BitMart Review – Should You Use This Cryptocurrency Marketplace?

About BitMart

BitMart is a cryptocurrency marketplace offering a number of crypto-related services. Customers can buy, sell, store, spot trade, futures trade, lend, and stake a wide range of crypto assets straight from their website or mobile app. The company was first launched in 2017 and currently serves over five million users in over 180 countries, including the United States, though select services will not be available everywhere.

BitMart Account Opening

Opening an account with BitMart is as easy as verifying your email or phone number and takes about 30 seconds. After completing the email or phone verification, you can transfer and trade any supported digital assets and even participate in their lending services. However, you cannot withdraw assets until you complete identity verification via a government-issued ID and an ID confirmation photo. Additional information such as your social security number and address will be required if you wish to deposit or exchange USD. So, if you are looking to access BitMart’s full range of services, the KYC process can take several days. 

BitMart Desktop Interface

BitMart’s desktop interface is very simple and easy to navigate with all their markets and services readily accessible from the top left section of the homepage. Their trading interface is equally as organized and aesthetic with charts powered by TradingView, which many traders will undoubtedly appreciate.

BitMart Mobile App

At first glance, the BitMart app can seem a bit overwhelming, but it is very neatly organized and mirrors the desktop version quite well. The app seems more suited for traders than crypto novices, but the learning curve for either should be relatively modest. Anyone interested in on-the-go trading will definitely appreciate the layout and find the app to be a convenient resource with well-formatted charts and order books, which is a pleasant surprise given the often clunky charting in many other mobile apps.

Supported Assets/Trading Pairs

BitMart supports over 200 crypto assets and has over 400 trading pairs. Customers can also purchase 20 of those crypto assets with 60 different fiat currencies through Visa, Mastercard, ApplePay, and PayPal. They also have a very sizable futures market with almost 120 trading options.

Futures

As mentioned, BitMart offers perpetual futures contracts for nearly 120 markets making it a very competitive platform for derivatives. BitMart also offers up to 50x leverage, which is becoming increasingly harder to find these days with most platforms capping their leverage at 20x. As for the trading interface, their futures market is nearly identical to their spot trading and extremely easy to use. You will, however, need to go through a good portion of the account authentication to participate in any futures trading.

Lending

BitMart’s lending is a little different than traditional lending services and can be a a bit confusing to understand. Rather than offering 24/7 lending of a number of supported crypto assets like most lending services, they periodically offer lending for a specific asset. Offers will open and function on a first-come-first-served basis until a volume level is reached and then the offer will close to new participants. Those who do participate can choose from 15 day, 30 day, 180 day, and 365 day terms. An important disclaimer to bear in mind, however, is BitMart’s lending services are not currently available to US residents.

Staking

Though BitMart offers staking for nearly 20 crypto assets, they do not provide staking for any of the top cryptos. For example, major stake-able assets such as ADA and SOL are not available. That said, their staking services are very user-friendly, pay rewards monthly, and require no minimum staked amount. BitMart will even allow you to trade with your staked coins.

Shooting Star

Shooting Star is a listing and initial exchange offering (IEO) service aimed at simplifying the listing procedure for blockchain projects. While Shooting Star is a rather niche service suited for more experienced blockchain investors, it is still a great and unique opportunity for those familiar with the relevant projects.

BitMart Fees

BitMart has a number of different levels to their fees related to the amount of BMX (BitMart’s native token) you hold and your trading volume. If you don’t hold any BMX and your trading volume is less than 150 BTC, the maker and taker fees are 0.25%. This is likely the category most traders will find themselves in. That said, the maker and taker fees can go as low as 0.075% with 5,000,000 or more BMX. 

For high-volume traders such as institutions, if your trading volume is equal to or above 150 BTC and you have at least 500,000 BMX, the maker fee is 0.06% and the taker fee is 0.065%. If your trading volume is equal to or above 25,000 BTC and you have at least 50 million BMX, your maker fee is 0.015% and your taker fee is 0.02%.

If you are purchasing crypto with a credit or debit card via Moonpay or Simplex, there will be a 3.85% and 4.20% purchase fee respectively. There is also a $3.99 fee per transaction for selling through Moonpay and a 0.5% selling fee through Simplex.

As for withdrawal fees, BitMart has a long list for all the various assets they support. Examples of the withdrawal fees for the main assets are 0.0005 BTC, 0.01 – 0.2 ETH, 2 USDT, and 50 – 1000 BMX.

Minimum Purchases/Deposits/Withdrawals

BitMart has a $50 minimum purchase and $12,000 limit when buying crypto with fiat. There is no deposit limit on crypto assets, but there are various minimum withdrawals such as 0.005 BTC, 0.1 ETH, and 10 USDT.

BitMart Security

99% of assets held by BitMart are stored offline in cold wallets with about 0.5% stored on hot wallets to facilitate daily operations. BitMart also offers 2-factor authentication and email or phone confirmations for withdrawals. They even have an anti-phishing code that will allow you to tell if your email notifications are coming from BitMart or an untrusted source. Though BitMart takes security very seriously, assets held by them are not currently insured in the unlikely event of a hack. This shouldn’t be too much of a concern for traders, but it is important to keep in mind if you plan on holding a large amount of funds with BitMart.

BitMart Customer Support

Like many crypto brokers, BitMart has a help/support center accessible at the bottom right of the page or through the ‘Support/News’ tab at the top right. Here you can find most of the general information you will be looking for, though there could certainly be more information and organization to what they have. If you are still struggling to find the information you need, you can also reach out directly to BitMart via their support email and receive a response within three days. 

Special Offers

A notable offering BitMart has been running for quite some time is their referral program. BitMart will give you 30% of the trading fees accumulated by any of your referrals for a whole year and will also give you 10% of the trading fees from any referrals of your referred customers.

Conclusion: Is BitMart Worth Using?

Overall, BitMart is a very adequate and easy-to-use platform. They have a signifiant amount of trading pairs and services as well as an excellent mobile app for traders making it a viable candidate for anyone considering trading crypto. Their futures market is quite robust and the fact that they still have up to 50x leverage will certainly put it on the radars of seasoned derivatives traders. However, if you are interested in lending or staking, I would likely pursue less confusing and more inclusive options. Most people interested in lending and staking are looking to do so in a more straightforward manner (in the case of their lending) and with top 15 crypto assets. Nevertheless, BitMart is an excellent choice for traders with fairly low fees and will prove itself to be an easy to use broker with a great mobile app for on-the-go trading.