Table of contents
Overview and History
Hotbit is a relatively new exchange founded in January of 2018, at the very height of the bull run. Hotbit is known to provide one of the most extensive list of trading pairs in the market. According to Coingecko, Hotbit has 791 trading pairs for 398 coins in total. It’s ranked in the top 3 among all exchanges for most number of cryptocurrency projects listed. Aside from this, Hotbit has been nimble and very quick to add new features as you will see below.
The Hotbit team is registered in both Hong Kong and Estonia while operating out of Shanghai and Taipei. It can be said that they are a truly global exchange supporting six different languages (e.g. Chinese, English, Russian, Korean, Thai, Turkish). They have over 500,000 registered users from more than 170 countries and areas all over the world, among which 90% are non-Chinese users. They self report a daily volume of about $3.3B but normalized reports show daily volume is around $50m to $100m. This is still a good amount of volume. Out of the 791 pairs, more than 80% are coming from the top 10 pairs leaving the majority of the other tokens with less liquidity with an average of $50,000 worth of transactions.
One of the unique features Hotbit offers users is they distribute interest for its users. This does not even require users to lock the fund or enroll it into a special deposit program. To date, they have distributed more than $180,000 worth already to their users. Even holding major coins such USDT, BTC and ETH will earn you some rewards.
KYC and Registration
Hotbit allows two main ways for you to register. You can register via email or mobile number. Just enter the code sent to your email or phone and you’re already ready to start trading. If you’re afraid of sharing details about yourself, you’re in luck. Hotbit does not require any KYC to register, trade, and withdraw. However according to them, they have certain “high risk control systems” in place. Once such alarms are triggered, they can ask you for KYC as needed. These are often triggered during withdrawals.
Hotbit Main Exchange
Hotbit’s main exchange looks very similar to most exchanges. The main chart is smack in the middle. You will definitely feel at home since they have integrated TradingView charts. You will see all the trading pairs at the left side while on the right you will see the order books. The buying and selling options are below.
Unlike other exchanges, a big downside is that Hotbit currently offers just limit buying and limit selling order options. They do not have market orders or stop limits. But they do have a feature that allows you to place hidden orders. This is usually done by big buyers or sellers that do not want their orders to be seen by the market and skew prices or get front run.
Fiat Gateways
Hotbit currently offers an option for users to deposit USD directly into their accounts. This is done through a service provider called EPAY. You will need to have an EPAY account in order to avail of this service. You can access this by going to the fund section and clicking “withdrawals and deposits” and then choosing the EPAY Deposit and withdrawals tab. USD deposits will have a minimum of $1 and a 1% transaction fee. If you want to load $1000, then it will charge you $10. You can find more details on how to use EPAY here: How to deposit USD on Hotbit
Trading fees
There are two main kinds of fees when trading, a maker fee and a taker fee. The difference between the two is the taker fee is taking liquidity from the exchange while the maker fee is providing and adding liquidity. If you place an order and it is filled instantly, you are on the taker side. If you place an order and it floats on the exchange, it means you’re on the maker side.
Hotbit charges a 0.2% taker fee and a -0.05% maker fee. The taker fee is considerably high compared to most exchanges. However, almost no other exchange offers negative maker fees. This greatly incentives users to increase liquidity in the exchange. Negative maker fees act like a rebate. So you actually get money back for making the trade.
Deposit and Withdrawal Fees
Hotbit provides free deposit services for all the tokens available on Hotbit. As for withdrawal, there will be a corresponding withdrawal fee. The fee varies depending on the token that you are withdrawing. Major tokens like BTC, ETH, and USDT will have withdrawal fees of 0.001 BTC, 0.01 ETH, and 2 USDT respectively. These are reasonable amounts compared to other exchanges. There is also a minimum that must be reached in order for a successful withdrawal. The full list of fees can be seen here: https://www.hotbit.io/rate
HTB (Hotbit Token)
HTB is the cryptocurrency token of the Hotbit Platform. Hotbit has designed multiple use cases for the token’s utility and multiple ways for it to increase in value.
- Hotbit will create a digital assets wiki system. Contributors here will be rewarded with the HTB token.
- Hotbit will design a worldwide customer service system and reward contributors with HTB.
- IEO sales will have allocations that can be bought only with HTB.
- Hotbit will create an automatic listing system where projects provide certain information and provide the necessary capital needed and they will get listed on Hotbit upon approval.
- A portion of the transaction fees collected by the exchange will be used to buy HTB from the market thus increasing demand.
- Half of those purchased tokens will be burned while the other half will be redistributed for marketing campaigns.
Hotbit Products
Hotbit is one of the most adaptive and creative crypto exchanges in the space when it comes to products they offer to users. They quickly adapt to new trends and try to get their version to the market as fast as possible. For example, in 2019, with the IEO craze heating up, Hotbit started their own IEO platform as well. They also have multiple gaming products. Hotbit’s products can be categorized into trading, investments and gaming.
Hotbit Investment Products
Hotbit offers two main types of investment products. They call these fixed term investment and current deposit investment.
