Prime XBT Review: Complete Exchange Overview

Prime XBT is a relatively well established cryptocurrency exchange that is giving clients the ability to trade a number of assets including crypto, Forex, Commodities etc.

This will provide traders with another interesting alternative to the status quo with crypto margin trading. Prime XBT is trying to take on some of the more established Futures and CFD brokers that operate in the space.

However, can such a new exchange really be trusted?

In this Prime XBT review, I will attempt to answer that. I will also give you some top trading tips that you need to know.

Overview

PrimeXBT is a cryptocurrency exchange that is registered in the Seychelles. The holding company name is Prime XBT Trading Services and their Company number is 148707. The exchange opened their books to the market in early 2019.

Since that time, they have also opened an office in St Vincent & The Grenadines and have moved their trading infastructure to Switzerland. Currently they boast over $375m in daily volume and claim to have over 30 employees.

One of the main selling points behind PrimeXBT is the fact that they have leveraged trading for a number of different assets. These include 6 cryptocurrency pairs with a max leverage of 100x and a number of forex / commodity assets with leverage up to 1,000x!

Prime XBT also makes use of the liquidity provided by larger exchanges and market makers in the industry. They aggregate or “pool” their liquidity from over 12 different exchanges.

PrimeXBT has traders from over 150 different countries. However, given certain regulations, there are some countries that they do not accept traders from. These include the likes of the USA, the province of Québec in Canada and a few others.

Is Prime XBT Safe?

Given the ever increasing news of cryptocurrency exchange hacks, one of the most important considerations for the trader is security. This is also one of our main review criteria when it comes to grading an exchange.

There is an entire section on the information page that details the security protocols that are employed by PrimeXBT.

Exchange Security

Most of the coins that are held at PrimeXBT are kept in cold storage. This means that they are kept in a secure offline environment away from internet connection and the threat of potential hackers.

In order to service their current payments and withdrawals, they will also need to run a “hot wallet” but only a limited number of coins are kept in this state. In order to make any movements from the cold wallet to the hot wallet, they make use of multi-signature access.

This means that in order for any transactions to take place in the Prime XBT wallets, they will need the authorization from a number of different people who hold those keys. This reduces the risk of a single point of failure.

In terms of other security protocols that they have in place, they also make use of Cloudflare’s technology in order to mitigate the risks that are posed by Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS).

Finally, they also have advanced hardware modules where they run their trading technology. These are hosted on AWS web servers which is known to be one of the best in the industry.

Communication Security

Like most exchanges and financial sites these days, PrimeXBT has full SSL encryption. This means that all communication that you send the exchange will be encrypted and make it hard for any malicious actors to intercept it.

It will also help you identify if you have accidentally landed on a phishing site of some sort. This is because the actual login page should have a secure padlock in the browser. If you do not see this then it means that you could be on a phishing site and should leave immediately.

When it comes to storing your passwords, Prime XBT claims that they use the “bcrypt” algorithm. This means that even if a hacker were to access the servers of the exchange, they would not be able to read them.

User Security

Of course, even if a hacker is able to get hold of your password, Prime XBT offers two factor authentication. This means that you will have to authorise the login on your phone via the Google authenticator.

It is not mandatory for you to enable 2FA on your phone although it is highly encouraged. You can do this quite easily through your account management options in your “security settings”. PrimeXBT will present you with a QR code and a backup key.

It is incredibly important to save this backup key as it will be required for you to reset your 2FA in the case that your phone gets stolen or lost. If you do not have this then you may have to wait for up to seven days as the broker manually resets this.

Lastly, when it comes to withdrawals, Prime XBT is one of the few exchanges that require a mandatory white-labeling of Bitcoin addresses. This means that your funds cannot be sent to a rouge address in the instance where your account is breached.

Prime XBT Leverage

For those that do not know, trading on leverage is a way for the individual to get more exposure to an asset than they have put down in funds. This gives the trader the advantage of making money on “borrowed funds”.

When you trade on leverage can potentially enhance your returns by a certain factor. Of course, this also works on the way down as losses are also magnified. Below is an example of how leverage will work on the PrimeXBT platform.

Another advantage of leveraged trading in general is that it allows you to short an asset. This means that you can make money on a fall in the price of the asset. In the case of a short position, you are borrowing the coin in question in order to sell it forward in the future.

As mentioned, the maximum leverage on PrimeXBT is 100:1 for the crypto pairs and up to 1,000:1 on some of their forex pairs. This means that you only need to put down a 1% (or 0.1%) of the required capital in order to take out that position.

