Ethfinex

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As it name suggests, Ethfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange, which is heavily connected to Ethereum. Another thing one could tell by this venue’s name is that it belongs to a group of companies around one of the oldest and most popular exchanges, Bitfinex. Its parent company also runs the Tether.to platform.

Ethfinex’s security is based on the expertise gained by Bitfinex’s team. The majority of system funds are stored in offline, in ‘cold’ wallets. Only around 0.5% of all crypto assets are accessible in ‘hot’ wallets for day-to-day platform operations.

Ethfinex Advantages

Hybrid decentralized exchange, part of a trusted group

Ethfinex is planned as a hybrid decentralized exchange. In the long term, the company plans to move towards a completely trustless exchange, steadily decentralizing ownership of the platform to its community of users. The company’s team has learned the hard way that running an exchange on a centralized server is dangerous. Bitfinex was hacked in 2016, and approximately US$72 million was stolen in the form of Bitcoin. Eventually, the company managed to pay back the money to all its clients.

On the other hand, decentralized exchanges do not store coins, funds, private keys or user information on centralized servers, thereby making it very difficult for hackers to compromise sensitive information.

Competitive fees

At Ethfinex market makers are charged up to 0.1% per trade, and market takers – up to 0.2%, which is in line with the average pricing in the crypto world these days. Those users who trade in large volume get discounts. By the way, Bitfinex has exactly the same trading fee structure.

Deposit and withdrawal fees by Ethfinex are also competitive. Deposits in digital assets are free of charge, while those in USD are charged with 0.1%. Withdrawal fees of this exchange are also in line with the average in the industry.

Leveraged trading available

Similarly to its older brother Bitfinex, Ethfinex provides margin trading. The maximum leverage level available at both exchanges is 1:3.3.

It must be mentioned that trading in volatile assets such as cryptocurrencies involves risk of loss, which are multiplied if you use leverage. So, be careful when trading on margin.

Many Ethereum-based coins available

Ethfinex offers trading in decent amount of Ethereum-based tokens, such as Ethereum, OmiseGO, EOS, Aventus, Status, Golem, and more. Although its crypto portfolio cannot be compared to the one offered by EtherDelta, the trading volumes at Ethfinex appear higher on most instruments.

Fiat accepted, bank wire transfers supported

This exchange accepts US dollars, one of the most popular “traditional” currencies.   This makes the services offered by Ethfinex more accessible to beginner traders, as it accepts cash payments via bank wire transfer.

Community vote for listing tokens

One of the biggest problems with most centralized exchanges is their reluctance to list tokens with a large community backing. That is why we consider Ethfinex’ decision to list new tokens after rounds of voting by the crypto-community as an advantage.

 
Ethfinex Disadvantages

No Bitcoin

As this platform is dedicated to Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens, you canot trade in Bitcoin on Ethfinex. However, you can always do that on the group’s Bitfinex platform.

Registered offshore

While Bitfinex is operated by Hong Kong based iFinex Inc., the company operating this exchange, Ethfinex Inc., is registered offshore. According to its Terms of Service, the governing law is the one of the British Virgin Islands. Companies registered offshore generally do not inspire a lot of trust.

Dependent on the Ethereum network

If there is serious backlog on the Ethereum network, the activity at Ethfinex will also become slow, as trading is done mostly against ETH.

Conclusion

Launched by an established group in the cryptocurrency world, Ethfinex seems like an attractive exchange especially to fans of Ethereum and Ethereum-based coins. It is planned like a platform based on a hybrid decentralized architecture, that will allow decentralized exchanges to plug into it and trade with Ethfinex customers, as well as each other.

Now in beta, Ethfinex is accessible to Bitfinex account holders with competitive trading and transfer fees. There is a decent amount of altcoins available to trade at the exchange, and besides, cash is accepted. Similarly to Bitfinex, Ethfinex provides leverage up to 1:3.3, which is a nice extra feature that most exchanges do not offer.

Although little to no regulation is applied to the crypto-exchanges in most jurisdictions, it's not good that Ethfinex Inc. is registered offshore.