FTX Review

The Big picture

FTX is one of the youngest exchanges in the top 10 by volume, founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried with the intent to make it directly for traders. Their intentions were achieved, skyrocketing to a massive $2bn in daily trading volume entering its fourth year.

The overall takeaway from FTX is that it’s curated for advanced traders and those already familiar with cryptocurrency exchanges. FTX should not be the first exchange you try. However, what FTX lacks in friendliness, it makes up with some of the lowest fees in the industry. On top of this, FTX offers excellent $FTT holding and staking rewards, starting at just $100. Being one of the main points of the exchange, FTX offers free ERC20 withdrawals for FTT holders and excellent withdrawal and deposit rates with a buy and burn system to push their native token up in price.

To conclude, advanced traders should flock to their trading platform with comprehensive trading tools available and the third-highest liquidity out of all exchanges, according to CoinMarketCap. You will not find tiny market-caps trading on FTX, but all of the more than 400 trading pairs available on FTX will have ample liquidity, so you never get caught holding your gains.

Who is FTX For?

FTX is for the advanced trader!

Although FTX offers two simple and advanced trading interfaces, FTX is predominantly designed for experienced traders and is unwelcoming to beginners. New traders will struggle to navigate the exchange or understand how to place orders.

FTX has established itself as the go-to exchange for high-volume or serious traders, not only for their low fees and FTT holder benefits but due to their extensive trading and charting tools. On top of this, FTX heavily promotes futures with high leverage, which is unsuitable for those that don’t fully understand the mechanisms of such order types.

Lastly, FTX is more than just a crypto exchange; FTX users can trade tokenised stocks, different fiat currencies and even leveraged tokens. Tokenised stocks are pegged to the price of real stocks, such as Amazon or Tesla, allowing anyone from around the world with access to an FTX account the ability to trade the biggest stocks around.

FTX Pros and Cons

Only going into its fourth year as an active exchange, it was expected that its security and transparency were still shaky. However, FTX pleasantly surprised us. Instead of a regular insurance fund, FTX opted for a more advanced liquidation ethos suited toward traders operating with high leverage. Although we know where FTX hardware servers are located, the whereabouts of their insurance funds and what percentage of user assets are stored in cold storage is still unknown. On top of this, their lack of ISO 27001 and clear information about the most recent audits or penetration audits may worry privacy-concerned users.

Conversely, FTXs transparency in the public eye is sublime, having a CEO with a prominent social media following touting all the changes happening to the exchange. To secure their high ranking from us, FTX showed a strong commitment to cyber security with its bug bounty reward program and strong KYC and AML protocols creating a proven track record that has not been dented with a hack since they started offering trading services.

Security

The most important feature of any centralised cryptocurrency exchange is undoubtedly the security of its users‘ crypto assets. Centralised exchanges are key holders of each user’s crypto wallets, making them directly responsible for handling their user’s assets.

Encompassing more than simple account verification measures, we cover:

• FTX Insurance

Instead of using a traditional insurance fund, FTX uses a backstop fund to cater for high-leverage traders, in line with their liquidation ethos. Such a method ensures they can survive and give confidence to their users, during the most volatile market movements

FTX offers leverage up to 20x, so it’s important they give enough assurance to their users that orders can be covered. The most recent tweet about FTXs insurance fund came from their official Twitter page, showing how it now exceeds $100m. This is derived from the excess trading fees those using leverage pay.

• Asset & Server Storage

On the server-side, FTX stores its servers in Japan (AWS ap-northeast-1 region (Tokyo, Japan)); however, it is unsure what percentage of FTX crypto assets are stored in cold storage, if any.

• Account Security

Established only three years ago in 2019, FTX quickly needed to catch up to industry standards regarding security. This means having 2FA and in-depth activity logs with notifications associated with all accounts across the FTX platform.

Other built-in security features for all FTX users include:

• Whitelisting your IPs: Ensuring no one else can touch your account, even with the right password.
• Whitelist External Wallets: Only allows crypto withdrawals to wallets you have whitelisted.
• Chainalysis Monitoring: Direct assistance from Chainalysis means suspicious activities are immediately flagged and investigated.