The exact leverage that you will be allowed for the position will depend on the type of asset that you are trading as well as the size of the position that you are taking on. For example, here are the base margin requirements and resulting leverage for a range of assets.

Pair	Margin Required	Leverage
BTC/USD	1.0%	100x
ETH/USD	1.0%	100x
XRP/USD	1.0%	100x
EUR/USD	0.1%	1,000x
EUR/GBP	0.1%	1,000x
USD/CAD	0.1%	1,000x
Brent	1.0%	100x
S&P500	1.0%	100x

You can see a full list of the leverage limits for the other assets in your account management area.

In order to most appropriately manage market risk, Prime XBT will reduce these leverage limits for those traders that have a higher exposure to the market. Below is an example of the leverage based on position size for Bitcoin and Ripple for example:

As you can see, larger positions will require more margin and hence reduce your exposure – and subsequently broader risk.

With all of these leverage numbers, it is important to point out that this is the maximum leverage limit and you can indeed opt for a lower number level. This may in fact be a more prudent move as even the slightest amount of volatility in can lead to an exhaustion of funds with 100x or 1,000x leverage.

If there is a case where you exhaust your equity and the value of your account falls below a certain level then you will get what is termed a “Margin Call“. With traditional financial brokers, they will actually call you and ask for the margin. Prime XBT closes out the position instead as they need to manage the risk that they have on their books.

Asset Coverage

This was actually one of the more impressive aspects for us about the PrimeXBT trading platform. There are an extensive range of assets that you can trade there.

Unlike exchanges such as ByBit and Deribit, you are not only restricted to trading cryptocurrency assets. You can also trade Forex, Commodities and stock indices. Below are all of the assets that you can trade.

So, this means that you can also take a view on some of the more traditional assets. There are indeed many times that we would like to take a position to hedge trades in the crypto market.

Correlation Trading 🤓️: Given that you can trade crypto as well as these more traditional assets, it means that you can also structure more bespoke and exotic trades. For example, you could trade Gold vs. Bitcoin or Ethereum vs. The Dow Jones.

Prime XBT Fees

Trading fees are a really important consideration as they can directly impact your profitability in the long run. If you trade a great deal of volume on an exchange then these fees add up on a cumulative basis.

PrimeXBT is quite transparent with their fees. They only have two types of fees and these are the trade fee and the overnight fee. The former is a fee that is charged for entering the position and the latter is for financing the position overnight. We have the fee breakdown for a selection of assets in the table below”

Pair	Trading fee	Financing/day Long	Financing/day Short
BTC/USD	0.05%	0.083%	0.083%
ETH/USD	0.05%	0.083%	0.083%
XRP/USD	0.05%	0.194%	0.194%
EUR/USD	0.01%	0.00417%	0.00417%
GBP/USD	0.01%	0.00411%	0.00411%
Nasdaq	0.01%	0.02778%	0.02778%

This places Prime XBT more in line with the fees model of a CFD broker than a Futures exchange. They are not charging settlement fees on the contracts but are charging an overnight rate for holding the position. The latter will not apply if you enter and exit the position within the day.

The trading fee of 0.01% – 0.05% is much lower than comparable CFD brokers such as IQ Option etc. The exchange recently released their tiered fee structure for those traders who do a considerable amount of volume on the platform. Below are the discounts that you can earn based on 30 day rolling trading volume.

• 300–600 BTC: You will get a 25% discount on the above rates at PrimeXBT.
• 600 + BTC: Traders with volume over this amount will earn a 50% discount on the current fee offer

In terms of funding your account, there are no fees that are applied to inward payments. However, if you are to withdraw funds from the exchange then you may have to pay an arbitrary miner fee in order to propagate your transaction (these are standard across the industry).

Prime XBT Registration

If you have decided that you would like to try out the PrimeXBT platform then you will need to register an account. In order to do this, you will need to provide them with an email and password. You also have the option to insert a referral code if you were given one (more on this later).

They will send out an email to the address that you have provided so that you can verify it. Once this is done you can log back into your account and access the trading platform and the account features.

Top Tip 💯: Enable two-factor authentication when logged in (it is not set as default)

Something that you may have noticed is that PrimeXBT does not require any forms of identification when you sign up. This is because they are one of the few exchanges that do not complete KYC or AML checks on their traders.

