I can say I’m a fan of binance in just a month using it.
From what I can tell, fees are reduced if you use Binance's coin (BNB) to execute trades on Binance. Is it worth doing this?
Of course yes. Though they have one of the cheapest fees, it can even go cheaper by 50% when using BNB. That’s pretty cool especially if you are trading with large amounts.
(I just sent some BTC over to Binance to buy something with -- should I first convert my BTC to BNB before making my purchase?)
You just need to purchase enough BNB to cover your future needs. Like me, I only bought 1.88 BNB and even if I had trade for few times, I still have around 1.8 BNB, so I only paid almost 0.08 BNB for those trades. Now that you have your BNB, you can switch on in your profile to use BNB as your trading fees.
To sum it up, you have now BTC and small amount of BNB. You can then use your BTC to purchase your favorite coins while the BNB being deducted with the fees.
Also, are there fees for trading BTC for BNB on Binance? If they charge you to convert your currency to BNB, it seems like it would defeat the purpose of trading for BNB in order to reduce fees.
Yes, there are still fees.
I hope you don’t get it wrong. The purpose of purchasing BNB is to reduce the fees when you are trading using the binance platform. Whatever altcoins you trade, as long as you have enough BNB, then you can enjoy the purpose of BNB. It does not necessarily mean you only trade BTC to BNB or vice versa.
Another advantage of using BNB:
When you buy something in binance exchange, you are subject to a 0.1% trading fee. If you are not using BNB for trading fees, the fee will be deducted to your purchased coin. So if you’re buying 500 Xcoins, you will receive only 499.5 Xcoins. You have to know also that some coins in binance can’t be sold in decimals. Please refer here
https://support.binance.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000594711-Trading-Rule. So with that, you can probably sell only the 499 Xcoins, leaving the 0.5 Xcoins as dust.
If you are using BNB when purchasing this Xcoin, you will receive the full 500 Xcoins and only the BNB being deducted for fees. You can then sell the full 500 when the perfect time comes leaving no dust.