Cyber Security

One indicator of strong cybersecurity for international exchanges is the ISO 27001 certificate, which most top exchanges have. Unfortunately, FTX has not yet gained their certificate, causing concern for many users.

However, FTX received an A from CER, ranking 23rd overall out of exchanges. CER also confirms that FTX has been recently audited on top of penetration tests. Although FTX has not confirmed specifics, such as how frequently they are audited, only being in their fourth year of trading, their commitment to cyber security is admirable.

A more community-driven cyber-security protocol that is gaining traction is bug bounty rewards. A majority of top exchanges are now offering bug bounty rewards for those able to expose a flaw in their security system and instead of exploiting it, report it.

FTX is no different, offering rewards up to $50,000 for the most critical bugs. Their maximum reward is disappointingly low when considering how much revenue FTX brings in on a daily basis and when comparing their bug bounty program to other top exchanges.

Transparency & Reputation

Without a proven track record as a young exchange, FTX on paper is not new-user friendly. However, their outspoken CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried is heavily active on his Twitter along with FTXs own social media profiles.

Their ‘help desk’ provides users with complete transparency, ensuring they know exactly how fees are calculated, deposit and withdrawal rules and much more. Transparency in all aspects of the exchange helps bolster its track record as a new exchange. Although their trading platform is not beginner-friendly, their help centre is intuitive.

Their security track record has been unparalleled. In the three years, they have been providing exchanging services, they have never been hacked and even managed to help other exchanges after attacks.

CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko and Cryptocompare score FTX an 8.5, 10 and A respectively, making them a top ten exchange according to the biggest aggregators.

FTX received the highest possible score regarding regulation, with full Anti-Money Laundering compliance through their KYC (Know Your Customer) protocol. FTX also provides government bodies with KYC information for tax purposes, ensuring they are operating legally within each jurisdiction.

FTX is operating within the majority of jurisdictions, but you can see an exhaustive list here to see which countries FTX is currently not operating. US traders can access FTX through their sister exchange, FTX.US, but cannot trade on the regular platform.

FTX is a traders exchange. Full to the brim with features, such as over fifty different technical indicators and a range of drawing tools, traders won’t be wishing for more features. However, it’s clear it’s for experienced traders and not beginners which is why it only scored mediocrely, brought down by its lack of simplicity for new users to place orders or navigate the trading platform. Overall, for liquidity, trading features and markets, there are minimal faults with the platform and ample opportunity to trade unique markets such as tokenized stocks or up to 20x leverage, which leads ample traders flocking to the platform.

General

The FTX exchange is renowned for its top-tier trading features and therefore, scored excellently across the board for its features. However, that doesn’t mean the exchange is easy to use. As mentioned before, only experienced traders should attempt to use their trading features, as experience in derivative trading is a requirement. Luckily for those wanting to use the exchange to its full potential, the KYC protocol process is efficient and straightforward.

There are ample trading features on the exchange such as:

• Peer-to-Peer trading
• Leverage trading (Up to 20x)
• Spot

Unlike other exchanges, there are no ‘extra’ platforms related to the crypto-sphere, such as launchpads or NFT platforms. They are focused solely on trading. One of the neat extra features they do have is referral bonuses and a multitude of trading order types such as market, limit and stop-loss features. Their referral program scales with the amount of FTT staked:

Wallet Storage

As a centralized exchange, FTX keeps your crypto in company-owned ‘hot wallets’, meaning you don’t have complete ownership over the keys to your crypto assets. Many users may find this an attraction, as you don’t need to understand self-custodial wallet ownership to trade on FTX.

Unlike more beginner-friendly exchanges like Binance, FTX expects its customers to be experienced, making it easy for new customers to potentially make mistakes. This concern is amplified when attempting to send or receive cryptocurrency onto the FTX platform.

Tip: Hot wallets are crypto wallets which keep cryptocurrencies readily available for trading, swapping, or sending. They are connected to a network, platform or the internet.

