Binance Review 2023 - Is It Safe?

Cryptocurrency and blockchain can be called one of the most popular and developing areas. The market is growing and new projects are constantly appearing that are created taking into account the shortcomings of their predecessors. In 2017, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange became one of the most high-profile novelties. In a short time, just a few months, it has become one of the main platforms for exchanging cryptocurrencies and has been awarded the title of the best cryptocurrency exchange for trading. It is Binance that will be considered in this article. But is it safe to use in the year 2020? We will talk about how to register and start work there, how to buy a cryptocurrency and how to go through verification, we will consider in detail other aspects of interaction with this project. Let’s read this Binance review and find out how secure the Binance exchange is!

1. Binance Overview
2. Where is Binance Located?
3. Binance Features
4. New Features (December 2021 Update)
5. Binance Fees
6. Binance API
7. How to Use Binance Exchange?
8. Binance KYC
9. Deposit
10. How to Buy XRP on Binance?
11. Trading on Binance
12. How to Withdraw?
13. Customer Service
14. Is Binance Safe?
15. Binance vs Coinbase
16. Binance vs Kraken
17. Conclusion

Binance Overview

Binance is a Chinese exchange for trading cryptocurrency Bitcoin and other digital assets. It began its work in early 2017. Over the 2 years of its existence, it has gained immense popularity among users. Now Binance is in the TOP 3 exchanges in daily trading volume. 

At Binance you can buy about 600 cryptocurrencies, among them the main assets such as BTC (Bitcoin), ETH (Ether), LTC (Litecoin), BCH (Bitcoin Cash), BNB (Binance Coin), EOS (EOS), XRP (Ripple), XLM (Lumens), DASH (Dash), TRON (Tron), USDT (Tether), XMR (Monero), ZCash (Zcash), etc.

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The trading volume is quite impressive as well, the average daily volume on Binance is usually about 750.000 USD or 100 BTC.

Binance Exchange has its official website with a domain name www.binance.com. The domain was registered on April 1, 2017. The Binance site is very progressive but at the same time a simple site. It is available in 16 languages. The site’s interface is clear, everything is the same with other cryptocurrency platforms. That's exactly what developers can be praised for, as it is for a block of current news, distribution of free cryptocurrencies and draws.

Where is Binance Located?

The Binance platform headquarters is located in Shanghai and is headed by Changpeng Zhao. However, the project attracts users from all over the world and can be considered international. There is no restriction on the registration of traders from other countries.

This is an entire ecosystem of socially controlled social projects. The competent policy of Changpeng Zhao is to eliminate dependence on the regulatory bodies of different states, they had to expand by opening branches in different countries.

Binance Features

Each exchange platform has its own unique features that distinguish it from competitors. One offers a huge selection of trading pairs, the second - low fees for exchange operations or even their absence, a strong advantage of the third - the most thought-out account security system. In this Binance review, we will see what kind of features this exchange has.

Despite the fact that Binance is quite a young exchange platform, the project immediately began to gain worldwide popularity and occupy the first positions in the ranking of exchange sites. And in January 2018, Binance became the world leader in trading volume. The cryptocurrency community enthusiastically accepted the new player with its chic trading conditions: a loyal commission policy and an impressive set of tools for trading. A competent advertising campaign, a generous referral system and a number of skillful team actions also helped to achieve rapid success.

The main advantage of the exchange is the ability to process up to 1.4 million transactions per second: this means that you can safely trade, despite the busy site. In addition, Binance offers competitive market rates for its trading fees (commissions): 0.1% on each side of the transaction or 0.075% if you use your Binance tokens (BNB). In this Binance review, we will talk more about fees.

Binance also encourages its users to store their cryptocurrencies on the Binance exchange, making it possible to receive regular airdrops. This is a great advantage for those who want to regularly trade their coins, while at the same time receiving financial rewards (GAS) for their hold.

Also, Binance supports the apps for PC - macOS, Windows, and mobile devices - Android, IOS, that makes the trading process the way easier and faster.

Binance offers the users to buy or sell Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies through Simplex, Koinal, TrustToken, and Paxos. 

