AscendEX

AscendEX Review

What is AscendEX?

AscendEX is – like so many other exchanges – from Singapore. The platform launched on 22 March 2021, after a name change from BitMax.

AscendEX today supports trading in a quite decent number of cryptocurrencies. You can find all of the biggest ones here, and the platform has 190+ trading pairs and 40 different margin trading pairs.

AscendEX Team

The team behind the exchange is spear-headed by three individuals: George Cao (Co-founder and CEO of AscendEX) , Ariel Ling (Co-founder and COO of AscendEX), and Shane Molidor (Global Head of Business Development at AscendEX). These individuals all have experience from asset management, banking and finance.

Mobile Support

Most crypto traders feel that desktop give the best conditions for their trading. The computer has a bigger screen, and on bigger screens, more of the crucial information that most traders base their trading decisions on can be viewed at the same time. The trading chart will also be easier to display. However, not all crypto investors require desktops for their trading. Some prefer to do their crypto trading via their mobile phone. If you are one of those traders, you’ll be happy to learn that AscendEX’s trading platform is also available as an app for iPhone and Android users.

Leveraged Trading

AscendEX also offers leveraged trading to its users. This means that you can borrow money from the exchange in order to buy crypto. The interest rate depends on the trade but can apparently be as low as 3.65% per year (0.01% daily). As you can imagine, leveraged trading can lead to great profit but also to great losses.

For instance, let’s say that you have 10,000 USD on your trading account and bet 100 USD on BTC going long (i.e., increasing in value). You do so with 100x leverage. If BTC then increases in value with 10%, if you had only bet 100 USD, you would have earned 10 USD if you simply held Bitcoin. Now, as you bet 100 USD with 100x leverage, you have instead earned an additional 1,000 USD (990 USD more than if you had not leveraged your deal). On the other hand, if BTC decreases in value with 10%, you have lost 1,000 USD (990 USD more than if you had not leveraged your deal). So, there is clearly potential for huge upside but also for huge downside…

AscendEX Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself determine which trading view that suits you the best. What the trading views normally have in common is that they all show the order book or at least part of the order book, a price chart of the chosen cryptocurrency and order history. They normally also have buy and sell-boxes. Before you choose an exchange, try to have a look at the trading view so that you can ascertain that it feels right to you. The below is a picture of the trading view at AscendEX:

AscendEX Fees

AscendEX Trading fees

Many exchanges charge what we call taker fees, from the takers, and what we call maker fees, from the makers. The main alternative to this is to simply charge “flat” fees. Flat fees mean that the exchange charges the taker and the maker the same fee.

This exchange charges a base  fee starting at 0.10% per trade for large market cap assets (0.20% for "altcoins"). 0.10% is for the users with the lowest VIP-level (VIP 0). Users at higher VIP tiers will be eligible for even lower trading fees, as further set out in the picture below:

The fees charged by AscendEX are competitive. Industry average has for a long time been 0.25% but we now see many exchanges moving towards lower trading fees (0.05%-0.15%). Regardless of which exchange you compare AscendEX's fees to, they are competitive.

AscendEX Withdrawal fees

Another fee to consider before choosing which exchange to trade at is the withdrawal fee. The withdrawal fee is usually fixed (regardless of the amount of cryptocurrency units withdrawn), and varies from cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency. For BTC-withdrawals, this exchange charges 0.0005 BTC. This is also slightly below the industry average. Global industry average BTC-withdrawal fee is approx. 0.0008 BTC.

All in all, with respect to the fees, AscendEX has a truly competitive offering.

Deposit Methods and US-investors

Deposit Methods

AscendEX has partnered with Simplex, an EU-licensed payment processing company to provide credit/debit card payment solution on its platform. Through Simplex, users can now easily buy digital assets with just a credit or debit card (both VISA and Mastercard accepted). Deposits through Simplex are normally quite fast (10-30 minutes), but there are fees involved with this service. To our knowledge, you need to pay 3.50% on the deposited amount to use the Simplex service. Minimum purchase amount is USD 50.

US-investors

Why do so many exchanges not allow US citizens to open accounts with them? The answer has only three letters. S, E and C (the Securities Exchange Commission). The reason the SEC is so scary is because the US does not allow foreign companies to solicit US investors, unless those foreign companies are also registered in the US (with the SEC). If foreign companies solicit US investors anyway, the SEC can sue them. There are many examples of when the SEC has sued crypto exchanges, one of which being when they sued EtherDelta for operating an unregistered exchange. Another example was when they sued Bitfinex and claimed that the stablecoin Tether (USDT) was misleading investors. It is very likely that more cases will follow.

AscendEX does not allow US-investors on its exchange. So if you’re from the US and would like to engage in crypto trading, you will have to look elsewhere. Luckily for you, if you go to the Exchange List and use our exchange filters, you can sort the exchanges based on whether or not they accept US-investors.