BitMart
BitMart Review 2023: An Expert's Comprehensive Analysis
3.5
3
3
4.25
3.75
Overview
General
Fees
Customer service
Requirements & Accessibility
Pros
Cons
Key Takeaways
Origins
Introduction
For those who live in the Telegram trenches of DeFi, BitMart is well known – mainly due to the scammers who pretend to be listing agents before stealing the ‘listing’ fee.
The actual exchange itself is a popular and well-known one, with a large selection of cryptocurrencies and a huge coverage worldwide.
But is it as legitimate as other exchanges, or are ‘fake’ agents just one of many more issues? Join CoinScan as we jump in and find out!?
History
Bitmart was founded and launched by Sheldon Xia during the 2017 bullrun and is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, with branch offices in New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea.
Xia’s aim was apparently to provide streamlined and effective digital asset trading and investment services to a global customer base, as well as an incubator to offer technical, financial, and marketing solutions for traditional businesses.
During and since launch the exchange has managed to seed a total of $13.7 million USD from a number of undisclosed Venture Capital firms, with a portion of that financing to launch its own BitMart Token (BMX) in mid 2018.
The native asset provides holders with trading discounts and other benefits on the exchange.
As BitMart has grown in the subsequent years, it has continued to add new features to create a better experience for its users, such as: staking; lending; margin, contract, and derivatives trading; OTC and C2C trading; and cross-chain swaps, as well as adding rapidly to its staffing numbers, (which now total 165).
In addition, the site launched various subsidiaries to cater to the needs of different user groups, such as Enterprise Solutions for institutional investors and Business Solutions for partners worldwide.
It also formed partnerships with heavy-hitters in the industry such as Zilliqa, Fantom, Tron and Ethereum Classic, while expanding to provide its services in Vietnam, Thailand, South Africa and Mauritius – which are all notoriously difficult marketplaces to penetrate.
Things were going well for the exchange until December 2021, when the company suffered a security breach that saw over $196 million dollars-worth of assets stolen from the platform after private keys for the company were compromised.
The exchange vowed that it would pay everyone back what was lost, but a month later people were still complaining that they hadn’t received reimbursement, and to date it remains unclear as to whether all the affected users were made whole.
User Experience
Ease of Use and Design
The desktop site is well designed, with a vivid white and turquoise color scheme that’s bold yet easy on the eyes.
Everything is laid out extremely well, with every relevant section easy to access from the overhead menu, and its current promotions being housed in the center of the screen through clickable hyperlinked images.
That said, users could be forgiven for thinking that they were looking at the carbon copy of Binance with a different color scheme, as its layout and even fonts are strikingly similar.
Considering both sites were launched in 2017, it's tough to say which exchange deserves a slap on the wrists. Either way it looks good.
Usage and Popularity
BitMart is well-known in the Telegram and Discord subcultures of the Decentralized Finance space – largely considered the wild-west of investment – due to being littered with smaller market cap tokens and prevalent scams.
Getting listed on the exchange is considered a major milestone for projects at this level of the industry, as although it accepts more new tokens than many of its contemporaries, it is still fairly discerning.
Currently, there are 647 coins and 726 trading pairs available on the exchange, with all the usual suspects such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tron being included, as well as several lesser-known tokens.
The site is popular in the broader sense too – with over 9 million users worldwide in over 180 countries – even including the US, which is notoriously difficult to gain access to, due to its complex laws around finance, although it limits some features such as earning and lending.
Indeed, the site produces some impressive daily volume figures, despite the DeFi sector being in probably the most brutally long crypto winter it has seen since the inception of digital assets, with its 24h volume being reported at a touch over $625,719,376. The current most active trading pair is ETH/USDC with a 24h volume of $20,388,690.73.
BitMart also (like most exchanges) has a counterpart mobile application to accompany its desktop site, so that users can easily trade on the go.
However, it isn’t overly popular from a review point, with many people complaining about its poor user interface and complaining about the exchange itself (more on that later).
Customer support
This is where things start to go a bit wrong for BitMart.
Firstly, unlike most cryptocurrency exchanges there is phone support – which is surprising since locating Bigfoot is easier than discovering a call center number.
However, the issue is that most people can’t ever seem to get through, or have to hold for extended periods of time.
It also has a live 24/7 chat service, but again many reviews state that they waited more than fifteen minutes per message when communicating with a live agent (and some even go as far to say that they were blocked by the individual when they couldn’t give an adequate answer – yikes!).
Others say that they didn’t get a response at all, effectively leaving them stuck.
Aside from the problematic phone number and live 24/7 chat, users can access the dedicated FAQ section, which purports to offer a solution to most problems an individual will face.
In reality the offerings are pretty generic content that can be found on most site, and would effectively be useless if someone was having an immediate issue, such as their account being unlawfully accessed, or their funds going missing.
Lastly, there is an email address that customers can access ([email protected]) but reports say that even with its projected response time of up to 3 days, many have waited twice as long, or not even gotten a response at all.
Overall it seems that the site has a long way to go to improve this fundamental part of its exchange to bring it up to the quality of the rest of the site.
