Topic: A jungle of Exchanges – reviewed by a newbie to other newbies (Read 196 times)

First Exchange up – my second exchange experience
Binance

According to CoinMarketCap on the 25th of January, Binance is the number one exchange with a trading volume of $2,814,627,985.

Registration:
My second registration ever was to this exchange, a bit terrifying for a first timer, the registration was simple and easy compared to Bitfinex – which actually gave it a sense of “cheapness” compared to the intricate system on my first exchange. Suddenly I had an unverified account and I was ready to trade! The excitement was real and the trade was on! 2Fa and all – security was as good as it gets with that. For an unverified account that you are allowed to withdraw up to 2 BTC of I give the Registration the following score:  
6/10
There would be a higher score if you had to get verified to start trading. I feel the low entry registration diminish the confidence in the exchange to a degree.

Overview:
The front page is kind of messy – all the action is difficult to understand from a newbies perspective. I registered at the same time as a less tech savvy friend and even though I was new too I had to guide him through the ropes. Your main entry points are Exchange – there you can choose between advanced and basic trading view. Personally, I feel the basic is best for us Newbies – later when we understand more about the indicators and trend lines we could look at the more advanced trading. But for starting up and just buying the coins you like, use the basic. The other page you are interested in is the Funds page – you can choose to see your balance, your deposit history and withdrawal history. The newest feature is a transaction page which shows all your deposits and withdrawals. The next link is for Orders – Open orders are your orders that are not executed or just partially executed. Order history is all your placed orders – both executed trades and cancelled orders, finally you have trades – this is excluding cancelled orders, and are a good tool to determine what you need to sell your coins for not to take a loss. The final interesting page is your account page where you set your security, change password or verify account.  Contests with prizes does not promote the impression of the exchange in my opinion – so not full score.
8/10
The overview is very easy to navigate when you get the complete picture. A simple and cool trade page sorted on the major trading pairs they offer. Will not get top scores from me since it was clearly not that intuitive for everyone.

Trading
Binance trading interface is very easy to understand. It supports three methods of orders. Limit – the best way to trade – you decide what you want for your coin or what you want to give. Market – you buy directly from the sellers or sell directly to the buyers. stop / limit. As a newbie – stay away from this one. I lost some money in the start from not understanding the concept. And it is different from selling and from buying. If you want to test it, do it with a small amount. But it goes something like: if you hit a certain level – put up a sell order or a buy order with a certain limit. A way of “buying the dip” or “selling the top” without sitting in front of the pc. Or limiting your losses. The trading on Binance is a bit stressful for a new trader. There is a lot of pump and dump groups doing their thing, and us newbs are easily caught up in the exiting rise of a coin and loose our gains. So as a newbie I lost some cash on said exciting rise. Another fucked up, pardon my French, thing with Binance is the petty cash left in each coin when you trade. I did my fair share of flipping on Binance, because it is so easy and fast. I moved all assets which was possible to move to another exchange – and I still have 12 dollars left divided on many coins. I will never get those back. It is extremely negative trait. Not only do they take fees, they take money.
5/10
Easy to trade, easy to lose money, loads of pump and dump action and they take more than just the fees.

Sense of Security
This is just my sentiment – but with 2fa and email confirmation you as a customer is in line in standard as most other exchanges.  My feeling, on the other hand, is that as an exchange Binance is under a lot of pressure as the number one in volume, and customers are under a constant pressure for being scammed. Binance have not proven themselves how they handle a cyber-attack or how they handle funds getting stolen. It is first after an incident like that – and the following actions to reimburse those who lost(like Bitfinex did) I will feel good about my assets at Binance. But until then it is a risk, as everything else in crypto.
7/10
There is good security with both 2Fa and email confirmation – Quite the Standard in exchanges today. Nothing magical and not proven if funds get stolen.

Deposit and Withdrawal
Depositing into Binance is easy as pie – and the withdrawal fees are not that high. But not being able to withdraw the small amounts makes me leave the damn thing with a 12-dollar balance in their favour with no possibility to gather or withdraw the said amount. Other exchanges do not leave your wallets full of small pennies when you withdraw. So, this is something they should fix ASAP. Other than that, I have had no issues with the Deposit or Withdrawal functions on Binance.
6/10
Could not withdraw all my funds, but easy and simple.

All in all, I give it a total score of 6,4/10

TLDR: Binance is a quick and easy exchange – but a little too fast for a Newbie and easy to get caught up in the exciting world of day trading or pump and dumps. It is very natural to lose money when things go quickly and you act without thinking. The contests and prizes add to the uncertainty of the validity of the coins they are promoting.