BW.com Review – Is This Cryptocurrency Exchange Legit Or A Scam?

About BW.com

The year 2017 marked a watershed moment for the entire cryptocurrency community as massive floods of volume bought up cryptocurrencies all across the market, ultimately pushing Bitcoin to its all-time high price (as of this writing). The space ultimately became flooded with new exchanges offering individuals an opportunity to get in on the action. The “big boom” actually happened in December of 2017, with the run-up beginning somewhere around October. As a growing number of exchanges came to the space, one exchange, in particular, BW.com (amongst many others), had been serving the space before Bitcoin became the household name it is today. What does this crypto market have to offer that other exchanges lack? Is BW.com a trustworthy and legitimate exchange?

A Brief History Of BW.com

BW.com was founded in 2014 and was originally a Bitcoin mining pool. The exchange, as we know it today, was founded in January of 2017, nearly a full year before Bitcoin’s big run-up. BW was established with the long term vision of creating a sort of self-sustaining machine that unites people through the trading and usage of crypto assets. In 2017, it was also announced that the BW exchange was fully acquired by the Australian Collinstar Holding company. The exchange had, at one time, been in the top 10 exchanges in the world, ranked by volume, but has since fallen in ranking compared to the vast amount of other exchanges in the cryptocurrency space today. 

BW.com Product Offerings

BW has a good number of tokens, tradable in different pairs. For starters, BW.com offers the household-name crypto tokens such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, as well as a wide swath of alt coins (both popular and exotic). To date, there are over 80 coins, with over 140 trading pair combinations. The exchange offers trading markets based in USDT, BTC, and ETH. BW also offers tradable pairs with QC (a Chinese Yuan stablecoin), BUSDT, TRX, and KC. 

BW.com Platforms And Tools

The exchange offers trading on a traditional spot platform, as well as margin trading. Many of the tokens offered on BW have leverage up to 10x, with 20x leverage on pairs such as BTC/USDT, LTC/USDT, ETH/USDT, and more.

Margin trading is an invaluable tool for traders, allowing them to take on larger positions while holding a smaller amount of capital. Traders essentially “borrow” the funds from the exchange, paying the original amount back once the trade is closed, with the profit or loss reflected in the trader’s account balance. While profits and losses can add up quickly, risk can be minimized with the proper usage of a Stop-Loss. Traders can capitalize on a great reward to risk ratio that presents itself with the opportunity of leveraged margin trading.  

Aside from the trading platform, BW.com offers their Tokens LaunchPad.  This section of the exchange is dedicated to the launch of new tokens that are being listed on the exchange. When a new project is being listed on the exchange, often, the exchange (in partnership with the project) will hold a competition, airdropping a reward to a lucky user that wins the lottery by meeting the credentials outlined in the competition guidelines.

Another similar competition that BW offers on their exchange is To The Moon. This competition features a unique cryptocurrency and allows traders to participate as an individual, or as a team. Users/teams that are able to meet the necessary requirements will often receive a reward. With this gamified platform, BW has incentivized the use of their platform in a rewarding way.

To incentivize the use of their platform further, BW offers a very rewarding referral program. When users refer their friends to join the exchange, the original user can receive between 10-30% commission on their friend’s trades, dependent on the level of trader that new user ends up being.

The BW Pool allows users to earn more cryptocurrency by locking up a token for a set duration of time. During this lockup period, users will accrue interest to be paid out once the lockup period is over. Often, many of the coins offered in “lock up” services are actually able to be staked from a self-custodial wallet. With that being said, great care should be taken when deciding if it will pay more to stake the tokens with the exchange. The tokens users can lock up include VSYS, NULS, USDT, EOS, ATOM, and more. If a user isn’t using their assets, this can be a profitable way to put assets to work, generating profits.

BW.com also has an OTC service available for those who wish to buy/sell with fiat directly through the exchange without having to use the spot market. This allows users to buy and sell directly with another user, at prices set by said users. Currently, CNY is the only supported fiat currency, with support for USD; KRW; GBP; EUR; JPY; THB; and HKD coming soon.

For convenience, BW.com offers a trading application available for Android/Apple phones, as well as Apple/Windows-based computers. These applications feature all of the services and functions found on BW’s web site, allowing the user to trade and manage their accounts without having to open a web browser.

BW.com Fees

Concerning the fees a trader will pay, BW operates with a standard Maker/Taker fee schedule, set at 0.2% for the spot market, and 0.2% for the margin trading platform. The exchange also has fees for deposits and withdrawals, varying in rates dependent upon the token. For more information on fees, feel free to visit: https://www.bw.com/feesRate. 

BW.com Customer Support And Resources

For customers in need of assistance, BW has an FAQ section, though clicking on the FAQ link of the website brings the user to somewhat of a dead end, as the actual FAQ can be found by clicking FAQ > Announcements. Only after clicking Announcements will the user be taken to a Zendesk site featuring articles covering every facet of the exchange.

Should a customer need direct support, the exchange has offered the email address of their customer support team. Once the customer sends a request, support should respond in a timely manner to help seek a solution.

BW also has a presence on Medium and has made their contact info available for Telegram, KakaoTalk, Reddit, Twitter, and more.

Should a new customer have trouble understanding how the margin trading platform works, BW has offered their Margin Trading Training Camp. This resource will explain how margin trading works, as well as going into probabilities and risk/reward ratios. While it does demand respect, margin trading is a wonderful tool that doesn’t need to be feared and can be wielded successfully when understood fully.

Is BW.com Trustworthy?

While it may certainly be safe to conduct business on BW, their trustworthiness is questionable at best. Many of their services are not as transparent as they could be, often failing to explain or state exacts and figures that should maybe be common knowledge (such as how long the referral event, otherwise known as commission period, lasts when referring new members). Then there are other issues with the website itself, as some of the pages lack aesthetic, other pages are either completely dead or are misleading (such as the FAQ), and some pages are left untranslated (though the website is offered in multiple languages). These are some things to consider strongly. If an exchange is to call itself legitimate, it is the exchange’s duty to do their very best to operate in a legitimate manner. However, it is the customer’s duty to demand that exchanges operate in concordance to set standards and to never settle for less.

Opening An Account On BW.com

Opening an account on BW.com is rather simple and straightforward. To begin, simply click the Sign Up button at the top of BW’s web site. This will take the new customer to a sign up page, allowing customers to sign up via Phone or Email.

To sign up with a phone number, all a user needs to provide is their country calling code, phone number, and a password. Once a phone number is provided, the exchange will send a unique code to verify that the phone number is indeed correct and valid. After clicking the box to agree to BW’s Registration Agreement, the user needs to click the yellow Sign Up button below the information fields to continue with the process.

To sign up via email address, the process is identical to the phone number sign-up process. The user will have to provide an email address, a password, and the unique code (which will be sent to the email address provided).

From here, the user needs to complete their profile to comply with Anti-Money Laundering/Know-Your-Customer regulations. This information will include the customer’s address, as well as an upload of the customer’s form of ID.

Conclusions For BW.com

While BW was one of the biggest mining operations in Bitcoin’s early days, it remains unclear whether their transition from mining to operating an exchange has been successful. Trading volume has dropped in recent years as more viable exchanges have entered the cryptocurrency space. Overall, the exchange lacks a level of professionalism that one should expect when conducting business on a cryptocurrency exchange.