They are a fully anonymous exchange which can be advantageous for those traders that value their online privacy and would not like send over personal documentation. Moreover, this makes the exchange less of a target for identity thieves who are looking for juicy targets in databases.

Funding / Withdrawals

Prime XBT is a crypto only exchange. This means that they do not take any Fiat currency funding and you can only make deposits / withdrawals in Bitcoin. If you need to get your hands-on Bitcoin to fund then you will have to use a Fiat gateway such as Bitstamp or Kraken.

Once you have your Bitcoin, funding your account is relatively simple. You will head on over to to your account section and you will hit the “Deposit” button. This will take you to the deposit page where you can access your PrimeXBT Bitcoin address.

They have also tried to ease the burden of buying Bitcoin with Fiat as they have integrated a Changelly widget on their deposit section. This is a third party Bitcoin purchasing service where you can quickly buy your coins with the use of a credit / debit card.

Once you have the applicable address, you can send your Bitcoin in. The deposit may take a bit of time to show up in your account due to the fact that they require a total of 6 confirmations on the network before they will credit it.

Withdrawing from your account is just as simple. In this case you will head on over to the “withdraw” page where you will provide them with your personal Bitcoin address. This will be the Bitcoin address that you would like to white-label for all future withdrawals.

Once you have requested the withdrawal, you will have to wait for them to process it. If you are requesting quite a sizable withdrawal then it may take a bit of time to be processed. This is because withdrawals are processed from the hot wallets and if they do not have enough on-hand they may have to access some from their offline cold wallets.

Prime XBT Trading Platform

As a trader, you will be spending over 90% of your time on the main trading platform. As such, it is quite important that it is well laid out and semi intuitive from a user interface perspective.

We were actually quite impressed with the Prime XBT trading platform. They have developed their own trading technology and there is extensive functionality which can satisfy traders of most skill levels.

On the PrimeXBT platform, you have three main sections which can be accessed in the header toolbar. These are the account administration section, the information section and the actual trading platform itself.

The first thing that you will notice about the platform is that it offers a large degree of customization. You can build out your own work-spaces that you can access at the top of the platform.

They have also designed this platform around “widgets”. This means that you can insert a new panel onto any one of your desired work-spaces. These widgets can contain a chart, order form, trades, messages etc.

You will select “add widget” and you will be given a list of different ones to choose from. You can spread the platform out across more than one screen or you can have numerous different markets on a single screen.

When it comes to the charting package, PrimeXBT seems to have quite comprehensive charting functionality. This could be ideal for those of you who like to trade with technical analysis.

Pro Tip 📲: You can use the Prime XBT Telegram Bot which will send you price alerts, open positions and executed orders. It also gives you the ability to reach out to customer support right there in Telegram.

For example, there are a number of customization options which allow you to alter the appearance of the charts. These include things such as the colors, grids and spacing. This is not something that we have seen on other charting packages developed by an exchange.

Taking a closer look at the actual tools that are at your disposal, you firstly have all the drawing tools that you will need to map your important levels. These include fan lines, Fibonaccis, retracements and other trend lines.

You also have a plethora of technical studies and indicators that you can use. These include all of the momentum indicators as well as relative strength and volume-based studies. You can also customize the indicators in terms of the time-frame and other important inputs.

Order Functionality

For those traders who are more technical, you would prefer a broader range of order types and functionality. This will allow the trader to define specific levels for entries and exits. They are also imperative as a risk management instrument to limit losses especially when it comes to leveraged trading.

PrimeXBT has most of the standard order types as well as some protection orders. These include:

• Market Order: This is one of the more traditional order types and it will be placed and executed immediately at the prevailing market price. You will use this order if you want to buy / sell immediately.
• Limit Order: This is an order that is placed to buy / sell an asset at a pre-specified level away from the market. The moment that the market touches this level, your order will be executed. In terms of the length of time that these orders are in place, they are either “Good-till-cleared” which means they will remain like that forever. Alternatively, these could only be day orders that will be completed the moment that the trading day is closed.
• Stop Market Orders: These are orders that will become market orders the moment that a certain level has been reached. These are used by traders either to limit the losses on their position as a “Stop-loss” order or they are used in order to take a profit on a positive position.
• Protection Orders: These are available as additional protection on any position or order that you currently have. These can be placed on new Market, Limit or Stop orders by clicking on the “Place Stop Losses / Take Profit” box on the order form. Here you can set up a the protection orders to go with your main order above it.
• One-Cancels-the-Other (OCO): These are a set of orders whereby the execution of one order will cancel the other. Here, the number “1” order will be your main order and if this is executed, the other will be cancelled.

