The cryptocurrency margin trading segment is a highly competitive and fast-paced environment. Since 2018, it has grown exponentially, both in terms of trading volumes and the number of new exchange platforms.
Therefore, when choosing a cryptocurrency margin trading platform, it becomes a difficult task whether to go for an established player like BitMEX or select a newer alternative like ByBit. The two most popular crypto margin trading exchanges in the market.
However, comparing both the exchanges will help you distinguish between the two and decide which platform you should trade.
BitMEX vs. ByBit: At A Glance
Features | BitMEX | Bybit |
📖 AML & KYC | Yes | No |
💰 Supported Coins | 27 | 237 |
🚀 Maximum Leverage | 20X | 20X |
⚖️ Taker Fees (Futures Market) | 0.075% | 0.075% |
⚖️ Maker Fees (Futures Market) | 0.010% | -0.025% |
🔧 Withdrawal Fees | Yes, varies blockchain to blockchain | Yes, varies blockchain to blockchain |
➡️ Deposit Fees | 0 | 0 |
📱 Mobile App | Yes | Yes |
📝 Demo Account | Yes | Yes |
💳 Spot Trading | No | Yes |
📈 Futures & Margin Trading | Yes | Yes |
🎁 Joining Bonus | N/A | Up to $4450 Bonus |
ByBit is a Singapore-headquartered crypto exchange platform and was established in March 2018. It has become one of the leading crypto margin platforms with over 300,000 users from throughout the world in a concise period.
Its daily average trading volume is around $850 million, and in June 2019, it recorded the highest trading volume of $2 billion in a single day.
Established in 2014, BitMEX is the first crypto margin trading platform globally and is a giant in daily trading volume. It gets an average daily trading volume of over $2 billion, which is 2-3 times higher than any of its nearest competitors. It specializes in perpetual swaps and traditional futures contracts.
Leverage & Trading Pairs Available Comparison
On BitMEX, you can trade perpetual swaps on XBT, ETH, and XRP. Also, it offers eight different traditional futures contracts on XBT, BCH, ADA, EOS, LTC, ETH, XRP, and TRX.
Regarding leverage limits, it offers up to 100X leverage on all XBT contracts, up to 50X on ETH and XRP perpetual contracts, and up to 20X on all other listed coins. Especially for ETH and LTC traditional futures contracts, it has a leverage limit of up to 50X and 33.33X, respectively.
Whereas on ByBit, it offers only four different perpetual swaps that include BTCUSD, ETHUSD, XRPUSD, and EOSUSD. It also offers a BTCUSDT futures contract for hedging purposes only.
The highest leverage offered is up to 100X on BTCUSD and BTCUSDT futures contracts and up to 50X on the other three trading pairs. You can find the complete list in our detailed ByBit Review.
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Trading fee comparison
Both the exchange platforms follow a maker fee-taker fee pricing model. BitMEX, for all its perpetual swaps and XBT traditional futures, offers a maker rebate of 0.025% and charges a taker fee of 0.075%. For other coins, it has a maker rebate of 0.050% and a taker fee of 0.25%.
ByBit also has similar pricing for all its futures contracts, offering a maker rebate of 0.025% and a taker fee of 0.075%.
(Result: Tie)
Liquidity comparison
For both the exchanges, liquidity is not an issue and can meet high frequency/volume traders’ requirements very easily.
BitMEX, being a leader in the segment, gets an average daily trading volume of over $2 billion, and for it, big order size is no issue. BitMEX is the world’s largest bitcoin futures market by volume.
On the other hand, ByBit gets an average daily trading volume of over $800 million on four of its assets, in which 75% of the trading volume comes from the BTC/USD trading pair.
You should note, in June 2019, ByBit hit a trading volume of $1 billion and $2 billion on consecutive days, which truly shows its market depth. In the past, BitMEX has been accused of inflating its trading volume numbers, but it denied doing any such acts.
Trading platform comparison
It is one of the most important factors to look at for any margin trader and check how effective the trading platform is.