Fixed Term Investment
The first one, fixed term investments, allows users to earn returns by locking their tokens. All of these products currently are on a permanent validity period meaning there is no specific start and end date. You will see the expected annualized return, the expected income, minimum deposit as well as the time period for redemption or unlocking. All of these vary depending on the token you are locking with. They currently offer this service for the following tokens: BTC, USDT, ETH, ONT, EDG, MDU, VSYS, IOTX, ALGO, KSM, BHD, FSN, ATOM and PCX.
Current deposit investment
Unlike fixed term investments, you do not need to lock your tokens for the current deposit investment. Just having on your wallet already allows you to start earning from those tokens. While the yield varies depending on the token, annualized yield is understandably lower compared to fixed term deposits. This service is available for the following tokens: BTC, USDT, ETH, ALGO, ATOM, BHD, BTM, DASH, EDG, FSN, IOST, IOTX, IRIS, KSM, MDU, ONT, PCX, SERO, TOMO, USDX, VSYS, XZC, ZEL.
Hotbit Polaris (IEOs)
Hotbit Polaris is Hotbit’s own IEO launch platform. The predecessor of the IEO is the ICO also known as Initial Coin Offering. An ICO is the first time that a crypto token has been made available for sale to the public. This is akin to an IPO in traditional markets. Before the IEO, projects that did an ICO had to make their own website, their own funding mechanism. But with the advent of the IEO, the crypto exchange handles this for you. Hotbit raises funds on behalf of the company while listing it for trading shortly right after.
Hotbit’s first IEO was a project called Lichang. The IEO was launched on April 7 2019 and was quickly listed 2 days after. Since then, Hotbit has managed to raise 11 IEOs as of March 2020. One thing Hotbit does is they actually raise in two ways, one is in USDT, and the other is in HTB, the exchange’s own cryptocurrency.
Hotbit Mobile App
Hotbit offers both android and iOS app. On iOS, the app is not actually listed on the App store. You can only download and install the app directly from the QR code linked on their website. As for Android, it is on the Google Play store. Most of the reviews are negative citing problems with withdrawals and functionalities. If you are trading on Hotbit, it is advised to stick with their website version as their apps are still buggy and the iOS app is not officially listed on the App Store.
Hotbit Activity Center
Compared to most exchanges, Hotbit does a lot of marketing and internal competitions and activities. You will be able to see all the campaigns running as well as past campaigns in this tab. Most activities fall into one of these categories: trading competitions, giveaways, and events.
This shows Hotbit’s support for the different projects that they have and their initiative to stimulate trading activity and volume for these tokens. They work hand in hand with the different projects and thus they are also getting exposure from blockchain projects as well.
Hotbit Dapps
Originally launched in October of 2019, Hotbit has included a section in their website where users can use different dapps. All of available one are gaming dapps. While most are casino games, they do offer other games too like Soccer which still involves betting. Here you use your balance in your gaming wallet to bet and win more. Aside from BTC and USDT, they also allow you to bet with other currencies such as BEAM and GRIN.
You can access your gaming wallet by going to the Funds section and clicking the game account tab. They currently offer the following coins which you can use to bet with:
- USDT
- BTC
- ETH
- HTB
- EOS
- BEAM
- GRIN
- LTC
- DAPPC
Hotbit Customer Support
Hotbit offers multiple ways of getting in touch with them. The main channel is through their support ticketing system. Hotbit also has an official Chinese WeChat group, official Chinese and English Telegram channels, official Twitter account and Facebook accounts. It’s good to see that they make contacting their support and helping you with your issues very accessible.
Hotbit also has a comprehensive FAQ section on their website. Their FAQ covers most of the topics answering all the questions newcomers might have about the exchange. Topics range from their services to account and wallet support.
Operation Security
Hotbit’s has an internal security audit team that provides 24/7 real-time online audit services for users’ assets. Hotbit has also established strategic partnerships with two top audit teams in the industry, namely SlowMist and Beosin. They consistently stress test and look for potential existing security problems and alert close the holes before they get exploited
As for user accounts, Hotbit offers different ways to help you protect your account. You can enable all of these in the security settings.
2FA – This has been a standard form of account protection for most crypto exchanges. This involves using a separate device that generates a unique code or combination every few seconds. You will be asked to enter this code upon signing in.
Email verifications – Whenever you would like to withdraw funds, an email will be sent to your email address for you to confirm if this transaction is legitimate.
SMS verifications – Users are required to use SMS verification during login, withdrawals, password modification and API management.
Hot and Cold Wallets – This is a standard procedure that separates revolving funds (hot wallet) and most user funds (cold wallet). The cold wallet is disconnected from the internet so it is less likely to be hacked. It is akin to banks not having all of their money locked in a giant safe. They only hold what they expect to be transacted that day.
Conclusion
Hotbit is a decent mid tier exchange that has a decent volume of users and trading volume. They cover a ton of different coins which is good but most of these tokens lack liquidity so the ask bid spread can be large. One good thing about the exchange is how fast they list tokens and rollout new products. They are very active on the marketing side with a lot of promotions as seen in their activity center.
However, one must still be wary of the exchange. It has a couple of complaints from different users on the internet that claim they lost money from the exchange. Trust score for this exchange is much lower than other exchanges. All in all, Hotbit has a lot of pros and cons. It is hard to tell if these complaints are resolved or isolated cases. So in the end, best to be extra vigilant especially when you are dealing with large amounts of coins.