Online Platform

Ease of Use

FTX is easy for users to sign-up and basic navigation, but becomes complicated for the average user when attempting to make trades or find specific markets. Using a multitude of acronyncs, the exchange is also not appealing to the eye, making navigation harder. FTX users are there for utility, not ease of use, as they are experienced.

Having said that, navigation to your wallet within the exchange is simple with transparent balances for all internal wallets within an FTX account. Users, from advanced to beginner, should have no problem understanding their wallet’s value and what coins they are currently holding or are in trades. Their wallet interface also allows users to simply see available cryptocurrencies to sell, trade and even stake/lend.

By clicking on the desired cryptoasset, users will be instantly taken to trading pairs of that cryptocurrency, such as USDT as seen from the image below. Once their, our point that FTX is made for the traders and not beginners is self-evident if you’re not familiar with trading tools.

For beginners, making trades within this interface will be confusing, although they attempt to make it as seamless as possible through the top-right-hand corner. Experienced users should be able to easily navigate their way around a buy or sell order, and order history on top of open orders are neatly organized at the bottom of the trading screen for continuity.

Trading Features

One sought after feature on exchanges are push notifications, helping keep traders ontop of the markets. FTX is a market leader in push notifications offering a wide variety of push notifications for deposits, prices, liquidiations and much more. On top of this,

On top of this, cryptocurrencies can easily be ‘saved’ into a watchlist for easy access and price monitoring through:

Advantageously, this also shows the user the most important coin information instantly, allowing them to focus on trading.

It’s trading features are where FTX truly shines, offering:

• Over 50 technical indicators
• Complete information of every trading pair
• 13 different trading time frames
• Up to four charts at once
• 15 different drawing tools

Apart from the ‘expected’ features for a trading-focused exchange, FTX adds unique features such as its ‘compare’ option, allowing users to compare one cryptocurrency with other crypto assets or companies. Furthermore, FTX caters to more than ten different candle types to suit all styles. On a final note, whilst the exchange may lack information it’s clean and straight to the point, with all necessary information about the token, and how much you hold of it, are always available to you.

Lastly, the exchange does provide basic crypto information but is focused around FTX and not the overall crypto sphere, another point driving home how it’s marketed towards advanced traders, not beginners.

Mobile App

Ease of Use

FTXs mobile app is a lot more user-friendly than their online platform. Sign-up and login can be done through a google or apple account, making sign-up as easy as it can be! From the home screen, users can instantly access different types of trading, such as tokenized stocks, leverage tokens and spot. On top of this, the days biggest winners and losers are readily available, giving traders important information they may need.

To add, quick access to their wallet to show holdings, different markets and their own user profile is all available at the bottom of the app. When browsing your profile, FTX offers up a complete transparent report about the fees associated with your account, so traders won’t be surprised by the fees they paid. I’m sure they’re happy paying some of the lowest fees around.

Navigating to the trading screen, the most popular markets are instantly viewable and searching for your favourite pair is incredibly straightforward for the advanced trader. New users, similar to their online platform, may have difficulty understanding what all the information means and what to do with it. However, important information such as recent price changes and total trading volume is shown underneath each pair, which is transparently showing the liquidity of each market on FTX.

Trading Features

As you can see from the image above, their mobile apps chart view is simplistic but full of features. Their platform makes assumptions about a trader’s knowledge to create such simplicity, such as not tilting the order book, expecting their users to understand what it means.

Lastly, when it comes to features, the mobile apps trading features almost identically mirror FTXs online platform, making it the go-to portable exchange for serious traders. Instead of combing through the same features, check out the online platforms trading features for a full breakdown.

Summary

Fees always will be one of the most sensitive topics when reviewing exchanges. Volume traders simply cannot profit if an exchange’s fees are too high. Luckily, FTXs trading fees are competitive with the best exchanges. For an exchange aimed at traders, their tier 1 trading fees and deposit and withdrawal fees will entice high-volume traders. Furthermore, a straightforward $FTT reward system provides discounts for small holdings, not just whales, on top of free withdrawals. Lastly, their FTT holding rewards extends to crypto withdrawals and deposits, offering users free ERC20 token withdrawals, a unique addition unseen in many other top exchanges. Besides high withdrawal fees without their free withdrawal program, FTX offers some of the best fee structures out of any exchange.