Binance is proud that they are an exchange for everyone (it is not surprising when their slogan is “Exchange the world”), claiming that it provides a convenient and intuitive interface for mobile and web platforms for beginners, and with the touch of a button make a complex UI for experienced traders. 

New Features (December 2021 Update)

Margin Trading 

Margin trading became an important feature for crypto exchanges as this feature allows traders to multiply their profits while exchanges don't risk. All risks are the burden of traders. That's why margin trading is not recommended to inexperienced traders. Margin trading is trading with money borrowed from the exchanges. On Binance, users can have up to 10x leverage. After a long period of development, Binance has finally added margin trading to its features list. 

Crypto Loans

At some point, Binance has added a crypto loan feature. It allows users to loan Bitcoin, Ethereum, or BUSD (a Binance native stablecoin) to investors and earn interest. More than that, BTC, ETH, BNB, USDT, and BUSD can be borrowed by any registered user. The procedure of loaning and borrowing on Binance is much easier than similar procedures and requirements in the traditional economy segment.

Futures Trading

In September 2019, Binance launched a Futures trading platform. Today many crypto exchanges offer futures, however, Binance was one of the first huge exchanges to implement such a feature. Spot trading might be less risky but futures trading might bring bigger profits so cryptocurrency futures became a natural part of the crypto trading industry. As of December 2021, there are over 170 futures products (including USDⓈ-M Futures, COIN-M Futures, Binance Leveraged Tokens, and Binance Options) available on Binance. 

P2P Market

Another feature that appeared on Binance in 2019 is a P2P platform. It is a simple marketplace where you place orders that are escrowed by Binance. Only when both parties signal they are satisfied with the outcome, the funds are released by Binance. The pros of P2P trading are low fees (no fees for makers), multiple available payment methods, privacy protection, and stable prices.

NFT Marketplace

In June of 2020, Binance launched an NFT marketplace. This service brings together traders, NFT-art collectors, artists, and other interested groups of people. There, people can sell their arts, sell NFT they own, buy it, host exhibitions, follow galleries, etc. It is possible to create NFTs via Binance. On the marketplace, there are several sections: Recommended Creators, Recommended Collections, Trending, Gaming, and Today's Picks. Such a marketplace is a rare and progressive feature. The first exclusive sought-after collection on the Binance NFT marketplace was a collaboration with Alphonso Davies, a Bayern Munich football player. The works were created by illustrator Jack Perkins.

Lite and Professional Versions

At some point, Binance created a simplified exchange interface. This version became known as Binance Lite while the full-fledged version is called Binance Professional. The Lite version lacks order books and charts and is more convenient for quick buying of this or that cryptocurrency. Without a doubt, active traders will need Binance Professional.

Liquid Swap

In September 2020, Binance launched a new service called Liquid Swap (aka Swap Farming). It is a tool for searching for liquidity pools and connecting to them. You lock some of your funds in one currency to receive rewards in USDT, BNB, or other assets. That's a handy way for making a passive income via cryptocurrencies.

Binance Tax Reporting Tool

Another innovative feature introduced by Binance in 2021 is the Binance Tax Reporting Tool. Those who want their trading on Binance to be transparent for tax organs can send them info about their transactions on Binance via API using this tool. 

Binance Gift Card

This recently added feature allows users to send customized gift cards to others via social media, email, and other channels. It may include a referral link, digital art collections, and a portion of cryptocurrency. That's just a nice way to introduce your friends and family to Binance and make it in a more pleasant manner than simply sending a referral link or a sum of crypto coins.

Binance Fees

The commission for trading on Binance is 0.1%. This will be charged every time you buy and sell a coin. So it is a Binance deposit fee and Binance withdrawal fee. However, discounts are provided for holders of BNB tokens. The system assumes that the discount on the commission will be proportionally reduced by half every year for five years.

