What is Bitget?
Bitget is a cryptocurrency exchange that supports over 250 spot trading pairs and derivatives trading, along with multiple other features which we will be diving into throughout this article. Bitget has been enjoying increasing adoption and rapid growth as they have found a niche in the market, attracting traders who are interested in innovative features like strategic trading and copy trading.
The first thing that caught my eye was the platform’s interesting motto, “Better Trading, Better Life,” a bold claim that I intend to find out if they live up to. Bitget was established in 2018, making them one of the newer entries into the crypto space, and provides customers with a way to purchase cryptocurrencies with an impressive 42 different fiat currencies across different payment partners such as Simplex, Banxa and others.
The exchange is located in Singapore and boasts a user base of over 2 million users located all over the world. One thing Bitget has done very well and prioritized is focusing on the importance of keeping global regulators happy. They have obtained multiple licenses, leading to Bitget being a safe and solid exchange choice for users located in most countries.
Bitget has an approximate daily trading volume of $365 million, though this peaked at around 10 billion during the bull run, and customers can rest easy knowing that the platform follows industry-leading security best practices. Bitget is currently ranked #53 on CoinMarketCap for trading volume, though they were at one time ranked in the top 5 for futures trading volume.
The exchange has announced some pretty impressive partnerships and sponsorships as they expand its marketing efforts, such as the sponsorship of Italy’s oldest and most established football club, Juventus F.C. Bitget has also partnered with the PGL Major as its official eSports crypto partner, and in 2022, the platform went on to partner with Turkey’s leading football club, Galatasaray F.C.
Key Features
When I first heard of Bitget I thought, “oh great, another third-tier exchange,” assuming that it was going to be no different than the hundreds of other copy-cat trading exchanges out there.
Then I noticed the lack of trading volume and low ranking on CMC and thought, “is Bitget even worth reviewing?” After all, we already have fantastic exchanges like FTX, Binance, Kraken, OKX and SwissBorg, do we need another one?
Despite the fact that I hadn’t been familiar with the platform, I was surprised to hear that it ranked as a top 5 exchange in terms of average daily futures trading volume on CoinGecko, reached “unicorn status” with a valuation of $1 billion, and reached a 24hr trading volume of over $10 billion according to their site. Then I thought, well, this “little exchange,” isn’t so little, and they have been quietly building behind the scenes and offer innovative features not found anywhere else. I knew it deserved a second look.
After looking further into the platform, I thought that there may be something more here as they seem to understand that in order to compete in this highly competitive industry, they need to offer a seamless product and be able to fulfil a need in the market.
I feel that Bitget may be doing just that. Don’t let the lack of media attention, YouTube schillers and advertising dissuade you, just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, Bitget is building a strong foundation that will be easy to expand upon if they play their cards right.
Spot Trading
Bitget offers a pretty decent selection of over 200 pairs available for spot trading. It is interesting to note that Bitget does not offer margin trading for spot pairs but does offer up to 100x leverage on futures trading which we will cover later on.
Anyone who has used other crypto trading platforms will have no issues navigating the spot trading screen. It is well laid out and intuitive, and I found the order execution lightning fast which is important to avoid issues like slippage.
The charting screen is powered by TradingView, which was the path chosen by many popular crypto traders, and for good reason. TradingView is one of the most advanced and popular charting platforms in the world and meets the needs of nearly any trader from beginner to advanced. By leveraging TradingView, traders can conduct all their technical analysis and place their trades on one convenient screen directly on the platform, no need to switch from trading platform to charting platform.
Bitget Futures Trading
For advanced traders, Bitget offers USDT-M Futures, USDT-M Demo, Coin-M Futures, Coin-M Futures Demo, USDC Futures, and Simulated USDC Futures.
Leverage up to 100x is available for futures trading with the range depending on the pair. The following position modes are available:
- Cross- All available funds in the futures account can be used as margin to share risks, making it more resilient to losses
- Isolated- The risk of each position will be calculated independently.
As for order types, traders can select the following options:
- Limit
- Market
- Trailing Stop
- Trigger- via trigger or post only
The futures charting screen is also powered by TradingView, so you don’t need to worry about the lack of features and functions here. One thing I really like about the trading platform is that it is easy to access the margin ratio, account information, Futures information, and analytics all neatly tucked away on the side of the screen:
Bitget Launchpad
If you guys have seen my other articles, you will know that I am a big fan of launchpads like the one found on Binance and decentralized ones like those on the Trader Joe DEX, the Enjinstarter launchpad, and TrustSwap
Launchpads provide the average trader/investor with the ability to get early access to projects, something that was traditionally only available to VC firms, and those with deep pockets and friends in high spaces.
Launchpads can be very lucrative. Think of the all-time highs seen by some of your favourite tokens at the height of the bull run, now imagine you purchased the token at a fraction of its initial price. Those thousands of percentage gains are what moonbag hodlers dream of.
Bitget Copy Trading
TradFi platforms like eToro, Avatrade and Zulu Trade have catapulted copy and social trading into the popularity spotlight and have created what has become a very desirable feature for traders and investors.
There aren’t many crypto exchanges that offer copy trading yet, Gate.io is one of the best ones I’ve come across but Bitget is making big moves in this space as well.
