Cryptocurrency futures trading has soared in popularity over the last couple of years, as traders shift towards leveraged trading and betting against cryptocurrency prices.

Binance, one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, has recently become a major platform in futures markets. But just how good is their Binance Futures platform, and what can users expect when trading on it?

Read on below to learn about Binance Futures, the instruments they have available to trade and more.

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Binance Futures Review

The Binance Futures platform is an extension of its Binance Global exchange. This is available to a huge range of countries worldwide, excluding the United States.

Creating a Binance Futures account is easy, and can be done at the click of a button by anyone who has a Binance global trading account.

What are Binance Futures Contracts?

Futures contracts are financial instruments which enable traders to bet on the future price of an asset, rather than buy or sell the asset outright.

They are settled at the price of the underlying asset, at a predetermined expiry date. It is only once the contracts expire (or a trade is manually closed before expiry) that a profit is realized.

In place of purchasing the underlying asset, users stake collateral on their trades. On Binance, only Tether (USDT) is accepted as collateral.

One of the most popular aspects of futures trading is the common option of high leverage, with Binance Futures in particular offering up to 125x leverage on their BTCUSDT contracts. This high leverage option enables traders to make much larger trades than they would on regular spot markets – however with a greater risk of losing their collateral.

The trading experience

The trading interface is very similar to the original Binance trading experience. This is with the exception of a few extra bells and whistles, which are specific to leveraged trading. These include adjustment controls for the leverage level, the display of profit or loss values, as well as the margin ratio and balance.

Binance Futures trading can be performed via their Binance Exchange mobile app, which is available on both the Google Play and Apple app stores.

Trading Instruments

Binance Futures has one of the largest varieties of futures contracts, out of all current platforms.

The most popular of these of course is the BTCUSDT perpetual swap, which tracks the price of Bitcoin as valued in USDT and has no expiry date.

All other trading instruments are also denominated in USDT. At the time this review was written, the available futures contracts include the following altcoins: ETH, XRP, BCH, EOS, LTC, TRX, ETC, LINK, XLM, ADA, XMR, DASH, ZEC, XTZ, BNB, ATOM, ONT, IOTA, BAT, VET, NEO, QTUM, IOST and THETA.

Binance Futures Background Information

Here, you can a brief history and overview of Binance Futures and Binance as a whole.

History

The Binance Futures platform went live in September 2019, with several trading pairs added through early 2020. The original Binance exchange, however, was founded in 2017 by Chinese-Canadian Changpeng Zhao.

Binance rapidly rose to prominence in 2017 thanks to a huge variety of tradable assets and competitive fees, quickly becoming one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.

Countries supported

All countries supported by Binance Global are eligible to trade on the Binance Futures platform. It should be noted that this excludes the United States, who now have their own Binance.us platform.

Restricted Countries

Binance does not accept users from countries in the following list: Afghanistan, China, the Republic of Congo, the Democractic Republic of Congo, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, South Sudan, and Sudan.

Restricted States

There are also restrictions on users from certain states in the US. These include: New York (NY), Georgia (GA), Connecticut (CT), New Mexico (NM), Hawaii (HI), and Washington (WA).

Accepted Payment Methods

The wider Binance exchange accepts deposits in all supported cryptocurrencies. They also provide the option to purchase major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, XRP, and Bitcoin Cash using a credit card via USD or EUR.

A Binance Futures account must be funded with USDT, however, which will need to be obtained on Binance spot markets or externally. Users may also choose to use the “cross-collateral” option, which enables them to borrow USDT against their existing wallet balances of BTC or BUSD.

Trading Fees

Binance Futures has its own fee schedule, which is independent from spot markets. Fees for the average trader will most likely come under the “VIP 0” category, which pays maker fees of 0.020% and taker fees of 0.040% on futures trades.

Traders who trade more than 250 BTC worth of volume per month may be entitled to lower fees, also subject to holding a certain amount of Binance’s BNB tokens.

A complete fee table for Binance Futures markets can be found by clicking here.

Account Verification

If you already have a Binance Global account, you will not be required to perform any additional verification to trade on Binance Futures.

For those setting up a Binance account for the first time, you will need to complete a short know-your-customer (KYC) process, in which you must provide your phone number and one or two forms of identification, such as a driver’s license or passport.

Buy/Sell Limits on Binance Futures

Unlike Binance’s spot markets, Binance Futures does enforce limits on how large trades can be. This is specific to the particular trading instrument, with a full list of minimum and maximum contract quantities listed here.

In terms of withdrawals, users are still limited by the amount of verification they have provided to the Binance. “Level 1” users are able to withdraw up to 2 BTC of assets every 24 hours, whereas  “Level 2” users (who have provided further identification) can withdraw up to 100 BTC worth of assets every 24 hours.

Security and Risk

Binance Futures is a relatively new platform, but its security can be estimated from its main platform’s history.

As with most exchanges, they have had small incidents of hacks and hack attempts, however any losses to date have been covered by their insurance fund. To date, Binance has a good track record for taking care of customer funds.

Additional personal trading risks related to leveraged trading should be considered for Binance Futures, and standard precautions such as two-factor authentication (2FA) should be taken.

It should be noted that as a custodial exchange, Binance account funds are held by the exchange and not by the individual.

Support

Binance, as with all cryptocurrency exchanges, appears to have mixed reviews for customer support.

The general consensus, however, is that they appear to answer most support requests through their ticket system within 24 hours of submission.

They also provide an online chat support box, with which we have personally had prompt and helpful replies within a matter of minutes.

Lastly, the Binance PR team is also reported to be quick to respond to user concerns via social media channels.