Trading Fees

FTX boasts impressively low tier 1 trading fees, asking just 0.02% on maker trades and 0.07% on taker ones. When compared to other large players in the industry, FTX is almost market-leading making it attractive for high-volume traders.***

High volume traders receive increasingly minuscule fees relative to their 30-day trading volume. However, the barrier to entry is set quite high at $2 million.

One way regular FTX users can reduce their trading fees is through a much more feasible FTT holding scheme. $FTT token often referred to as FTX, is the native token of the exchange, offering a wide range of benefits to holders and consumers.

Users will start receiving discounted trading fees when they hold $100 or more worth of FTT. To assess how their discounts are helping them, FTX provides an in-depth fee report here.

Deposit and Withdrawal Fees

For cryptocurrencies, FTX charge zero extra fees on top of any blockchain network fees paid to send or receive different crypto assets. Fee-less crypto deposits and withdrawals are the industry standard.

For fiat deposits, FTX is quoted stating:

‘’Any known fees incurred while depositing fiat to FTX will be shown to you in the deposit instructions’’.

According to our example, depositing $1000 worth of USD into FTX costs an additional $30 in fees, giving us a card deposit fee of 3% which is higher than the industry average.

Users can receive free ERC20 withdrawals (Ethereum Tokens) if they have at least 25 FTT staked. Ethereum has the most expensive network fees, or gas fees, out of any major cryptocurrency, so it can provide major savings for retail investors!

When it comes to fiat withdrawals, FTX offers free withdrawals when the fiat value exceeds $5000. On top of this, each user is granted one free withdrawal per week, provided it’s under $5000 in value.

FTT holders staking at least 25 FTT gain an additional free fiat withdrawal under $5000, showing the importance of holding and staking FTT to reduce trading and withdrawal fees on FTX.

Lastly, suppose you have no free withdrawals left. In that case, FTX will charge set withdrawal fees according to the fiat currency:

ACH

FTX international does not offer ACH withdrawals or deposits to its clients, only available on FTX.US

Summary

FTX provides clear deposit and withdrawal instructions here. If you wish to deposit or withdraw fiat, head over to your FTX wallet. There are several options to deposit or withdraw fiat currency, such as:

• wire transfer
• debit card
• bank transfer

FTX offers a respectable range of fiat currencies but doesn’t compete with the largest exchanges on this front. However, their platform is intuitive for those depositing and withdrawing crypto to and from external wallets; but may lack extra security precautions. Offering free crypto deposits and withdrawals, and even limited free ERC20 token withdrawals, FTX is keeping with the market standard. Lastly, internal transfers within the platform are free and simple, but confusing for absolute beginners. FTX is aimed at the experienced trader or investor, which corresponds to their platform; leading to a high score in the deposit and withdrawals section.

Deposits

Both crypto and fiat deposits are straightforward and simple on the FTX platform. Clear guidance is offered surrounding supported assets and deposit methods. Both crypto and fiat deposits are quoted to be ‘fee free’, although your intermediary may charge them fees!

Withdrawals

You can check whether FTX currently supports fiat withdrawals in your native currency here, or crypto here. To withdraw fiat currency, you must have KYC level 2 on your FTX account! Having clear instructions for deposits and withdrawals makes the process seamless and efficient.

However, there is no clear ‘minimum’ withdrawal for FTX users, both crypto and fiat! Consequently, there are no maximum withdrawals stated on FTX. Although unverified accounts are restricted to $2000 withdrawals.

Available fiat currencies on FTX

If you’re struggling with fiat deposits or withdrawals on FTX you can watch their guides linked!

Receiving or Sending Crypto

All crypto wallets are accessed through the FTX main wallet, where you can easily navigate to specifically supported cryptocurrencies.

For example, you can easily deposit Bitcoin into FTX by clicking ‘Deposit’.

Your deposit address for Bitcoin will become instantly available, as well as any other blockchains that FTX and the cryptocurrency support.