BitMEX, despite being a top crypto margin trading exchange and having a simple and intuitive platform, is not suitable for all types of traders, especially beginners. Further, the platform is prone to overload error, login issues, which severely marks down the trading experience.
Whereas the trading platform of ByBit is well laid out and intuitive, having a standard interface where users can easily toggle between multiple widgets in the platform. Traders of all types (professionals to beginners) find it easy to operate.
ByBit also has its mobile application, which helps you trade on the go, while BitMEX lacks this feature.
Speaking about charting features on both platforms, ByBit offers a third-party charting package from tradingview, where you get most of the features and functionalities required for advanced technical analysis. BitMEX offers limited access to the various technical indicators, tools, and other advanced charting features.
Also, ByBit has a fair liquidation policy compared to BitMEX. The liquidation process is a fail-safe feature, in which the contract is liquidated when prices get close to bankruptcy price.
ByBit has more checks and balances in place to make the liquidation process more transparent. It uses the liquidation price very close to bankruptcy price and uses a dual-price mechanism to avoid liquidation due to market manipulation.
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Order types & order book comparison
BitMEX offers seven different order types, market, limit, stop-limit, stop-market, trailing stop, take-profit-limit, take-profit-market. Whereas, ByBit supports only three order types, limit, market, and conditional. It also has three order life options that include good-till-canceled, immediate-or-cancel, and fill-or-kill.
Now, speaking of the order book for both platforms, ByBit has an open order book that looks very clean and crisp at first sight. You can scroll up and down to analyze the buy/sell order sizes in detail and easily determine the price fluctuation differences.
While BitMEX’s order book looks too flashy and unresponsive, the excessive blinking makes it difficult to analyze the market movement and potentially wrong trades properly.
(Winner: ByBit)
Deposit limits & funding options comparison
Both the exchanges do not have any minimum deposit limits to start trading, whereas their funding options differ.
BitMEX is a fully crypto-centric exchange and only supports deposits and withdrawals in bitcoin. ByBit allows its users to fund its account using five different cryptocurrencies: BTC, ETH, XRP, EOS, and USDT. Both exchanges do not support fiat currencies.
One of the major advantages of ByBit is, it processes withdrawals throughout the day compared to that of BitMEX, which processes only once at 13:00 UTC every day.
Privacy & security features comparison
Both the exchanges follow industry best practices to ensure security and stability in their platform.
Speaking of BitMEX, it uses a multi-sig deposit & withdrawal scheme for wallet security, Amazon Web Service’s world-class security systems for system security, exchange platform coded in kdb+ for ensuring platform stability, and secure channel for communications. Internally, it has multiple forms of authentication for system access.
Although, in the past, BitMEX had an incidence of a security lapse when accidentally it leaked all their customer’s data online.
ByBit stores 100% of the user’s fund in a multi-sig cold wallet, and only a small portion of its own fund is kept in the hot wallet to support the trading operations. Apart from this, it uses 2FA for user access and encrypted communication channels to prevent phishing attacks, IP whitelisting, and many more.
Regarding the privacy of users, both exchanges do not require their users to complete KYC verification when creating an account.
Customer support comparison
BitMEX primarily offers email-based customer support and has no live chat feature on its platform. However, the response time is slow, ranging from a few couples of minutes to hours. It also has a presence on Twitter and Reddit, where you can reach them for any query.
ByBit has a pretty good customer support service, with both email-based and live chat support. It also uses many different social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, Telegram, etc.
Both the exchanges have a detailed FAQ page explaining all their product features and functionalities.
ByBit Offer: Get upto $30,030 Bonus on your First Deposit using this link to sign up. Deposit More to Get More Bonus. Simple!! |
Conclusion
The choice between the two is a very difficult one. For me, when selecting an exchange, I always give preference to the one that offers a superior trading experience and better customer service.
BitMEX might have scored higher on liquidity and the number of trading pair factors, but ByBit ticks all those boxes, which is important for having a seamless trading experience.
And, in this highly competitive and fast-paced trading environment, ByBit has proved its mettle and has emerged as one of the most trusted exchange platforms.
If you want to mention any points or share your experience with both the exchanges, write it in the comment box below.
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