Introduction

Bittrex is a US based exchange that has operated since 2015 and allows trading of thousands of cryptocurrency pairs. This exchange platform is founded by security experts hailing from Amazon. Due to its strict verification requirements, registration on Bittrex can frighten those who value anonymity — new users are required to disclose their full name, date of birth, address, and ID information in order to access the platform.

Commission for transactions is 0.25%. The interface and next-generation exchange engine provide detailed information on the open time currency pair: charts with different timeframes, network statistics, trading volumes and access to the wallet.

Today, Bittrex supports more than 190 cryptocurrencies.

Features of the Bittrex Exchange

The exchange platform displays high levels of security, thanks to cold storage. Cold storage allows users to store their assets on devices/servers disconnected from the network, so that they cannot be accessed virtually and hence, safer from theft. Other features of the platform include:

• To withdraw funds more than $2000 per day, you must have two-factor authentication on.
• Transactions are carried out fairly quickly — a user can always get a state of his account in real time.
• Bittrex charges a transaction fee of 0.25%
• API and 2FA.

Sign-up procedure

In order to sign-up and start trading on Bittrex Exchange, you need to go to the site and click on Login.

Don’t have an account yet? No worries, it’s pretty easy — all you need is an e-mail address and a password.

After you are done with all routine procedures, you will receive a confirmation email, in which you will need to find a link for verification. Simply click on the link to verify your email. Then you only need to sign into the exchange again, specifying the e-mail and password that you entered when registering. After signing in, you should now see a screen that looks like:

Account verification

Bittrex verifies the account of each user as part of their Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) program. This requirement is mandated on them by a number of different US government regulatory bodies. The philosophy of this program is to require the minimum amount of information from the customers while providing the most services to them.

Levels of verification

Bittrex Exchange supports two types of accounts. Basic accounts can withdraw up to 3 BTC worth of digital currency equivalent per day if they have two-factor authentication enabled. Enhanced accounts can withdraw up to 100 BTC per day.

How does Bittrex verify accounts?

Basic accounts require users to submit their name, address, and birth date to Bittrex. The platform verifies it through public records. If you can be verified through the public records, Bittrex representatives will accept your application for a basic account. If public records do not match, you can also enter a mobile phone number and receive a text to become Basic verified. If that fails as well you will need to proceed to enhanced verification.

Enhanced accounts require users to submit scans of their identification as well as a selfie. Bittrex service provider, Jumio, uses a number of heuristics to verify that the IDs are legitimate and the faces match.

What countries and documents are supported for Enhanced Verification?

Refer to Jumio's documentation here to find the types of identification documents that are supported in each country.

Interface

Markets

In the upper left corner there are two Markets buttons.

The first of them is intended for trading with cryptocurrency pairs, the list of which is massive.

Sort By: Name, Percent Change, Last Price, Volume, Newest, Oldest — sorting of cryptocurrency by various parameters.

Max Rows: number of rows to display.

The second Markets button is used to select a USDT trading pair, which can be Bitcoin, Ethereum or some other crypto.

Currency pair charts

The window with currency pair charts is as follows:

You can see that there are a variety of timeframes options to choose from. Certain items of the user interface can be used for various purposes:

• Via the ‘Select Tool’ item, you can select various tools for chart analysis (for example, Fibonacci retracement)
• ‘Chart’: select the type of chart (Japanese candlesticks charting, bars, lines, etc.)
• ‘Studies’: a large selection of technical analysis tools (MACD, Bollinger Bands, Moving Average, RSI, Stochastics, etc.)
• If you click on the ‘gear’ icon, you can set the time zone, choose the graphics theme (Light, Dark) or customize it a new custom theme.

To the right of the chart you can see the last price, daily trading volume, Bid and Ask prices, and the maximum and minimum price for the last 24 hours. Below the graph, there is a ‘Trading’ block, with the Buy and Sell blocks standard for any exchanger.

Under the ‘Trading’ block, there is ‘Order book’, with orders for sale and for purchase:

Orders

• OPEN: displays all open orders
• COMPLETED: displays all closed orders:

Settings

Here are the profile settings, verification, as well as password change, 2FA, API settings, etc.

