Bitfinex Review 2025
Bitfinex is a long-standing, influential cryptocurrency exchange that is well-known for its trading tools and favorable fees. Based in Hong Kong and operating since 2012, it has a strong support base, but is no stranger to controversy. Read on to explore an exhaustive review of this exchange and find out about its occasionally chequered past.
Bitfinex Review Summary
Bitfinex is a comprehensive cryptocurrency exchange with a somewhat murky past including hacks and allegations. Despite its mishaps, however, the exchange is a well-rounded one, amply suited to advanced traders. It supplies the option for margin trading and lending, but has certain restrictions in place; for instance, it doesn’t accept US customers.
What Is Bitfinex?
An established cryptocurrency exchange with multiple functions, Bitfinex started off by only offering services centered around Bitcoin, particularly P2P margin lending. However, the company’s repertoire was soon extended to a wide number of cryptocurrencies. Bitfinex is a strong choice for many investors because of its reasonable fees. In fact, a trade will only set you back around 0.20%. In addition to this, it provides a commendable list of trading services, including advanced trading and investing tools. For example, newcomers to the crypto sphere can start their journey on Bitfinex by trying out its paper trading tool, which serves as a great introduction to the world of crypto investing. Aside from this, the platform presents staking and lending options, as well as a good number of features entered into below. The combination of these two qualities has kept the exchange near the top spot when it comes to crypto trading brands. That said, it has also come under fire for a number of issues.
Bitfinex’s past challenges mainly relate to a hacking which took place in 2016, with a significant amount of the funds being stolen. Although a good portion of these Bitcoins were very recently returned to the exchange, the damage caused to the brand at the time was substantial. The exchange was accused of falsifying the amount of its Tether reserves, which lost investors money. Though some of the harm done has since been repaired, the crypto exchange’s reputation still took a beating. It also resulted in clients from the US and US dollars no longer being accepted by the platform, after a major US-based bank froze its assets. Still, the company managed to bounce back after these scandals, thanks to a combination of efficiency and versatility, and is still going strong.
Bitfinex Pros and Cons
- Low trading fees
- Advanced trading features
- Deep liquidity and access to leverage
- Support for over 400 trading pairs
- Accepts USD, EUR, GBP, JPY and CNH
- Platform’s advanced features may be overwhelming for new users
- Bitfinex has faced security breaches and regulatory issues in the past
- Not available in the US
Bitfinex Key Features:
- Advanced Trading Interface– Customizable interface with powerful charting and trading tools.
- Wide Range of Order Types– Including market order, limit, stop, trailing stop, fill or kill, and more.
- Margin Trading– Up to 10x leverage.
- Derivatives Trading– Perpetual swaps and futures contracts available.
The above are the principle points relating to Bitfinex. Take a look at the rest of the review if you’d like to know more about this brand.
Bitfinex Review: Overview
Bitfinex was founded in the British Virgin Islands in 2012 by iFinex inc and is headquartered in Hong Kong. Initially, the company was a go-to P2P margin lending platform for just Bitcoin, but its services were then extended to other coins. Some of the founders and management of iFinex inc. have also had dealings with Tether, the US pegged Stablecoin.
Bitfinex Services
Bitfinex offers its customers a variety of services. Among these, you’ll find that it operates as an advanced trading platform and offers derivatives trading as well as providing margin trading and funding.
Advanced Trading Platform
Bitfinex offers the most liquid order book in the world. High volume is important for traders, as it ensures a low spread, which determines the difference between the best bid and ask prices.
The brand features an advanced, customizable GUI, over 50 trading pairs (e.g. BTC/ETH), and plentiful order types, such as limit, market, stop, stop-limit, trailing stop, fill or kill, and scaled orders.
Not only is Bitfinex’s trading platform interface customizable; you can also get access to advanced charting functionality and API access. These features combine to make it a popular exchange with more experienced cryptocurrency traders.
Margin Trading and Funding
On Bitfinex, users can borrow and trade with up to 3.3x leverage through the site’s P2P (Peer to Peer) margin trading platform. Borrowing terms (amount, duration and interest) can either be determined by the user themselves or automatically, through Bitfinex.
On the other hand, cryptocurrency owners have the possibility to lend their funds securely to traders in order to earn interest on them. Users can offer funding across a wide range of currencies & assets, at the rate and duration of their choice.
