Bitbuy

Bitbuy Review

Bitbuy Pros

• No hidden fees
• Extremely transparent and secure, 99% of crypto is kept secure in Cold Storage and they undergo annual proof-of-reserve audits by third-party consultants
• Comprehensive insurance policy provided by BitGo
• A platform for everyone (beginners like more advanced investors)
• Active on Twitter for quick support
• Canada’s first and largest regulated crypto marketplace            

Bitbuy Cons:

• Less crypto available than competitors, though they are increasingly adding new coins
• Only available to Canadian residents

What is Bitbuy?

Bitbuy is a Toronto-based crypto exchange for Canada residents. Originally launched back in 2013, but under the name InstaBT with the mission of making Bitcoin more accessible to Canadians, it has since then grown into a fully regulated crypto exchange.

Bitbuy supports 19 popular coins: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), EOS (EOS), Stellar Lumens (XLM), AAVE (AAVE), Chainlink (LINK), Dogecoin (DOGE), Polkadot (DOT), Cardano (ADA), Uniswap (UNI), Sushiswap (SUSHI), Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL), Decentraland (MANA), USD Coin (USDC), Apecoin (APE) and most recently just added Terra (LUNA) to their offerings.

Regulated in Canada - But Only for Canadians

The exchange is fully regulated by Canadian federal authorities through their registration with Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) as a Money Services Business (MSB).  Currently, the exchange only onboards residents or citizens of Canada. To find an exchange accepting also non-Canadian traders, you can check out our Exchange List.

Bitbuy Advantages

Bitbuy says they offer the following to their customers:

• Easy (Express Trade) and more advanced trading options (Pro Trade)
• Industry-leading security
• Fast transaction times
• Compliant and fully transparent
• Top-rated customer support

No hidden fees!

Basic & Advanced Trading

Basic & Advanced Trading

In addition to their OTC-desk (now called Bitbuy Private Wealth service), there are two different types of trading modes here: Bitbuy Express Trade & Bitbuy Pro Trade. The Express Trade option is for the easier deals, when your action is not necessarily based on order patterns or order depth or anything like that. Bitbuy Pro Trade is for more professional traders who maybe want to use different charting tools etc. Here are a few of the advantages that Bitbuy mentions for the Pro version:

• Deep liquidity pools
• Tight spreads
• Low fees
• Advanced trading UI (user interface)
• Fiat integration
• Rest and FIX API
• Variety of order types
• Low latency matching engine

Bitbuy Private Wealth service

Bitbuy also has an OTC desk, now called Bitbuy Private Wealth service. With this service, you can execute larger trades with quick settlements. Trades that you for pricing reasons (also known as “slippage”) don’t want to execute on the open market. This picture from Bitbuy’s OTC Cryptocurrency Report 2019 clearly describes how an OTC deal is carried out:

Bitbuy Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself determine which trading interface that suits you the best. What the 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 crypto 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 see that it feels right to you. Here's a quick preview of what the trading interface at Bitbuy looks like:

Bitbuy Fees

Bitbuy Trading fees

Trading fees are naturally very important. Every time you place an order, the exchange charges you a small trading fee. The trading fee is normally a percentage of the value of the trade order. Many exchanges charge what we call taker fees, from the takers, and what we call maker fees, from the makers. The takers are the people who “take” orders from the order book. This means that they remove order options from the order book and thereby remove liquidity. Makers are the ones who put the orders on the order book in the first place.

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.

At Bitbuy, the fee rates range between 0% to 1.5% for both makers and takers. They follow a tiered fee schedule i.e. as the trading volume increases, the fee rates decrease.

Bitbuy Withdrawal fees

Bitbuy charges a withdrawal fee amounting to 0.00025 BTC when you withdraw BTC. This is below the global industry average with almost 40% (the global industry average BTC-withdrawal fee is 0.0004599 BTC per BTC-withdrawal). Accordingly, the withdrawal fees here are competitive.

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