Mexo Exchange

Mexo Exchange Review

What is Mexo Exchange?

Mexo Exchange is a cryptocurrency exchange from Mexico, which you might have expected from its name. The platform has been up and running since 2020.

This exchange is a so called derivatives exchange, meaning that they focus on derivatives trading (also known as contracts trading). A derivative is an instrument priced based on the value of another asset (normally stocks, bonds, commodities etc). In the cryptocurrency world, derivatives accordingly derive its values from the prices of specific cryptocurrencies. You can engage in derivatives trading connected to a number of different trading pairs here.

It should be noted though that Mexo Exchange does not only offer contracts trading, they also have a well developed spot trading function.

Mexo Exchange Advantages

As a few of the main advantages with the platform, Mexo Exchange states that they focus on security, that they have deep liquidity in their order book, that they have a wide variety of different trading options and that they are trustworthy. All of these factors are in our view very important for an up and coming crypto platform to have.

Mexo Exchange 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 Mexo Exchange’s trading platform is also mobile compatible.

Leveraged Trading

Mexo Exchange also offers leveraged trading to its users. All crypto exchanges that offer contracts trading do. The maximum leverage level for this platform's perpetuals is 100x (i.e. onehundred times the relevant amount).

A word of caution might be useful for someone contemplating leveraged trading. Leveraged trading can lead to massive returns but – on the contrary – also to equally massive losses.

For instance, let’s say that you have 100 USD in your trading account and you bet this amount on BTC going long (i.e., going up in value). If BTC then increases in value with 10%, you would have earned 10 USD. If you had used 100x leverage, your initial 100 USD position becomes a 10,000 USD position so you instead earn an extra 1,000 USD (990 USD more than if you had not leveraged your deal). However, the more leverage you use, the smaller the distance to your liquidation price becomes. This means that if the price of BTC moves in the opposite direction (goes down for this example), then it only needs to go down a very small percentage for you to lose the entire 100 USD you started with. Again, the more leverage you use, the smaller the opposite price movement needs to be for you to lose your investment. So, as you might imagine, the balance between risk and reward in leveraged deals is quite fine-tuned (there are no risk free profits).

Affiliate Program

Mexo Exchange has an affiliate program with 4 different levels. Through this program, you can earn up to 35% commissions on the trading fees generated from the futures and spot trading of your referrals and your referrals' referrals. 35% is a fairly attractive commission level relative to the industry standards. On the date of first wring this review (9 February 2021), the following table showed the different levels (and their affiliate commission) available to the different categories of affiliates - bronze, silver, golden and platinum:

You can sign up to the affiliate program here.

Mexo Exchange 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 Mexo Exchange (the day after Tesla announcing that you will be able to buy Tesla cars with Bitcoin in the future):

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.

Mexo Exchange Fees

Mexo Exchange 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. Many exchanges divide 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.

This platform charges takers 0.095% per trade for spot trading. These spot trading taker fees are below both the old and the new 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%. Makers receive a discount on their spot trading fees and only have to pay 0.075%. These spot trading fees are very competitive.

As for the contracts trading, takers pay 0.04% and makers pay 0.02%. According to our latest report on contracts trading industry average fees, available here, the averages were 0.064% for takers and 0.014% for makers. So Mexo Exchange is clearly below average on the contracts trading taker fees and somewhat above on the contracts trading maker fees.

All in all, we think that the fees offered by Mexo Exchange are very competitive. Mexo Exchange also offers trading fee discounts to customers who achieve certain trading volumes. Here are the available trading fee discounts:

Mexo Exchange Withdrawal fees

To our understanding, Mexo Exchange 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.

Generally speaking, to only have to pay the network fees should be considered as below global industry average when it comes to fee levels for crypto withdrawals. 

Deposit Methods and US-investors

Deposit Methods

In addition to depositing cryptocurrency to the platform, Mexo Exchange also lets you deposit fiat currency. However, only through wire transfer (not credit or debit card).

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

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.

Mexo Exchange 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.