Thus it will make:

50% in the first year

25% in the second year

12% in the third year

6.5% in the fourth

0% in the fifth 

If you are a market taker – meaning that you simply use the liquidity that is already available on the platform, then you can reduce this down to 0.09%, if you trade more than 500 BTC (or cryptocurrency equivalent) in a 30 day period. The lowest fee available for market takers is 0.04%, albeit, you would need to trade at least 150.000 BTC in a single month.

More information on the Binance fees you can find on this page.

Trading Fees

In accordance with the information posted on the Binance website, at 00:00 AM (UTC) every day, your trading volume over the past 30-day period and your current BNB balance are evaluated. Your Tier level and corresponding maker/taker fees are updated one hour later.

Binance API

The Binance API is designed to provide an easy and efficient way to integrate your trading application into our platform. 

Binance Exchange provides users with API keys - a software interface for trading automation. To create an API key on your Binance account, 2FA must be activated. You can find General Info for Binance API here. More in this Binance review we will check how to use this exchange.

How to Use Binance Exchange?

To register Binance, you need to go to the site. Then click on the “Register” button, after which you will be taken to the page you need. Immediately after entering your email and generating a password to enter the exchange, you will need to go through a captcha.

An email will be sent to confirm your email address. It contains a code to confirm your email address, which will need to be entered in the verification field. By entering the password, you activate your account.

Next, you will be offered the two-factor authentication settings. You can choose either Google Authentication or SMS Authentication. Two-factor authorization on Binance is an additional measure of your security, in fact, access to the exchange website for two or more factors. For example, confirmation via Google Auth and followed by email.

Recently, there has been a wave of phishing attacks when the site the user needs is replaced by its fake version. The official Binance website is no exception, it is worth checking every time you connect. In the browser address bar, check the Binance.com domain name and the HTTPS encryption protocol.

Verification

After completing the creation of a new account, the user can begin to use the full functionality of the platform. It is true that the withdrawal of funds will then be limited to the amount of 2 BTC per day. It can be increased to hundreds of bitcoins per day, but this will require standard verification.

To do this, you will need to go to your “User Center” (your Account logo at the right corner of the screen) and press on “Identification”.

At this menu, you will see two options for verification. To complete your personal identity verification, choose the “Personal” option you’ll see on the screen to proceed further. To complete an enterprise identity verification, choose the “Enterprise” option. In this guide, we will choose “Personal Verification Type”. 

To complete your “Personal Verification” indicate the full name, date of birth, address, city, postal code and country of residence. Once finished, press on “Begin Verification”.

Depending on the country where your ID documents were issued you will have to choose a valid ID type. For most users, you can choose a passport, ID card, or driver’s license.

The scan of the selected document will need to be uploaded to a special form on the site. Moreover, the user will have to take a selfie with a document in his hand and a leaflet with the current date and the name of the exchange.

After you have uploaded the required photos, you will be directed to the facial verification process. Сlick on "I confirm this is me" to proceed further.

To proceed with the verification further, you will need a Binance mobile app. Scan the QR code using the app to complete the facial verification process.

Binance KYC

It is important to remember that Binance will require you to go through a simple KYC procedure before they can accept your deposit request. This is to ensure that Binance remains in compliance with all relevant anti-money laundering laws. This is especially important for the exchange at a time when they want to obtain the necessary regulatory approval to launch the exchange in the United States.

To do this, you first need to enter your full name, home address, country of residence and date of birth. After that, you will be redirected to a third-party platform verification partner - NetVerify. To complete the Binance KYC process, you need to download a copy of your government-issued ID. It must be a driver’s license, passport or national ID.

Deposit

The next step after registration and verification of the account is to replenish the balance at Binance. Previously, the Binance exchange only worked with cryptocurrency, fiat was not supported. Users could not replenish the account with the card in dollars, euros, payment cards or in other ways using traditional currencies. Now, operations for depositing and withdrawing money to Binance are conducted both with digital cash and with fiat.

Go to your account and click the “Deposit” button. On the deposit page, you’ll need to choose the currency you want, to do it you should click the “BTC” logo to see the full list of currencies supported. Once you find the assets you want to buy, click on it to deposit into Binance. 

Copy the unique wallet address that is provided to you, and use that to transfer the funds from your private wallet.

