FTX Review

FTX is a new derivatives exchange founded in 2018. It offers a very high number of exclusive trading pairs allowing it to go beyond the normal product offerings you may observe on the market. Despite FTX being founded recently, it’s managed to partner and collaborate with bigger brands within the industry such as Paxos PAX, Bitfinex, Alameda Research Ltd, Circle USDC and others.

Sam Bankman-Fried is the CEO and founder of FTX and has experience as a trader in the international ETF desk of Jane Street Capital. Gary Wang is the CTO with experience as a software engineer at Google before co-founding Alameda and FTX with Sam Fried. The team behind the trading platform consists of young and ambitious people ready to create an advanced trading platform suitable for both experienced traders and newcomers to high-risk leverage trading.

FTX Features Review

FTX Security Review

FTX lacks a clear explanation of its security measures on its website. Considering how other competitors such as Bybit and Bitmex put maximum effort in explaining their security measures thoroughly, FTX is lagging behind. Although this may seem negative to some people, the exchange hasn’t been hacked for the time being. When it comes to user account security, FTX has a two-factor authentication and a password for withdrawals. 

Where is FTX Located?

FTX headquarters are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, West Coast, United States. The exchange is owned by FTX Trading LTC, registered in Antigua and Barbuda. 

Deposits and Withdrawals

In regards to deposits and withdrawals, FTX offers a much wider variety of options ranging from major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum to various low market cap altcoins and fiat currencies. Compared to other competitors, within the same product offering category, FTX does a better job at providing both deposit and withdrawal options.

Cryptocurrencies available for deposits and withdrawals:

• BTC
• ETH
• BCH
• LTC
• BNB
• and more

Deposits and withdrawals in various fiat currencies can be made through Bank Transfers, SEPA, Credit and Debit cards. 

Fiat currencies available for deposits and withdrawals:

• USD
• EUR
• GBP
• AUD
• HKD
• SGD
• ZAR
• CAD
• CHF

Depending on your verification level, there are withdrawal restrictions. Without completing the KYC procedure, you can withdraw a total of 1 000 USD in a lifetime. If you decide to complete the verification process, the imposed limits will be lifted. Having a level 1 account will allow you to request withdrawals within the range of 2 000 to 9 000 USD per day. Level 2 allows you to make unlimited crypto deposits and withdrawals. Level 3 allows for fiat deposits and withdrawals.

Trading Instruments

Having a plethora of trading instruments, FTX has defined a new category in crypto trading. Possessing trading instruments such as President 2020, you can long and short trade presidential candidates for the US, with up to 101x leverage, which is a highly controversial product for a derivatives exchange as a whole. 

Options trading and perpetual futures contracts with up to 101x are also available on most of the pairs. There are also leveraged tokens that are unique to the market and found only on FTX, as a part of the list containing such risky products. 

Trading instruments on FTX:

• Perpetual Contract Trading with up to 101x (Futures)
• Leveraged Tokens
• Options Trading
• OTC Trading (Over-The-Counter) 
• Spot Trading

FTX Order Types

The platform did a tremendously good job when it comes to assembling a package of possible advanced order types.

Available Order Types on FTX:

• Limit
• Market
• Stop-Market
• Stop-Limit
• Trailing-Stop
• Take-Profit
• Take Profit Limit

Additional sub-order options:

• Reduce Only
• Post Only
• Immediate or Cancel

User Interface

FTX’s user interface is effective, allowing full customization of all the tabs in any order to your liking. Recently FTX introduced a redesign of their trading interface which is miles better than the old one. Now everything is more clear, easier to use especially from the perspective of new users that may be just starting with leverage trading.

There are multiple interface color options, which give the user interface a completely different look and feel. On the left side, you will find the chart with the order book, market trades, and the order tabs on the right. The interface does a good job and now after the design is ready to compete with other trading platforms of high quality like Bybit and PrimeXBT.

Mobile App

FTX has a mobile app for both Android and iOS, allowing you to interact with all of the available instruments on the go. The mobile app is fairly responsive, however, upon testing it with older phone models running on older versions of Android and iOS, we’ve noticed some hiccups in performance. Nonetheless, it does a good job by providing access to all trading tools available on the native desktop platform. 

FTX Trading Fees

The fees on FTX are low and suitable for high-frequency trading. The base Maker fee is 0.02% and the base Taker fee is 0.07%. There’s a volume-based fee structure in place, meaning you can lower the fees to 0.01% for Maker and 0.04% for Taker if you have traded over $35 million within the last 30 days.

The fees can be reduced even further if users decide to hold the native token of the platform – FTT. Again, this is a tiered system where the higher the proportion of FTT token you hold, the lower the fees will be. For example, if you hold $100 worth of the FTT token, the discount is 3% of the trading fees and if you hold $5 million of the FTT token, the discount is 60%.

The broker does not have deposit or withdrawal fees. Leverage tokens have a creation and redemption fees of 0.10% and a daily management fee of 0.03%. If you’re using a leverage of 50x when opening a trade, the fees are increased by 0.02% and if 100x is used – the fees also grow by 0.03%, financing the insurance fund.

Restricted Countries

FTX fully restricts users from US, Cuba, Crimea, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Antigua and Barbuda to open corporate and/or personal accounts on the platform.

Additional restrictions for specific contracts on the platform:

Presidential and Oil contracts have stricter restrictions prohibiting citizens of US, Canada, EU, Singapore, UAE, mainland China, Hong Kong, Turkey and Cambodia from trading those specific products on the platform.

FTX Quant Zone

Quant Zone is one of a kind instrument for trading platforms of this type. Quant Zone offers traders the opportunity to develop strategies for automated trading. Profiting from the trading strategy will be possible when the product is fully released through earning fees from that the strategy is used by other users. If executed correctly, this product has a big potential that can lead to attracting a low of new users to the platform.

Volume monitor

FTX has its own global volume monitor where you can observe the daily trading volumes of the crypto exchanges. This is a nice addition, where you can get a perspective on where FTX and other trading platforms stand. Remember that 90% of the reported volume is most likely fake. 

Conclusion 

FTX is a controversial exchange, it offers illogical trading instruments, besides the usual ones. Offering innovation often comes with a high risk as it can be interesting at first sight, and the potential gains can be large, but with multiplied risk. Nevertheless, new innovative trading pairs and options are always welcome and should serve as a wake-up call for new exchanges coming to the industry. 

FTX currently lacks transparency in its security practices, as high security combined with transparency is a must. If you are looking for new and different trading pairs that offer unique trading opportunities, FTX is a platform to try.

FTX is a new derivatives trading platform that came out in 2018. This new trading platform offers innovative and high-risk trading products not found on other similar trading platforms.

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