange is that it provides the AI-based algorithms improving the trader experience. The Bibox API is available in the form of a client for Mac and PC, as well as for iOS and Android. This feature is one of the possible reasons for the early success of the exchange. The reported volume of the platform is quite high. Currently, this exchange is one of the top 20 exchanges by trading volume.

The trading is realized via the multi-functional user-friendly web-platform. The UI provides such traditional features as trading history, order books, and charts and graphs. In contrast to the fully decentralized exchanges, Bibox provides many trading options such as margin trading, stop-limit orders, and so on.

Through the on-screen notifications, users may learn such current information as the lowest or the highest price of the day, present value of this or that currency, a ticker, trade fluctuations, 24 hours trading volume, and the current value of a certain currency.

Another special feature of this platform is the tool forecasting the future price through the analysis of the quotations in the charts. Actually there are three different features that allow quite an efficient forecasting of the price. These tools are the Relative Strength Index, The Stochastic Oscillator, and MACD.

One more notable thing about this exchange is the system of Rebate Rewards. Some of the money spent on fees is back by the platform. Actually Rebate Rewards on this exchange exist in the form of a standard affiliate program. It means that verified users have an invitation link that can be shared with friends or with anyone else publically. The people using this link to proceed to the exchange and start trading will be the source of some income (Rebate Rewards) as some proportion of the transaction commissions they will be paying will be added to the account of the user who shared this link. The Referral Link can be found in the user pop-up menu in the Greatest Rewards tab. According to the latest update, the users whose link was a success can earn 18% of the transaction fees paid by the referrals. The invitation relationship lasts for 90 days and then expires.

The native token of the platform is BIX. It is an Ethereum-based ERC20 token that serves as a fuel for the decentralized transactions platform. In future BIX will give privilege to token holders when the new Bibox apps will be released.

Bibox Fees

Deposit fees just like on many other exchanges equal to zero. It's important to realize that depositing fiat money is not supported by this exchange.

The trading fees system on Bibox is quite simple. All traders (regardless if they are makers or takers) pay a transaction fee of 0.1%. This fee is rather below average if we compare it to other cryptocurrency exchanges. More than that, even this fee can be reduced through the use of the native Bibox token (BIX) for paying fees. In order to do so, the user should turn on the “Use BIX for fees” option in the menu. A fee discount is provided for the first four years. During the first year, traders might have a 50% trading fee discount if using BIX. The next year the discount is reduced to 25%. During the third year of use, the discount drops to 12.5%. And finally, during the fourth year of trading on the platform, the users might have only a 6.5% discount if using BIX token to pay fees. After using Bibox for four years, the users can't have fees discount associated with the use of BIX anymore.

Some sources stress that withdrawal fees on Bibox are network fees, not a payment taken by the platform. These fees are flat and different for each currency. For instance, the current Bitcoin withdrawal fee is set to be 0.0005 BTC while the Ethereum fee reaches 0.006 ETH, etc.

Registration and Setting the Security

The signup process is quite simple. One is required to enter an email address, set the password (8 - 20 characters) and confirm it. Also, it is required to agree with the terms and conditions.

When the email address gets confirmed, the unverified account with 2 BTC daily trading limit is created. The user can log in and trade. But instead of starting the trading process it's important to set the security measures first because trading makes no sense without profit, but all the profit is compromised until the moment when all the protection measures are not turned on.

There are such security measures available as 2-factor authentication, anti-phishing and fund passwords, and SMS verification. SMS verification is set in the User Information tab of the Account Information menu. That's where one can enable SMS authentication. It is required to enter the account password, phone number, authorization code, and push the Confirm button. SMS verification is used to confirm diverse actions on the platform via the SMS code.

Another security option is 2-factor authentication. On the Bibox website, this feature is called "Google authentication". It is quite a standard feature that creates an additional layer of security. The user scans the OR code from the website with his/her mobile device. It creates a token generating a new unique code every 30 seconds on the mobile device. This code is requested by Bibox when the user is going to perform any significant action including logging in and withdrawal.

Fund password is another layer of security that might screw the malicious plans of a hacker because it is the additional password requested each time one withdraws the funds. It can be set in the same tab as the rest of the security features. It is recommended that the fund password should not coincide with the account password or any credentials.

The last thing the user can do in order to strengthen the protection of the Bibox account is setting the anti-phishing code. When set this code will be appearing in all legitimate emails sent on behalf of the exchange. The lack of this code in the email is a clear sign meaning that this email is sent by a fraudster.

That's all protection features that one can (and should) turn on in order to protect the data and the assets associated with the Bibox account. The rest of the security work is the duty of the platform.

Is Bibox Safe?

There are many things to consider to decide on whether Bibox is safe or is it a risky platform. The reason is simple: we have facts that undermine the trust to Bibox, but at the same time there are facts that make us believe that the company is legit.

There is a criticism of the company because of listing some alleged scam coins (although Bibox is known for delisting the coins that proved themselves to be a fraud). But the most serious problem associated with Bibox exchange is the allegedly fake volume. The platform was called out for this many times. By some accounts, the actual trading volume on Bibox is 0.3% of what they report. It means that probably the real liquidity on this exchange is 333 times less than people may expect. It's hard to tell if this valuation is the most accurate or is it overblown, but in general, such allegations raise questions of can we really trust this platform. Some voices claim that Bibox utilizes AI for wash trading. Nevertheless, the lack of complaints on the company's Twitter page makes us think that even if the platform creates some problems for its users, it's capable of solving them swiftly.

Another reason for mistrust is the lack of transparency. There are not many verified facts on who runs the company and what Bibox actually does in order to maintain the security of users' funds. There are claims that Bibox exchange has ties with Huobi, OKCoin.com, and even Binance, but it's not absolutely clear how exactly do these platforms interact. Moreover, there is no verified information on how does Bibox stores the funds of its users. According to the company, most of the users' assets are stored offline in the cold storage wallets, but that's all we can learn. There are no records witnessing that the platform was ever hacked, but if this happens, it's hard to predict the scale of the potential harm.

Now, we'll look at some positive facts on the platform's security. Besides the funds and data protection features that can be turned on by the user, there are some more tools that can guard and improve the trading process. For instance, one of the functions of AI on the platform is to provide the security of the transactions and protect traders from losses. For example, a microservice splitting process big transactions as a set of small bits. It makes transactions processing more efficient and safe. Fix, Websocket, and RESTful APIs supported by Bibox are helping to avoid the losses.

Considering the set of security features and the lack of complaints online throughout the 2+ years history, we can assume that this platform is rather safe than not.