BINANCE [Regrets/Hope/Review] ... On missed 4000% gains, BREAD ICO, and how i feel as a new BINANCE user

With the recent BTC boom and the accompanying alt-coin party over the past 3-4 days, I’ve come to believe that as these new crypto-entrants explore the myriad of crypto-related activities (kittens and all), there might be a significant chance that they might turn their attention to upcoming ICOs as well.

Having said that, I was drawn while looking for coins to the BREAD ICO, which just concluded slightly under two hours ago as I pen these words. This note is not about BREAD, and I will not be shilling a coin I just entered, but for those who’s interested, here’s the details on the coin: https://token.breadapp.com/en/. I expect it to be listed on Binance in a week or so.

And that brings me to the topic of this post … Binance.

It’s a word I’ve dreaded for a while now. It all began on a fateful day earlier this year, 2nd July as I recall, the day of the Binance ICO. Now if you guys haven’t heard of Binance yet, it’s a Chinese-backed crypto exchange based in Hong Kong, and the token (BNB) would entitle you to significant discounts on all fees on the platform. I had just made up my mind to enter the ICO after reading the white paper, and after calculating the humongous profits that exchanges like polo and bittrex made on a day-to-day basis. While this coin didn’t enable profit-sharing with the exchange owners, I figured that the relatively limited supply of the coin (200mn->with buyback to 100mn), and an assumption of healthy user base would result in an appreciation in the coin’s value as a trading-fee-substitute/discount token eventually.
I ended up transferring 1 BTC (around 2.5k USD then, yes, those were the days) the night before, and being a crypto-noob, I had been so excited about it about it that I woke up at 7am (GMT+8), one whole hour before when the ICO was supposed to start. I vaguely remember snoozing my phone alarm again (supposed to be 15 min intervals), deciding to get just a bit more shut-eye. Unfortunately, the next moment when I opened them was 8.15am, and yups, the ICO had totally sold out at $0.15 a token, in a matter of minutes.

Fast-forward to today … and after multiple ups and downs, BNB is now valued at $6 a token, roughly 4000% gains. I had missed the big, fat, luxurious BNB boat, just like all the predecessor miss-boaters before me in the crypto world. But still, 4000% (100k!) is relatively painful for a young working adult. It would take me 4 years to save that amount working in the office. Who knows—it might have been my first step towards being a crypto-millionaire 😊

Nonetheless, as fate would have it, I had missed the BREAD crowdsale, and the only way I was gonna get my hands on them at all was to get them from the Binance launchpad. And there I go, back to Binance, logging on again after 6 WHOLE months of inactivity.

And lo and behold, how the site has changed. From some crappy-looking slowish site, to this sleek-looking platform. It hit me how much the site has progressed when I looked at the long list of coin-pairs available for trading. Curious, I went to coinmarketcap.com and voila, Binance listed as freaking No. 4 in terms of daily exchange volumes, just below my favourite Bittrex, and surpassing old-dude Polo.

Why was it so popular? I guess some of these factors (gleamed from a 24hr user experience, and some brief sleuthing around on the net) have led to its rapid popularity.

– Binance’s matching engine, as claimed in their whitepaper, is capable of handling 1,400,000 orders/second, making Binance one of the fastest exchanges in the market today. Yes, from personal experience, it’s very fast. No more circling circles.

– Cross-platform trading clients available for (i) Web-based trading, (ii) Android, (iii) iOS and Mobile iOS app, (iv) Mobile HTML5, (v) PC (Windows).

– Multilingual Support; they have already added support for their website in Japanese, Spanish, and Korean (along with English and Chinese).

– Onsite-staking! Finally a place to park my NEO and get GAS without going through the troublesome desktop procedures. Binance is the only exchange that gives NeoGAS to its NEO HODLers every month, as long as NEO balances are held on the exchange.

– Accepting of feedback. I heard on forums recently that earlier users complained of the lack of stop-limit functions, but by the time I logged on again today, they were there. So I guess that says something for the team’s competency.

– China regulation risks: Binance is apparently based in HK, with servers in Japan. Interestingly, a few months back, Binance no longer allows Chinese customers to trade on the exchange. Chinese users can still access the user center and make withdrawals, but deposits and trades are no longer possible. Barring them from participating in any exchange activity will hopefully allow the company to evade further scrutiny by the PBoC. Apparently they were accounting for <20% of the site’s users anyway, so Binance did it “for the greater good”.

– Binance currently charges a flat 0.1% fee on each trade. If you pay using their own token (BNB), you currently receive a 50% discount on the trading fee – bringing it down to 0.05%. Compare that to Bittrex’s 0.25% or Polo’s 0.15/0.25%.

– TRADING PAIRS! In terms of trading pairs, there’s slightly more than 200, just below Bittrex’s 250+, and roughly twice as many as Polo. More importantly, some of the hot coins which I was looking at can’t be found on Polo/Bittrex, e.g., IOTA, RDN, ICON and it seems like Binance is currently the exchange providing the largest liquidity pools for them (no way am I going to be a HITBTC user).

– Lastly, just like today, Binance sometimes have tie-ups with ICOs, and there’s reserved amounts for Binance users. Gives folks who miss the crowdsale a second chance to get their tokens, for good or for worse.

Now why am I so actively sharing all these info? Besides doing it out of the goodness of my heart for my fellow steem community? Well, it’s obviously because I found a referral scheme on the platform of course. If you’re interested in signing up at all, pls pls pls use this https://www.binance.com/?ref=10028905 link. It costs you nothing, makes Binance a bit poorer (they are very rich already), and makes me a bit richer (I am very poor still).

Caveat though. For all the good points above, the site is still relatively new. While the team seems relatively competent, and the community loves them, anything can happen in the world of crypto. I would advocate signing up only to use it ALONGSIDE your other exchanges. Doesn’t hurt to have one more avenue of crypto trading/ICO application, just in case other platforms have liquidity issues. Or if you are a really avid trader/scalper, the low-low fees can make a huge difference in the long run to your portfolio value.

That’s all folks. Have a good wk ahead.

[P.s. I’ll update on how I do on the BREAD ICO—wish me luck!]