How to Buy XRP on Binance?

You can buy stablecoins listed on Binance by wiring money from your account to the providers of these coins. Then, use these stablecoins to buy XRP on the Binance exchange.

To find more information on how to buy XRP on Binance, you can check on its website.

Trading on Binance

Once your cryptocurrency deposit has been credited – which usually takes no more than 10-20 minutes, you are then ready to start trading. Hover over the ‘Exchange’ button at the top of the screen, and select whether you want the ‘Basic’ or ‘Advanced’ trading platform. If you’re just starting out, then go with the former.

You now have access to over 540 individual trading pairs. If the coin you want to purchase is not directly related to the cryptocurrency with which you deposited money, you will need to make an additional transaction.

When you finish trading, your recently purchased coin will be available in your Binance account. You can leave it on your Binance account or withdraw it to an external wallet.

Binance also offers an API that allows you to connect your account to several Crypto Trading robots and allow them to trade on your behalf, automating your strategy and hoping to profit from bot transactions.

As for the minimal amounts to a trade, you can find the full list of Binance minimum trade amounts for every crypto asset here.

How to Withdraw?

The withdrawal of funds is on the same page as the input. The only difference is that you need to choose “Withdraw”. There you will need to enter data on the transfer amount and address. Next, you just need to confirm the withdrawal. 

To do it, you also have to choose the asset you wish to withdraw and enter the recipient address of the currency chosen. Once all the information double-checked, press “Submit”.

Customer Service

Binance exchange customers respond positively to the work of the Exchange technical support specialists. According to them, support works quickly, providing competent assistance and advice.

Also, to provide users with technical support, the developers have identified a separate dashboard. On it, you can find the answer to one of the frequently asked questions (FAQ) or submit a request to a specialist if something does not work as it should.

Technical support reviews are different. Among them are descriptions of positive work experience and dissatisfaction. At Trustpilot, we can see the full picture of the customer’s reviews and the issues that they could have experienced. 

You can also stay tuned on all the news and announcements via Facebook, Twitter or Telegram.

The most common issue Binance users are contacting the Support Center with is 2FA Error that they could see. However, Binance has already described the solution to such a problem in their FAQ.

As the platform’s advantages, users usually note a convenient multilingual interface, low fees, a large volume of transactions, a large selection of coins, including rare ones, a high-quality support service and various channels for communication with specialists, high and uninterrupted operation speed and fast order execution, convenient withdrawal currencies, the availability of mobile trading, currency sweepstake.

Traders working with the exchange note that it is profitable to trade here, transactions are carried out very quickly and you can store coins in crypto-wallets. Binance is rightfully considered to be one of the best and most stable platforms for trading cryptocurrency, both for beginners with small trading volumes, and for ardent crypto sharks who daily carry out large transactions.

Objective disadvantages of the platform are the difficulty of verifying the account and limitations in its absence, frequent account blocking.

Is Binance Safe? 

Binance takes security very seriously, the platform offers a number of security safeguards to ensure your funds remain safe from the threat of external malpractice. At the very beginning, customers are asked to set up two-factor authentication (2FA) when registering an account. 2FA is an additional level of security that sends a special code to your mobile phone every time you want to enter, exchange or withdraw funds.

Moreover, if you attempt to log in from a device or IP address that has not previously been used on Binance, you will need to confirm this via your registered email account. You can also choose to receive email notifications when key account functions are performed, such as withdrawals. But is Binance safe to entrust with our savings?

The Binance website also uses the CryptoCurrency Security Standard (CCSS) to protect accounts, which is the industry standard for large exchanges. You can always have some extra protection using a VPN service. According to Vpnpro, good VPN encrypts and hides your location, IP address, some of them even have a AES 256-bit cipher which helps to protect your personal information from hackers.

Binance recently introduced its ‘Address Whitelisting’ feature. Ordinarily, you have the option to withdraw your cryptocurrency funds to any wallet address. However, if you set up the address whitelisting feature from within your account, you can ensure that withdrawals can only be made to a single address. You can, of course, amend this at any time, although you’ll need to go through an extra couple of security steps. 