Given the amount of leverage that you will be trading with as well as the volatility in the crypto markets, we would suggest that you make use of the protection orders – for your own good.

For the Pros 👨‍💻: You can enable “one click” ordering if time is of the essence with the trade.

Order Slippage

Something that most traders are no doubt aware of is the risks of “order slippage”. This occurs when you place an order and the price that you get is nowhere near your desired entry point.

Slippage can occur for a number of reasons. It can be because the there is limited liquidity in the market or it can be because the matching engine at the exchange is not fast enough.

Given that PrimeXBT has developed a highly effecient trading engine, they are able to execute orders at below 7.12 milliseconds on average. This is actually pretty damn fast and means that you are likely to have less slippage.

In fact, PrimeXBT actually measured the slippage on their executed orders. Accordig to their 2019 slippage stats, at least 94% of their orders were met at Quote or better.

These are actually pretty impressive stats for any brokerage or exchange. Of course, this is an average and you should also take note of the liquidity in the order books before placing large block orders.

Prime-XBT “Turbo” Platform

For those just getting started at Prime XBT, the Turbo platform is the most user friendly. This allows you to basically take a position on an asset over a period of time for a defined gain.

You can think of these as “Digital” instruments whereas if your price prediction was correct at the end of the expiry then you will get that fixed payout. You can either go long (goes up) or short (goes down).

You have three options when it comes to the duration of these trades. They are 30 seconds, 1 minute or 5 minutes (so pretty short). It would have been great to see expiry times of slightly longer length as trading for such a short period is not really the most optimal.

Currently, you only have options to trade 6 different assets. These are BTC/USD, ETH/USD, EUR/USD, GBP/USD, EUR/JPY and USD/JPY – so nowhere near as much as with the actual platform.

The potential profit from a correct prediction can either be 70% or 85% depending on the expiry time. The point to note though that the max risk you have is the amount deposited. This means that you have limited downside risk.

Something else that is really pretty neat about the Turbo platform at Prime XBT is the social aspect. You can see what the other traders are doing and you can also compete with them in the leader board. This adds a competitive edge to your trading. It is also a precursor to their co-vesting product they will be releasing soon.

When it comes to the trading chart, this is really quite simplified. It has none of the technical tools and studies that you have on the main platform. Hence, you cannot do that much analysis on it unfortunately.

PrimeXBT Mobile App

For those of you who are going to be away from your desk you will be happy to know that PrimeXBT also has mobile apps. These will allow you to monitor your trades on the go.

These are supported on both iOS and Android devices. We actually downloaded the app and tested it out to see exactly how functional it was.

Well, it appears to have alot of the same functionality that you have on the desktop platform. You have charting, easy order execution and account management.

Something that we found particularly impressive about the app is that you can customise your layout to suit your trading preferances. You also have pretty extensive order options which is more than we have seen on other trading mobile apps.

In terms of the reviews by other traders, they appear to be quite mixed. In the iTunes store the traders appear to be happy with the app. However, in the Android store there are many complaints about the slow reaction time of the app.

So, should you use mobile trading?

Well, we are not really fans. Even though PrimeXBT claims that you have all of the same functionality as the browser based platform, you still can never replicate the same trading conditions. We would suggest you use the web app as a first port of call.

Customer Support

Nothing can be quite as frustrating for a trader than an exchange that takes a long time to respond to their questions or customer support queries. This is why it is such an important criteria for us when we complete these reviews.

Generally, the thing that takes up the most time for customer support staff is KYC verifications. Given that PrimeXBT does not conduct these it means that it frees up a lot of time for their agents to answer the most pressing questions for the traders.  This was indeed also our experience.

Perhaps the quickest and most effective way to get hold of their customer support is through the live chat that can be accessed right from the trading platform. This is active and manned 24/7. When we reached out both Garret and Anthony below were free and they got back to us almost immediately.

They were also quite knowledgeable so it shows that Prime XBT has not palmed their support function off to some offshore location with people who don’t know what they are talking about. Alternatively, you can contact their team on support@primexbt.com if you have any questions that related to security, account management or product inquiries.

Unfortunately, they do not have a dedicated phone line which you can dial in the case of an emergency. They also do not appear to have an online chat functionality but perhaps this is something that they could roll out later on.

