XBTFX is owned and operated by XBTFX LLC which is a company that is based in St Vincent and The Grenadines. It has a company number of 155 LLC 2019 with an office address at First St. Vincent Bank Ltd Building, Kingstown.
Although their head office is in this location, they have several remote offices around the world. They were established in 2019 and since their inception they have grown considerably. There are over 20 employees now working there.
As a CFD broker, they offer leveraged trading of up to 500 times on a number of different assets classes. This is all through the MT5 trading platform which comes from the same MetaTrader trading stable as the MT4 platform.
They are a True STP broker. STP stands for Straight Through Processing and means that the broker will send your order direct to their liquidity providers. This means that orders are not routed through a dealing desk of any sort.
Given the popularity of the broker, they have expanded to a number of different countries. There are, however, some countries where they do not take traders and that includes the likes of the USA, Québec, Belgium, North Korea, Sudan. You can see the whole list on their website.
Is XBTFX Safe?
Before anyone can start trading with a broker, one of the most important things that they can ask is whether it is safe? They are, after all, holding your funds.
This is why it is one of the most important criteria for us and we look at a number of factors to determine that. These include broker, user and fund security.
Coin Security
When it comes to the funds sent to XBTFX, they store most of their coins (95%) in cold storage. This means that most of their crypto is kept disconnected from the internet and cannot be accessed by hackers.
Security Protocols at XBTFX
Then, when it comes to the remaining 5%, these are in a “hot” environment and these are used in order to pay withdrawals or take deposits. These are manually managed with multi sig wallets. Hence, when you are requesting a withdrawal, it could take a bit of time initially.
Risk Management
Given that XBTFX offers leverage of up to 500x, they need to make sure that they are protecting all their traders from market swings. This is why they have built up an insurance fund. This will act as a buffer in extreme market movements.
The concept of an insurance fund is not a new one and has been used by a number of other leveraged exchanges including the likes of Bybit, BitMEX etc. At XBTFX, the fund is replenished with 10% of the commissions going towards the funds.
Communication Security
You will notice that all communication with XBTFX is fully encrypted. They have full SSL encryption on their site which means that all of your personal data is secure and cannot be snooped on.
Secure Certificate at XBTFX
This is also great tool for you to spot any phishing attempts. If you land on a website that looks like XBTFX but you cannot see that secure padlock in the browser, you can be sure that you are on the wrong site and you need to leave immediately.
User Security
Most often, the most vulnerable component in the security of a broker or an exchange is the user themselves. Hence, XBTFX has provided their users with a bunch of tools in order to prevent your account getting compromised.
Asset Coverage & Instruments
XBTFX is a CFD broker which means that you are trading what are called “Contracts for Difference”. These are essentially leveraged trading instruments that give you exposure to some underlying asset.
With a CFD, you are trading on the margin. This means that you will only ever have to put down a fraction of the total notional size of the trade in order to enter a position. So, when the margin is 1%, you will have an effective leverage of up to 100x.
XBTFX Asset Coverage
Given the unique nature of the XBTFX offer, you can trade with leverage of up to 500x. This is more than we have seen at nearly all other leveraged crypto exchanges. Even many other forex brokerages only go up to a maximum of 400x.
When it comes to the assets that you can trade, there is a multitude of options really. Below are some of the traditional asset classes that you can trade:
- Forex: There are close to 100 different forex pairs including all of the major and minors out there.
- Commodities: Some of the commodity assets include WTI, Brent, Copper and Natural Gas
- Indices: There are a number of different indices that you can trade from Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
- Metals: This includes the likes of Gold, Silver, Palladium and Platinum
- Stocks: There are plethora of stocks that you can trade from all of the global stock markets. These include both large and small cap. You can see all of the assets here.
Then, when it comes to cryptocurrency, you have most of the major coins and altcoins. These include the likes of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, XRP and BNB.
You then also have a pretty decent selection of smaller altcoins. You can see a selection of them over here:
XBTFX Fees & Spreads
As a trader, something that directly impacts on your profitability is the fees that you pay. This is something that you may not notice at first but will eat into your profitability in the long run.
So, this is something that we like to examine intently.