Withdrawing is just as easy, providing clear instructions on where to paste the recipient address and warning signs of incorrect wallet addresses.

Lastly, transferring between ‘wallets’ within FTX is incredibly simple and can be done with a click of a button:

Summary

We felt obliged to give FTX a maximum score for available cryptocurrencies due to their ample cryptocurrency trading pairs and top of the range liquidity. An exchange made for traders, FTX offers all blue-chip cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, with ample pairs, but also more niche altcoins. On top of this, they are not rampantly adding unvetted projects to their exchange, ensuring each trading pair has market-matching liquidity, as seen through their CoinMarketCap liquidity score. Overall, although traders may miss tiny market-cap pairs, a majority of the most popular coins are present.

According to CoinMarketCap, the most reliable crypto aggregator, FTX currently has 325 different cryptocurrencies available to trade, with over 400 markets (pairs). FTXs wide range of available cryptocurrencies is competitive but small enough to ensure each new crypto that is added is properly vetted Their most traded pair (BTC/USD) sees almost $1bn in trading volume every day.

However, there is no need to take CoinMarketCaps word for it as FTX provides a clear report on their supported assets, updated frequently; along with their network, and if there are opportunities, such as over the counter trades, lending and borrowing.

If you’re worried about liquidity on their 400+ trading pairs, FTX currently sits 4th in the CoinMarketCap liquidity score leaderboard, supporting our top review score. More liquidity means tighter spreads or fewer fees for you!

On top of this, FTX supports trading of their native FTT token, used prominently around the exchange to reduce trading fees, increase free withdrawals and more.

FTT Token

FTXs $FTT token is the self-proclaimed backbone of the FTX ecosystem, currently ranked #24 out of all cryptocurrencies by market cap. Heavily utilized throughout

the platform, FTT can directly aid users:

• Reduce their trading fees
• Earn by staking FTT
• Reduce OTC (Over The Counter) fees
• Receive free ERC20 withdrawals
• Increase referral rates
• Increased airdrop amounts

*FTX makes it easier for small-scale investors to receive rewards, as benefits start from just 25 $FTT staked.

To put constant positive pressure on FTTs price FTX operates a weekly ‘buy and burn’ scheme, where they burn a set percentage of FTT tokens according to a few rules:

To date, FTX has burned 18 million FTT, amounting to $471 million. Each burn transaction is clearly shown on-chain for complete transparency.

You can read up on all the possible benefits of holding and staking FTT tokens here. FTT can be bought on all major exchanges, including FTX.

Summary

FTX has chosen to avoid a ‘live chat’ model for their support, instead offering:

• Email support
• Phone support
• Ticket system, through their helpdesk

From our own experience, FTX’s support system is prompt, intuitive and helpful. Along with their help.ftx, users should easily be able to find a solution for their issue. Their ticket system allows users to keep track of any current or prior issues, enabling continuity throughout their time on the platform. It’s clear that FTX is conscious of the importance of support and is not shying away from it, but their lack of live chat support impacted our overall score for them.

As FTX is a top 10 exchange, a high standard of support is expected and many users do complain about a lack of live support to smooth over small problems.

What Support Channels Do FTX Offer

FTX currently supports phone and email support requests but does not have a ‘live chat’.However, with their help desk, you can easily submit a ticket which will be answered promptly in up to 10 different languages.

You can see your ticket history and their status, helping you keep track of help given.

Connected to their help desk is their help.ftx site, containing direct guides and tutorials for a majority of issues on their platform.

Unlike other top exchanges, FTX does not offer support through a verified Twitter account, which is a positive in our eyes! You can receive community support through their dedicated subreddit although it is not very active.

Our Experience With FTX Support

To test out the FTX ticket support system, which will be the closest to ‘live support’, we asked a simple question:

Replying to us within five minutes the simple answer we needed is about as good as we can ask for.

When asking more technical questions, the response times will be longer due to the necessary investigation process and may require back and forth between you and your support agent.

However, a benefit of the FTX ticket system is its readability and simplicity to track and store your active and archived tickets for continuity.