Finally, if you suspect that something could be down with the exchange then you can always head on over to their status page. This gives you an in depth overview of the operational status of the tradin engine, deposits / withdrawals and website.

Prime XBT Referral

If you have been using the exchange for a period of time and are comfortable with the service then you may want to consider getting involved with their referral program. This will allow you to earn a commission from referring friends to the platform.

Prime XBT operates a tier-based referral program where you will earn a percentage of trading fees not only on those traders that you directly refer but also a percentage from 2nd and 3rd tier referrals. Below are the commission rates:

This is better than the other futures exchanges such as BitMEX for example. Although they have the same commission for your direct referral, BitMEX does not offer tiered referral payouts. This means your earning potential is enhanced with PrimeXBT.

If this is something that you would like to get involved with then you will need to get your referral code. This is something that you can get in your account management page under the “referral” section. You can either elect to use a link with your code embedded or to give your referrals your code when they are signing up.

Note ✍️: Be sure to read the T&Cs that applies to this as well as what is acceptable promotions and what is outlawed

Tutorials & Guides

It’s always a nice touch when an exchange includes additional material to help smooth your trading experience. PrimeXBT is no exception.

If you are still struggling to use their trading platform then you can always head on over to their platform guide. This is available within the “Information” section in your when you are logged into your account.

If you would prefer a more visual guide then Prime XBT has included a number of video tutorials. These can be accessed from inside your account by clicking on the “Tutorials” section in the top right of your account.

These are professionally done and well presented. They include information such as how to place trades, set up stop-losses and protection orders, funding your account and safely using leverage.

Finally, Prime XBT also runs a pretty unique medium blog. Here you can find additional information on how to trade futures products. They also go over broader trading disciplines such as Technical / Fundamental analysis etc.

Covesting Module on PrimeXBT

In August of this year, PrimeXBT made the Covesting Module accessible to all users to its platform. This new feature created by Covesting allows you to automatically copy and execute the traders of professional traders.

This technology has been in development since 2017 and was being beta tested by select users on PrimeXBT since April of this year. PrimeXBT is the first of what will likely be many exchanges to incorporate this feature.

When you click on the Covesting tab you are presented with a long list of cryptocurrency traders. Here you can see the returns they have made over the past 24 hours as well as since they have joined.

This is important to note since it is wise to choose a trader who has a long, proven track record rather than one which has been on the platform for a few days. You can conveniently sort them according to their total profit.

Once you have decided which cryptocurrency trader you would like to follow, you will need to make sure the funds you want to copy trade with are on your main wallet, not your trading wallet in PrimeXBT.

These funds need to be in Bitcoin and you must commit at least 0.001 BTC to follow a trader (around 10.50$USD at the time of writing). As seen in the image above, the fees taken from your profits vary depending on how much Bitcoin you have deposited. You can learn more about Covesting here.

Areas For Improvement

While there were many things that we liked about the Prime XBT exchange, there are a few things that we think warrant improvement.

Firstly, when it comes to trading technology, they do not offer API functionality. This would allow developers to code their own bots and trading algorithms to trade on the PrimeXBT platform.

They also do not offer any PC client program to trade on. This could limit the opportunity for those traders who would like to trade away from the browser-based platform. Perhaps this is something that they are considering down the line.

I would also like to see more optionality when it comes to their Turbo trading platform. Currently, the assets you can trade are limited and the expiry times are too short.

Conclusion

It seems from this review that Prime XBT could be an attractive option for you to trade leveraged cryptocurrency instruments. There are numerous traders that are looking for alternatives to the likes of BitMEX et al. and the exchange is launching at an opportune time.

Indeed, the high leverage levels make it a similarly attractive proposal which will allow those users to magnify their returns on borrowed money. Of course, this is a double edged sword and leverage can chop you down on the flip side. Appropriate risk management is a must.

There were of course some things that we thought warranted improvement. However, these are all as a result of the brand new status of the exchange. They may have several improvements to their technology in the pipeline. Similarly, they can only really build up a track record with new traders.

So, is Prime XBT the exchange for you?

If you are looking for a leveraged cryptocurrency exchange with relatively advanced technology, transparent fees and strong security procedures then it should be considered. You will need to make a judgement on whether you are comfortable using a brand-new exchange service.

Warning ⚡️: Trading leveraged futures products is incredibly risky. Make sure that you practice adequate risk management

Featured Image via Prime XBT

Source: https://www.coinbureau.com/review/prime-xbt/