However, Binance could not avoid hacking. The company was hacked on May 7th at 12:15 Eastern Standard Time. In addition to stealing bitcoins, hackers received a large number of user API keys, two-factor authorization codes, and other information. The stolen bitcoins are insured by the fund existing at the exchange and were paid to all users. Nevertheless, there are rumors that the exchange itself organized a “hack” because on the OTC market, there was a large application for the purchase of crypto, and in order to satisfy the application, it temporarily froze users' bitcoins. It remains to be hoped that this will not happen again and everything will be fine with Binance.

The big advantage of Binance exchange is how the Binance team responds to threats and solves problems, and in terms of reliability, since there were precedents, then it’s not worth overpraising it. The design and convenience of trading, of course, are at a high level, since the development of this exchange is well underway.

In November 2021, Binance had an issue with Dogecoin which led to the suspension of DOGE withdrawals for over 2 weeks. Later, the exchange reps claimed that the issue was a rare and unforeseen bug. However, some people felt unsatisfied with an explanation.

Due to tensions with regulators, Binance has lost its markets in the USA, Germany, and the UK. Currently,  the activity of the exchange is investigated in several countries. However, Binance is willing to overcome these hardships. In December 2021, Binance announced its plans to return to the UK by the beginning or middle of 2023.

Binance vs Coinbase

Coinbase is one of the leading digital asset exchanges based in San Francisco, California. The exchange was founded in 2012. They focus on the US market, however, the company currently operates in 31 countries and offers storage of Bitcoins in 190 countries around the world.

In 2014, the company created the Global Digital Asset Exchange (GDAX), a platform for trading a wide range of digital assets and directly exchanging Bitcoin and Ether for fiat currency. GDAX is intended primarily for professionals with large volumes.

The Coinbase offers the most reliable protection in the entire Bitcoin exchange market. More than 97% of the coins are stored in the cold storage. Private keys used to authorize cold storage operations are stored in fragments between autonomous hard drives and paper, in different places with backup in case any sheets are lost. This kind of protection of users’ data inspires confidence. It is a strong competitor to Binance both in terms of operating time and reliability of information storage.

Binance vs Kraken

The Kraken cryptocurrency exchange was created back in 2011 by Jesse Powell, one of the first bitcoin enthusiasts, as an alternative to the (now closed) Mt.Gox exchange.

Kraken is one of the few large exchanges that has an impeccable reputation for security and has become the first cryptocurrency platform to introduce a Proof-of-Reserves system that cryptographically verifies whether the users' balances on the exchange match the funds on Kraken wallets.

Over 8 years of operation, the Kraken exchange has been able to gain credibility in the crypto industry. The exchange regularly conducts internal audits and tries to demonstrate transparency even in conditions of unfair competition. When it comes to security, few can compete with Kraken. Today, Kraken is one of the few large cryptocurrency exchanges that has never been hacked.

To achieve the highest possible level of security, Kraken stores most of its funds in cold wallets geographically distributed across several countries. Kraken servers are monitored around the clock and are protected by armed guards, and a team of cybersecurity experts regularly checks for potential vulnerabilities.

For users, Kraken offers many additional options to protect your account. They include additional two-factor authentication, as well as blocking account settings. 

Unfortunately, the Binance exchange was hacked and it can’t boast such an impeccable reputation, especially considering that the Kraken exchange is 3 times older than Binance.

Conclusion

Summing up, it should be said that Binance is one of the best options for trading and investing. This is evidenced by popularity, and trading volume, and the number of supported currencies. The exchange is suitable for both professionals and beginners, thanks to the availability of appropriate modes. In addition, on the platform, it is not necessary to verify and withdraw not the smallest amounts. The project continues to actively develop and open new offices around the world. Is Binance safe enough? Is Binance legit? Or is Binance scam? For this kind of exchange, we can say that the Binance exchange is quite safe and secure to trade average amounts. And what do our readers think about Binance? Have you used this trading platform? We invite you to share your opinion in the comments to the review.