BTC-E Review: The Best Bitcoin Exchange for Traders

BTC-E is one of the larger, more trusted, Bitcoin exchanges on the Internet, behind only Bitstamp and Bitfinex. BTC-E is shrouded in anonymity, with no clues regarding the identities of the individuals behind it and where the exchange is truly based (that we know of, leave a comment if you find anything).The site was first announced on July 17, 2011 with test mode trading. Live trading began on August 7, 2011 BTC-E is built on the MetaTrader 4 platform, which is typically used for forex trading websites. It intends to start publishing audited financial statements in the near future to provide a more transparent nature common in business, but most commonly forex platforms. BTC-E serves as a platform for individuals interested in trading Bitcoins using the Euro, eastern currencies (RUB), and the world-reserve currency, USD.

Although not much is known about this exchange, it consistently attracts some of the highest bitcoin trading volume in the world. It is Europe’s second largest exchange next to Slovenia based Bitstamp, speaking seriously about its volume. The internet has hypothesized that BTC-E is Bulgaria-based. There is also speculation that it could be Russian-based. It is certain that this opaque, yet large exchange holds tremendous klout as prominent player among bitcoin exchanges. Regardless, let’s take a look at the essentials of this exchange.

BTC-E Supported Currencies

BTC-E offers the typical trading currencies. Since BTC-E is a Russian-based bitcoin exchange which supports Russian Rubles, the Euro, and United States Dollars. Also, the site has Russian and English user interface translations for those who are concerned with such things.  Most bitcoin exchanges support Namecoin since it is merge-mined with Bitcoin. It utilizes the SHA-256 hashing algorithm and is supported by most bitcoin exchanges because of it’s similarities with bitcoin. Although it is also supports these trading pairs:

• BTC/USD
• BTC/EUR (Euro)
• BTC/RUR (Russian Ruble)
• USD/RUR
• EUR/USD
• LTC/BTC, LTC/USD, LTC/RUR
• NMC/BTC

Main account page of BTC-E

BTC-E USD Withdrawl and Bitcoin Trading Fees

There are no fees for bitcoin deposits, aligning with most other sites. There is a small fee for withdrawing bitcoin as stated on the website- the “Fee for [bitcoin] withdrawal is 0.001 BTC”. BTC-E charges a 0.2% fee on each trading transaction carried out by the user on the exchange. This transaction fee may vary for each individual account. There are varying ways to withdraw USD with the most popular and reliable being: Paypal (7%, 500 USD minimum), wire-transfer (1.5%, min. 1000 USD), payeer.com (0%, min. 10 USD), and many more. The USD withdrawals take up to 72 hours.

Positives of BTC-E

• No verification necessary to trade BTC/USD
• Excellent volume, trades complete quickly
• Trading in automatic mode (not tested, but advertised on website)
• Almost instant bitcoin deposit/withdrawal 
• USD Withdrawal within 72 hours
• Price typically lagged to Bitstamp

Negatives of BTC-E

• Not much known about owners of BTC-E
• Not recommended for storing bitcoin

BTC-E is a Reliable Exchanges with Tremendous Volume

Presently the most reputable Bitcoin exchanges include Bitfinex, Bitstamp, with BTC-E trailing the other two in terms of daily volume. Here at Cryptocrooks, we have begun using the BTC-E bitcoin exchange as a part of our short term aggressive trading strategy. This represents a small portion of our cryptocurrency strategy. We recommend that you use this exchange solely for trading bitcoin. History has demonstrated  that bitcoin exchanges fail. Along with unpredictable compromises to bitcoin exchanges, bitcoin can never be assumed safe within an exchange. Take a moment to recognize the inherit risk in having bitcoin in this exchange (and all others), so don’t put more in than you can afford to lose. That being said we’re comfortable enough with BTC-E in its present state to allow for a small account to trade bitcoin on. We’ll continue to trade a fraction of our funds using a BTC-E account for the time being, keeping you informed on BTC-E news.