Globitex

Globitex Review

What is Globitex?

Globitex is a cryptocurrency exchange with headquarters in the United Kingdom. The platform has been operational since May 2017. The cryptos available to trade here are Bitcoin, Ethereum and the exchange's own native token - the GBX.

Personal or Business Account

First off, it should be noted that this exchange not only focuses on retail investors. They also have a technological infrastructure in place to have companies as customers.

Description of Services

They describe their services as follows:

"By combining an institutional grade digital asset exchange with a licensed e-money institution on the same platform, we are ensuring that the crypto trader or company is no longer required to have a bank account at a legacy financial institution to do their business. With Globitex you can do it all from converting digital assets into fiat currency to sending fiat directly to another exchange for arbitrage as well as making fiat payments to your suppliers or employees."

EUR Wallet Product

One of the features that follows from the above statement is the platform's EUR Wallet Product. Through this, the platform offers EUR-banking to its clients (the individual crypto traders as well). Very interesting indeed!

Trading Volume

On the date of last updating this review (2 December 2021) the 24-hour trading volume was USD 318,307, according to Coinmarketcap, which is unfortunately quite low. The trading volume must really pick up in order for this platform to be a viable choice for a prospective trader. We would not recommend anyone to start an account here before the 24-hour trading volume is at least a hundred times higher (but preferably a thousand times higher).  

Globitex Trading View

Every trading platform has a trading view. The trading view is the part of the exchange’s website where you can see the price chart of a certain cryptocurrency and what its current price is. There are normally also buy and sell boxes, where you can place orders with respect to the relevant crypto, and, at most platforms, you will also be able to see the order history (i.e., previous transactions involving the relevant crypto). Everything in the same view on your desktop. There are of course also variations to what we have now described. This is the trading view at Globitex:

It is up to you – and only you – to decide if the above trading view is suitable to you. Finally, there are usually many different ways in which you can change the settings to tailor the trading view after your very own preferences.

Globitex Fees

Globitex Trading fees

Every time you place an order, the exchange charges you a trading fee. The trading fee is normally a percentage of the value of the trade order. Normally, exchanges distinguishes between takers and makers. Takers are the one who “take” an existing order from the order book. Makers are the ones who add orders to the order book, thereby making liquidity at the platform.

Globitex’s fee for takers is 0.20%. These taker fees are somewhat above the global industry averages for centralized exchanges. Industry averages have historically been around 0.20-0.25% but we now see new industry averages emerging around 0.10%-0.15%.

However, this exchange does not charge any fees for makers, thus promoting the liquidity at the exchange. This is a very strong part of Globitex's offering and can be really helpful for people interested in not picking up existing orders from the orderbook.

As an individual, you can also choose to open a BASIC account or a PREMIUM account. The differences between these two accounts in terms of fees are outlined in the below table. 

Globitex Withdrawal fees

To our understanding, Globitex does not charge any fees of their own when you withdraw crypto from your account at the platform. Accordingly, the only fee you have to think about when withdrawing are the network fees. The network fees are fees paid to the miners of the relevant crypto/blockchain, and not fees paid to the exchange itself. Network fees vary from day to day depending on the network pressure. In general though, only paying the network fees should be considered as below global industry average when it comes to fee levels for crypto withdrawals. 

US-investors and Deposit Methods

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.

It is unclear whether Globitex permits US investors or not. We have not found any explicit prohibiton for US-investors in the exchange's Terms and Conditions. We do however urge any US investors to form their own opinion on the permissibility of their trading at this platform.

Deposit Methods

In addition to depositing cryptocurrency to the platform, Globitex also lets you deposit fiat currency. However, only through wire transfer (not credit or debit card). If you need an exchange accepting credit or debit card deposits, just use our Exchange Filters and you'll find one in no time at all.

Seeing as fiat currency deposits are at all possible at this trading platform, Globitex qualifies as an “entry-level exchange”, meaning an exchange where new crypto investors can start their journey into the exciting crypto world.