When it comes to the trading fees at XBTFX, it will depend on the type of account that you decide to open. As we cover in the accounts section below, there are two different types with unique fee structures.
Trading Fees at XBTFX
If you go for the standard account, then you do not have any commissions on the lots that you trade. However, you will face a slightly wider spreads. For example, on the Standard account you have spreads that start at 1 pip whereas on the ECN account they are 0.01 pips.
However, if you are going to be trading on the ECN account you will have a “lot commission”. For FX, Commodities and CFDs the lot commission is $3.5. If you are trading crypto CFDs, the commission on this ECN is 0.125%.
For both the standard and the ECN account, you will have fees to trade on the shares. These are $0.10 for US, EU and ASIA while you will have to pay 0.45% for Russia.
Other Fees
The only other fees that you are likely to incur are the exchange fees. These are the fees that you will have to pay to swap two different cryptocurrencies. This ranges from between 2-4% depending on the cryptocurrency. This is quite high if we were to compare it to other exchanges.
They say that there are no fees for Deposits and Withdrawals. However, I do happen to think that you will be charged a minor miner fee.
Account Types
Once you have registered you can create your account type. As mentioned, there are two basic types on offer at XBTFX. These are the Standard and the ECN.
Well, with the standard account XBTFX is adding a minor spread to the pairs that you are trading and earning their fees in that way. ECN stands for Electronic Crossing Network and when you place an order on this account it is routed directly to the market and you will get the raw spread.
XBTFX Account Type Overview
As you can see from the above, both accounts are nearly identical but only differ according to their spreads. Some of the most important points that both of these accounts share that I can glean include the following:
- Both have a low minimum deposit of only $1.
- Both use state of the art servers at Equinix London LD4
- Both allow for expert advisors and automated trading strategies
- You can scalp with both of these
You will also notice that on the standard account you have the option to open an Islamic account. This is an account that is fully compliant with Sharia law and does not include any sort of carry over fees.
Demo Accounts
You may not be entirely sure what type of account you want or if you even want to fund an account at XBTFX. That is exactly the reason that they offer a demo account. This is a trial account that is funded with demo funds.
The benefit of this is that you can trade as much as you want and get a feel for the platform / broker. Its a risk free way for you to trade and see how the broker performs. This can be created for both the standard and the ECN account and can be done right there on your dashboard.
Mobile App
As mentioned, MT5 is also available as a mobile app for both Apple and Android devices. It has been downloaded over a million times and is still one of the most popular apps on the market.
It is also a pretty functional app and includes some of the following features:
- Switching between financial instruments on charts
- Customizable Forex & Stock chart color schemes
- Trade levels visualizing the prices of pending orders, as well as SL and TP values on the chart
- Free financial news — dozens of materials daily
- Chat with any registered MQL5.community trader
This is also great for technical analysis as you have the interactive charts that you can zoom into and scroll through. The mobile charts include 30 of the most popular indicators that traders use to get a bearing on the market.
You only need look at the ratings of the apps in both the iTunes store and Google Play to get a sense of just how popular it is and what the other traders think about it.
Customer Support
Something that can be incredibly frustrating for any trader is a lack of customer support. There have been many times when we have had to wait for hours or even days on end to get any sort of feedback from other brokers.
So, how does XBTFX stack up?
Well, it appears to be quite responsive. There are a number of ways in which you can reach out to them but perhaps the most direct way is through their online chat. This is connected to a facebook messanger window.
While this is great, it does exclude those who do not have a Facebook account from reaching out. Either way, when we did reach out we were usually helped in only a few minutes. They were informed and knew how to address our query instantly.
Final Thought
In summary, this is a great broker with extensive asset coverage. We also love the fact that they offer trading through the wildly popular MT5 platform – one cannot go wrong with this established technology.
We were also quite impressed with their speedy customer support as well as their low fees for deposits / withdrawal of crypto. We also love the fact that they are transparent with their STP service and offer their traders the ability to request an “STP Lock”.
Moreover, the entire user experience is pretty simple. Account registration was quick and did not require too much to get going. The user interface is also uncluttered and a breath of fresh air among some of the other brokers.