Fees and Promotions
Fees
BitMart has a variety of charges for the services it provides, and utilizes a tiered fee structure, where users with higher trading volumes (based on trading volume over a 30-day period in BTC) pay lower fees according to a complex table that ranges from Level 1 through 9 and then onto a Pro level from 1 to 6.
In addition Spot trades are broken down into A and B class assets, which have different maker and taker fees.
However, without the discount the fees are pretty heavy considering many exchanges have gotten their maker and taker fees down to 0.15 and even 0.1%.
There are more fee structures for Futures and Margin Trading, and it gets a bit complex, however, there is a convenient link to the full fees breakdown here.
Lastly in terms of deposits there is no fee for deposits of either fiat (through partner Simplex) or cryptocurrency, although for the former, bank charges may apply, and the latter will be subject to gas and network fees.
For withdrawals, there is a flat rate of 0.0005BTC on Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies vary – the site does also charge for fiat withdrawals too, and it can be up to $50 depending on the method.
Comparison
BitMart and Bybit are both esteemed players in the cryptocurrency trading ecosystem, offering users platforms to engage with digital assets.
They emphasize robust security infrastructures, incorporating features such as cold storage, encryption protocols, and two-factor authentication to protect users' funds and data. As modern trading platforms, both are built with user-centric interfaces and tools designed to enhance the trading experience, catering to a range of trader expertise levels, from novices to professionals.
While BitMart and Bybit operate in the same space, their primary offerings and focus differ considerably.
BitMart is a comprehensive cryptocurrency exchange that offers spot trading for a wide variety of cryptocurrencies. Its platform caters to users looking to engage in traditional buy-and-hold strategies, as well as those looking for more active trading.
Bybit, on the other hand, is more specialized, emphasizing derivatives trading, especially cryptocurrency perpetual contracts. It's tailored primarily for traders interested in leveraged trading, offering high leverage ratios that can amplify both profits and risks.
This distinction in offerings means they cater to slightly different audiences within the broader crypto trading community.
Safety Essentials
Security
It goes without saying that BitMart’s security needed a bit of beefing up after the hack which cost it almost $200 million in its user’s assets. Since then the company promises that it has put time, money, and effort into ensuring that the site cannot be exploited again.
These include, advanced protection against DDOS attacks, automatic backup of the platform’s database, and SSL-secured (HTTPS) protection.
The company itself employs an "advanced risk control system," operating a hybrid hot and cold wallet system and deploying multi-signature technologies, so that no one person has access to all funds.
Due to the fact that it was a hot wallet that was exploited for the theft of funds, BitMart now apparently keeps less than 0.5% of its trader’s assets in the hot wallet to help cover daily trading, with the other 99% stored in offline cold wallets that are almost impossible to penetrate, and keep user assets safe.
For the site’s users, although customers don't have to perform a KYC to access the base platform, if they want to be able to take advantage of its numerous features, such as spot trading, futures trading, earning, staking features, and increase to higher deposits and withdrawal limits (so basically everything), they will have to go through the KYC and AML process – which includes providing ID and utility bill / bank statements for address verification.
However, users are well protected from their own end once they are set up, as the platform incorporates two-factor authentication, confirmation codes sent to phones for withdrawals, biometric logins (such as fingerprint or face scan), and password recovery.
Seems like BitMart learned their lesson well.
Controversy
Unfortunately, controversy and scandal are frequent in the DeFi space, and something that both security companies and policing agencies are doing their utmost to try and fix.
However, until that happens, users need to try and protect themselves and keep a vigilant eye on happenings within the space to make sure they don’t fall victim themselves.
When it comes to scandal, there has only been one piece of genuine controversy surrounding BitMart, and that’s the aforementioned loss of close to $200 million in user assets.
However, it seems to be a lingering problem for the company (and users) as reviews as recent as this month are from furious customers of the site who claim that they have still not received refunds for the money that was taken from them.
On all of these reviews, the company has responded with a boilerplate message, which reads:
We apologize for any inconvenience caused, please wait with patience. BitMart promises that we will not harm users’ assets. If you have any further enquiry, please do not hesitate to contact our customer service.
It’s pretty fair that waiting 13 months for a refund is being more than patient, so it's likely the message has done little to assuage the fears and anger of those still waiting, and frankly it’s not a good look for the company.
Proof of Reserves
 | $2,135,256 | |||
| $1,547,024 | |||
| $480,507 | |||
| $440,910 |
Like a magician, exchanges can make user assets disappear in a flash, which is why in the wake of the FTX collapse, many have stepped up their game and allowed anyone to publicly view where they store their user’s assets.
Unfortunately at the time of writing BitMart has no Proof of Reserves and has not released any statement suggesting that they might be in the process of doing so - which is another negative check against the company until they do.
Conclusion
BitMart appears to be a very competent exchange with a great selection of assets and a wide variety of different products and services (although its fees are a tad on the high side if no BMX is held to bring the cost down).
However, where the site has really shown a poor foundation is in its customer service, which appears to be borderline non-existent, and its lack of swift response to a financial exploit that happened over a year ago.
Also the fact that it has no Proof of Reserves at this point (whilst a recent thing) is another red flag and something that should be addressed immediately.
If BitMart is to pull itself further up the ranks and become an exchange we can recommend to users, it has a little work to do.