Warning: Margin trading amplifies both upside and downside risk and is not recommended for new traders. Margin funding locks your funds on Bitfinex for the duration of the loan.
Over The Counter Services
For those who wish to trade major amounts ($100,000+) of cryptocurrency privately, Bitfinex provides an over-the-counter trading facility. This service matches, and presumably secures major private deals.
Derivatives Trading
Bitfinex offers the trading of derivatives contracts, which give traders the ability to speculate on the price of an asset, without buying or selling it outright. Traders simply need to collateralize their derivatives account with USDT in order to trade.
Staking and Lending
Lastly, Bitfinex also offers a staking and lending service. This allows users to stake or lend their cryptocurrency holdings in an easy way, without needing to have the technical knowledge or operate staking software.
Bitfinex Difficulties
It’s no secret that Bitfinex has experienced a number of setbacks. In 2015 the exchange was hacked for the first time, and 1500 Bitcoins were stolen.
The successive April 2016 theft of nearly 120,000 BTC from Bitfinex stands as the second-largest Bitcoin heist in history, dwarfed only by the loss of around 750,000 BTC by Mt. Gox. The perpetrators, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, were sentenced to five years and eighteen months respectively for stealing and laundering the stolen Bitcoins.
The key difference between the Gox and Bitfinex incidents is that the latter exchange made its clients whole. Although not all accounts were affected, Bitfinex made the decision to spread the loss among all its clients. All users took 36% “haircuts” on their account values.
One year later, all clients were fully compensated—at least those who’d held their BFX tokens, which represented IOUs from Bitfinex.
The problems didn’t end there for Bitfinex. In April of 2017, Bitfinex’s bank accounts were frozen by its correspondent bank, Wells Fargo.
This situation persisted for weeks, leading to client complaints and all kinds of distortions in Bitfinex’s pricing. Normal service was eventually restored—although US dollars and US customers are no longer accepted by Bitfinex as a result of these banking headaches.
More recently, it was revealed that Bitfinex lost access to $850 million worth of their customer funds, due to one of their payment processors – Crypto Capital – having funds seized by Poland, Portugal and the USA.
Currencies and Payment Methods
Bitfinex accepts fiat deposits in EUR, JPY, GBP, and USD. Fiat deposits can be made through a wire transfer only. Bitfinex also supports Tether (USDT), the quasi-fiat token unofficially pegged to the US dollar’s price.
Free deposits and fairly cheap withdrawals are available for Bitcoin Litecoin, Ethereum, Zcash, Monero, Dash, Ripple, Iota, EOS, and an additional 80+ assets.
Bitfinex requires verification for Tether usage and expedited cryptocurrency withdrawals. However, the exchange remains perfectly usable for those who only wish to provide an email address. Bitfinex also offers direct access via a Tor hidden service.
Top 30 Coins Traded on Bitfinex
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Tether (USDT)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- LEO Token (LEO)
- Cardano (ADA)
- Avalanche (AVAX)
- XRP (XRP)
- Solana (SOL)
- IOTA (IOTA)
- Bitcoin Cash (BCHN)
- USD Coin (USDC)
- Litecoin (LTC)
- Arbitrum (ARB)
- Dogecoin (DOGE)
- ZeroDAO (ZRO)
- Monero (XMR)
- Fantom (FTM)
- zkSync (ZK)
- CHEX Token (CHEX)
- EOS (EOS)
- Shiba Inu (SHIB)
- Polkadot (DOT)
- Curve DAO Token (CRV)
- Atheios (ATH)
- Tap (XTP)
- Stellar (XLM)
- TRON (TRX)
- Algorand (ALGO)
- Dash (DASH)
- Aptos (APT)
- HTX DAO (HT)
Bitfinex Fees
Bitfinex utilizes a taker-maker fee model where people who fulfill existing orders are considered takers, while traders that place new limit orders are considered makers.
Fees start from 0.2% for takers and can drop as low as 0% for large maker orders. There is no trading fee for large orders conducted through the OTC desk.
Bank wires have a 0.1% deposit and withdrawal fee, which can reach up to 1% if you’re looking for an expedited withdrawal.
Cryptocurrency deposits are generally free of charge while withdrawals include a small fee, depending on the currency withdrawn.
For the complete fee schedule including margin trading fees see this page.
