Bitvast

Bitvast Review

What is Bitvast?

Bitvast is an exchange from South Africa that launched in 2018. It calls itself the "world's premier bitcoin exchange". In addition to Bitcoin, Bitvast also offers trading in most of the bigger cryptocurrencies. You will not find the more exotic altcoins here, but more than a h andful of the big ones.

Trading volume

An exchange's trading volume is very important for any user of such an exchange. A large trading volume often (but not always) correlates with deep liquidity. When the liquidity at a platform is deep, it means that it will be less difficult for you to find a buyer to your sell order or a seller to your purchase order.

According to Coinmarketcap, on the date of last updating this review (2 December 2021), the 24-hour trading volume was USD 77.5 million vis-a-vis USD 86.9 million on 21 September 2021 (up from USD 39.6 million on 17 April 2020). This trading volume surely has a lot of room for improvement.

Bitvast Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should determine which trading view 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. The below is a picture of the trading view at Bitvast: The exchange also has an easier format, which they call the "Quick Buy/Sell Interface".

Bitvast Fees

Bitvast Trading fees

This exchange doesn’t treat takers (persons taking orders off the order book), and makers (persons placing the orders that the first group of persons take off the order book) differently. Instead, they charge something that we call a “flat fee”. This means that they charge both takers and makers the same fee. The fee they charge is 0.15%.

0.15% is an acceptable trading fee. Global industry average has historically been around 0.25%, and Bitvast's fees are accordingly a bit lower than the historic global industry average. Today, however, we are today seeing more and more exchanges moving towards lower trading fees, and new industry averages are starting to form around 0.10%. So in comparison with the new emerging trading fee averages, Bitvast lies a bit higher.

Bitvast Withdrawal fees

Bitvast charges a withdrawal fee amounting to 0.0006 BTC when you withdraw BTC. This is around 25% lower than the industry average, as the industry average is arguably around 0.0008 BTC per BTC-withdrawal.

All in all, the fees here (both trading fees and withdrawal fees) are in line with the industry averages.

Deposit Methods and US-investors

Deposit Methods

Bitvast does not accept any other deposit method than cryptos, so new investors are restricted from trading here. If you are a new crypto investor and you wish to start trading here, you will have to purchase cryptos from another exchange first and then deposit them at this exchange.

To find an exchange where you can deposit fiat currency, just use our Exchange Filters and we’ll help you through it.

US-investors

We have not found any information on this exchange's website that indicates that US-investors are restricted from trading here. However, many exchanges do not allow US-investors in spite of not having any clear prohibitions obtainable on their respective websites. Accordingly, we urge any US-investor interested in trading here to perform their own analysis of whether they can indeed trade here or not. Sometimes, exchanges might even allow investors from certain states in the US but not investors from other states in the US. So the answer to whether you can or cannot trade at an exchange if you're from the US is not always obvious. Rather the opposite.

Bitvast Security

There are numerous things to consider when determining the security level at an exchange. For instance, one important thing is how big the proportion is of user assets that are stored in cold storage. Bitvast, apparently, store 100% of all user assets in cold / offline storage - meaning that every withdrawal made from the platform is performed manually ensuring "absolute safety". This is, if true, very impressive.