Deposits and Withdrawals

Wallets

This item displays a lot of wallets for a variety of cryptocurrencies (traded on this exchange platform), as well as their balances. You can check the status of your account: after replenishing the balance on the exchange or buying/selling, you can track changes in your wallet. Thus, for each coin there is a separate wallet allowing not only monitoring the amount of available coins, but also how their rate has changed throughout the day (percentage-wise). There are also some tools and features within Wallets window worth mentioning:

• Hide zero balances: hide currencies with zero balance;
• + and - : top up your balances/withdraw funds
• Display: adjust the number of rows to display
• Search: search by cryptocurrency.

Funding your account with dollars will not work; the platform is intended only for cryptocurrency trading. So in order to fund your Bittrex account you need to have either some cryptocurrency on you or find an exchange platform (like Bitfinex, Coinbase, etc.), where you can sell your real money, a.k.a fiat money or fiats, and buy cryptos you are interested in.

Let’s say, you want to trade Bitcoin and, fortunately, you have a digital wallet with some amounts of it. Click on the ‘Wallets’ menu and find Bitcoin on the list.

Then click in the ‘+’ item.

In the appeared window press the button "New Address" (1) and in line (2) a new bitcoin address will be generated, to which you will transfer your Bitcoins to in order to buy other cryptos (after all, Bittrex does not support Fiats) . If you want to create wallets for other coins, then follow the same pattern.

Withdrawal of funds

Members of the platform can withdraw the obtained cryptocurrencies in the same ‘Wallets’ menu. For example, select BTC wallet and click the "-" button. Next, enter address of the wallet, to which you want to transfer your funds to, amount of withdrawal and click the ‘Withdrawal’ button.

Trading

So, let's say our bitcoin wallet on the Bittrex Exchange is already funded, and you want to purchase some Ethereum. To do this, in the main window in the ‘BITCOIN MARKETS’ section, select the desired position:

Pay attention to the percentage change of rates over the last 24 hours. After choosing a currency pair, a page with detailed information on this currency pair should appear:

As it was mentioned before, on the ‘Timeline’ tab, there is a chart. On the right side of it, there is data on the last price, daily trading volumes, buying and selling prices at the moment, the maximum and the minimum price over the last 24 hours. On the ‘Order Book’ tab, you can find out the volumes of purchase/ sale. The ‘Wallet’ tab is used to quickly create a digital wallet for further operations with the purchased currency.

Below this information, one can find another group of blocks called ‘TRADING’.

These blocks are used for actual buying and selling of cryptocoins. Let’s start with the left one called, in this case, ‘BUY ETHEREUM’:

• ‘Units’ line indicates how much Ethereum to buy
• ‘Bid’ line indicates the price; in the drop-down list a user can choose one of the suggested values or enter it manually
• ‘Total’ line represents total amount of Bitcoins that will be debited from our account for all purchased Ethereum plus Bittrex Exchange operational fee (do not forget about the fees!). Press the ‘Buy Ethereum’ button, and a user either immediately receives Ethereum on the balance sheet, or his/her application will be transferred to the list of pending orders (the principle is exactly the same as on any other exchanges).

In order to sell Ethereum, a user should perform the same actions in the right block called ‘SELL ETHEREUM’. Below the trading block, there are information blocks with pending and open orders, as well as transaction history for this currency pair. This is where buying/selling orders are located, and a user will always be able to find it and quickly cancel it if the transaction hasn't yet been completed.

In general, the Bittrex Exchange is professional, with a user-friendly, easy to learn, intuitive and customizable interface.

For security reasons, the funds cannot be withdrawn within 24 hours after changing the password. Moreover, in case of disabling two-factor authorization, the withdrawal limit will be limited to 1 BTC per day.

Even with such a security system, there are still dissatisfied users. In addition to the lack of an interface in any language other than English, technical support can sometimes be lacking. User problems remain unsettled for a long time, and, periodically, the exchange receives accusations of opaque work policy and problems in withdrawal of funds.

The exchange operates as a trading platform and as a wallet, which can be convenient for many potential members. Bittrex can be the best solution for those who put safety above comfort. Despite the fact that verification can take a long time, and technical support does not work well, the security of accounts is unquestionable. When the user database was hacked in April 2016, only those accounts with disabled two-factor authentication were compromised.