Supported Countries
After looking hard at the ToS and FAQs, the only country explicitly excluded from using the services is the United States of America.
Using Bitfinex’s ‘basic’ services e.g. the exchange, margin trades & digital assets deposits /withdrawals requires only a valid email address, so effectively they’re available worldwide – at least from the company’s end (of course you are responsible to follow your country’s legislation on the subject).
As for the more advanced levels, a deeper KYC process including a ‘proof of address’ is required. However, since the list of available countries is nowhere to be found on their site, you’ll only be able to tell whether you’re eligible or not once you’ll go through their verification process.
Customer Support and Reviews
Bitfinex supplies its users with an extensive knowledge base and a ticket based support center. Its average TrustPilot score shows that it’s doing a relatively good job in maintaining user satisfaction (most exchanges receive a “poor” rating).
However, there has been a lot of criticism about the exchange throughout the years, mainly about the transparency of their business and their close relation to the stablecoin Tether. It always feels as if they are hiding something without the ability to actually prove it.
On April 24th, 2018 Bitfinex was accused by New York’s attorney general’s office of an $850 million coverup stating:
“Our investigation has determined that the operators of the ‘Bitfinex’ trading platform, who also control the ‘tether’ virtual currency, have engaged in a coverup to hide the apparent loss of $850 million of co-mingled client and corporate funds”
Bitfinex has denied the claims, sending an open letter to its users a day after, saying that the attorney general’s office letter is filled with inaccuracies and false assertions.
Bitfinex vs. Other Exchanges
Both Bitfinex and Binance support an impressive amount of cryptocurrencies. However, Bitfinex’s interface is much more advanced (and confusing) than Binance’s. In contrast, newer crypto exchanges such as Margex usually make use of accessible interfaces, suitable for beginners as well as veteran investors. Margex also distinguishes itself by offering advanced charting tools powered by TradingView.
When it comes to reputation, while Binance has been around only since 2017, it still maintains a much better standing in the community due to its relatively clean past.
Bitfinex’s past hacks, accusations and connection to Tether tend to raise some concerns in the Bitcoin community. Fees are generally lower on Binance, with a fixed 0.1% fee as opposed to the taker-maker fee Bitfinex uses.
So overall, unless you’re looking for advanced features, it seems that Binance is probably a better choice than Bitfinex. You can read my complete Binance review here.
Conclusion – Is Bitfinex Legit?
If you’re a non-US advanced trader or looking to trade large sums, then Bitfinex is definitely an option. However, if you’re new to cryptocurrency and looking to get your first coins, Bitfinex is not for you.
The lack of easy deposit methods combined with the complicated interface will certainly take time to master and will make costly mistakes more likely. Newcomers are advised to stick with a simpler exchange that offers a variety of familiar payment options (e.g. Coinmama, CEX).
On the other hand, if you’re an experienced cryptocurrency trader, Bitfinex likely offers everything you’ll need and more. The high cryptocurrency liquidity combined with advanced features such as margin funding, leverage, and multiple order types makes it a great trading platform.
For those worried about the safety of their funds due to past hacks, there’s not a lot to say other than it seems that until today Bitfinex has made it a priority to reimburse their customers in such cases.
Also, some may argue that the multiple hacks have made the platform much more resistant to future attacks.
Have you used Bitfinex yourself? I’d love to hear your experience in the comment section below.
FAQs
Can You Trust Bitfinex?
Is the Bitfinex App Safe?
How to Withdraw Money from Bitfinex?
Is Bitfinex Good for Beginners?
What Are the Trading Fees on Bitfinex?
Does Bitfinex Support Fiat Deposits?
Are There Staking Options on Bitfinex?
Bitfinex
Pros
- Great for experienced traders
- High liquidity
- Reasonable fees
Cons
- Confusing for newbies
- Troubled history
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I have been trying for over a month to withdraw my money and I don’t think that I will ever get it! The first time I tried they at least ask me the amount and where it should be deposited and I gave them the information and they said that it had to be approved by the Blockchain. I’ve tried at least a dozen times since then now they don’t even reply to me apparently my money is gone I do not know.
I’m sorry to hear about your frustrating experience, Remember to exercise caution when dealing with financial transactions online and ensure you are using reputable platforms with good customer support and security measures in place. I hope you are able to resolve the issue and recover your funds soon.