Here users can copy the trades of high-performing traders. I am a big fan of copy trading as it can be massively beneficial on multiple levels for a variety of traders:
- Beginner traders who are learning the craft can study the trades and learn from more experienced traders while earning an income, almost like an apprentice would learn from an experienced craftsman.
- Experienced traders who want a side income. There are too many assets for one person to trade and more charts than one person can watch, why not share the workload?
- Traders looking to diversify. If a trader has studied Bitcoin and is an expert in Bitcoin trading, they can focus on that and find a trader who specializes in Ethereum’s habits, trends, and price movements and copy their ETH trades.
- Experienced traders can share their strategies and earn a profit from their followers. As they are trading anyway, why not earn the extra income by allowing others to copy you?
- Traders who are just looking for easy hands-off income can just sit back and copy the pros.
Bitget Quanto Swap Contracts
This is an interesting feature that is exclusive to Bitget. This feature allows users to use various crypto assets as collateral and then trade crypto on margin using a variety of crypto trading pairs.
The main benefit of this is that it allows traders to retain the charges for the conversion of coins to coins and allows them to collect profits earned from the higher value of coins.
Bitget Earn
The ability to earn passive income on your crypto holdings has become a cornerstone of our industry and most of the major exchanges offer some sort of an earn section.
And here is my first major negative criticism against the platform. Does the image above look a bit bare to you? Me too. The earn section only supports the BGB token at this time and there are only two products available, both of which are sold out.
Compare this to platforms like Binance which have hundreds of different earn products ranging from low to high risk for hundreds of different assets.
Bitget has a lot of development to do here if they want to compete with just about every other crypto platform which have more robust earn features. This certainly would not be my platform of choice if earning APY on a plethora of tokens was my primary interest.
Bitget Fees
Bitget does not charge fees for depositing crypto but expect fees ranging from 2-8% charged by their purchasing partners if you plan on purchasing crypto on the platform. Those fees are very high which is why I recommend using another exchange that supports bank deposits and withdrawals for purchasing, then simply sending crypto to your Bitget account for trading.
As for trading fees, Bitget takes a different approach to the tier structure utilized by most exchanges:
- Spot: Fixed fee of 0.1% for maker and taker
- Futures: 0.02% maker/0.06% taker
Trading fees can be reduced up to 20% for traders who choose to pay fees with the platform’s BGB token.
Crypto withdrawal fees vary depending on the asset and network of choice, you can find the entire breakdown of fees on the Bitget Fees Page.
For users looking to get into copy trading, there are no extra fees to get involved, but 10% of any profits made will go to the trader who they chose to follow.
Security
Bitget is a licensed and secure platform, holding multiple licenses and regulations around the world which checks the most important box for many traders.
On top of that, Bitget follows industry best practices and keeps the majority of its funds offline in cold wallets and away from the attempts of hackers. Unfortunately, they do not disclose what percentage of the funds are kept in cold storage, some transparency would be nice here as most exchanges keep 90-98% of funds safely stored which is what users like to see.
Bitget claims that it has received 12 A+ ratings from SSL Labs, which would be impressive, though I could not find any way to verify this. The exchange is backed by and partnered with Qingsong Cloud Security, Armors, HEAP, and Suntwin Technology.
Bitget Exchange Platform Design and Usability
Both the web and mobile platform proved to be well designed and laid out, simple to navigate, with a good user interface and experience. I mentioned that this platform is not very beginner friendly, but that is due to the nature of the advanced trading options and complex interfaces that are required to meet the needs of advanced traders.
For anyone familiar with trading platforms, they will find this platform a breeze to use and beginners will quickly get the hang of it I’m sure.
As the trading interface itself leverages TradingView, it is appropriate for any skill level and requirement of trader. I also really like that the exchange interface is customizable, something not supported by all exchanges. Traders can move and resize screens to fit their preferences, and there is a light and dark mode available.
Bitget Token (BGB): Uses and Performance
BGB token is the platform’s native utility token. It is an ERC20 token that can be used to reduce trading fees on the platform, be staked for 6% APR, and used to enable social trading. Here are some of the use cases for the token:
- Fee deduction –15% to 20% discount on trading fees.
- Contract Margin -BGB token can be used as a contract margin in contract trading.
- Reward tokens for Trade-to-Earn programs.
- Utilizing BGB margins on the Coin Margined futures lets the users take a 15% discount on the fees.
- Traders can use the Bitget token to secure potential partnership opportunities and take advantage of some Launchpad features.
The team has big plans for the token and states that it will be the backbone of a seamless Web3-ecosystem for all user’s holdings, community tokens, NFTs, DeFi applications and more.
Bottom Line
Bitget is a robust exchange that offers more than just trading. The exchange has been growing in popularity thanks to the advanced trading interface and innovative features like copy and strategic trading and is drawing those interested in KYC-free trading.
In the intro, I mentioned their motto about better trading leading to a better life and said I’ll investigate to see if they live up to that motto. While the concept of a “better life,” is very subjective, the fact that Biget provides multiple ways to earn and trade passively, while also allowing privacy hawks to get involved, I would have to say they live up to the motto.
