This is a sponsored beginners’ guide by BitMax.io.
Introduction
BitMax.io (platform native token: BTMX) is a Singapore-registered digital asset trading platform servicing retail and institutional clients across the globe. The platform currently has 84 digital assets listed, and offers access to over 82 coins and 191 trading pairs.* In this first post of our three-part series, we will introduce you to BitMax.io and cover how to get started on the platform.
Brief History of BitMax
BitMax.io was formally launched in August 2018 with a mission to “support financial market innovation and advancement of crypto economy… through building upon a series of open and fair market rules…to the liquidity of the overall market, enhance market depth and support blockchain structural optimization.”
BitMax.io was the first trading platform to introduce the combined model of “transaction-mining” and “reversing-mining” mechanism. The hybrid-mining model rapidly became popular and was quickly emulated by other trading platforms. However, BitMax has recently discontinued the hybrid mining model to pursue new ways to promote trading efficiency and liquidity.
In 2019, BitMax.io’s growth in market share has been largely driven by its relentless product innovation. The launch of its cross-asset collateral margin trading in February 2019 was a shining example of the platform’s rapid expansion of product-offerings beyond traditional spot trading. Similar to the platform’s margin trading, the introduction of Volatility Cards in June 2019 has again showcased the team’s deep understanding of capital markets and their advanced expertise in financial product design.
About the Founders and Key Management Members
Led by co-founders Dr. George Cao (CEO) and Ariel Ling (COO), BitMax’s founding team comprises of Wall Street quant trading and crypto trading veterans. The team has rich experience working in top traditional financial firms including Morgan Stanely, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Bloomberg, as well as top digital asset trading platforms such as Gemini.
George Cao, CEO
Mr. George Cao has an over-decade executive experience in building and management of quantitative trading and venture capital platforms in global financial markets. He has an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of product development, strategy research and risk management in global capital markets.
George was the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Delpha Capital Management, LLC., New York. Delpha Capital specializes in trading equity, ETFs and commodity future products in all major trading platforms across the globe. He is also the co-founder of Whitestone Investment Group, a New York-based venture fund with investment focus on large variety of startup companies in the high tech, fintech, big data and medical space.
Before founding his own business, Mr. Cao worked at the Equity Division of Barclays Capital based in both its New York and London offices, managing quantitative systematic trading in the U.S., European and Asian markets. Prior to joining Barclays, he researched and traded U.S. equity as a Portfolio Manager at Knight Capital Group. Mr. Cao gained professional experience in structured financial products while working for Cohen & Co supporting the issuance of $40 billion in structured financial products (Structured Finance Product).
Mr. Cao graduated with Bachelor of Computer Science in the University of Science and Technology of China as well as earned his PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Chicago.
Ariel Ling, COO
20-year veteran Wall Street executive, Ms. Ariel Ling has built extensive professional experience in strategic planning, business development, financial risk management and regulatory implementation across major trading asset classes (Equity, FX, Fixed Income) at top global investment banks and management consulting (Deutsche Bank, Barclays / Lehman Brother, Commerzbank, etc.).
Prior to jumping into digital asset trading, Ariel was Head of Liquidity and Investment Product for top-tier global investment bank, leading USD short-term investment solution offering and product development to global financial institutional and corporate clients. Before that, she ran US Broker Dealer as COO for Germany 2nd largest bank in US and led regional strategy planning as head of Business Development. Earlier from 2007 to 2012, Ariel was Global Equity Trading COO across Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital, building out trading franchise, quantitative trading and market making businesses globally, such as multiple merger & acquisitions to build up No. 1 Designated Market Making business on the NYSE.
Ms. Ling holds four degrees —she graduated top of class from Nankai University with two Bachelor degrees in Finance and English Literature and gained an MBA degree from NYU Stern School of Business and Master of Mass Communication from the University of Georgia.
Shane Molidor, Global Head of Business Development
Mr. Molidor has extensive professional experience in the cryptocurrency industry since 2015 with deep understanding of trading platform infrastructure, custody solutions, regulation, and marketplace dynamics.
He formerly served as the Global Head of FBG One, the trading division of China’s largest cryptocurrency hedge fund, FBG Capital, where he oversaw all Designated Market Making and over-the-counter (“OTC”) trading operations. Prior to that, Mr. Molidor was one of the first hires responsible for business development at Gemini Trust Company, LLC, a fully regulated New York-based cryptocurrency trading platform and custodian founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Before entering the cryptocurrency industry, Mr. Molidor served as a technology consultant at IBM.
Mr. Molidor holds a Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University and also attended The London School of Economics where he studied Economics.
Innovation
In this fast-paced industry, BitMax.io has set itself apart from regular cash trading platforms with their innovative product offering such as volatility and margin products.
Volatility Cards
BitMax introduced their volatility cards, a volatility-linked derivative product. In August 2019. The volatility cards allow users to effectively forecast and trade-off 24-hour price fluctuation of the underlying major coins in a simple and easy-to-understand structure. We will dive deeper into this and BitMax’s other financial products in Part Two of our series.
Margin Trading
Margin trading allows users to borrow assets from the trading platform to increase buying or selling power to potentially achieve higher trading returns. BitMax.io also has a very unique and efficient margin borrow interest mechanism where no interest will be charged for any repayment within 8 hours. We will be covering more about BitMax.io’s margin trading features in Part Three.
First Impressions
Getting started on BitMax.io is relatively quick and simple. You can access it from any computer browser or your mobile phone using their dedicated iOS or Android app. For the purpose of this guide, we will be showing you how to set up your account using your computer. We recommend that you use incognito mode on Google Chrome for the best performance.
Signing up for a BitMax.io account
Getting started on BitMax.io is relatively quick and simple. You can access it from any computer browser or your mobile phone using their dedicated iOS or Android app. For the purpose of this guide, we will be showing you how to set up your account using your computer. We recommend that you use incognito mode on Google Chrome for the best performance.
Click ‘Sign up’ and key in your email and password. After signing up, an email will be sent to you with a verification code to complete registration. Once you fill-up the verification code and you’ll get immediately get access to the platform.
Setup Google 2-Factor Authentication
With all things crypto, you need to keep safe. After signing up, the first thing we recommend you to do is set up your Google 2Factor-Authorization (2FA (If you don’t already have it, you’ll need to download Google’s Authenticator app). Follow the setup instructions and voila! You’re all set to trade!
Know-your-customer (“KYC”)
BitMax.io is does not require KYC verification to get started. The trading platform has a 2 BTC withdrawal limit per 24 hours if you do not KYC. This is perfect for beginners! However, if you plan on trading more, we recommend that you complete your KYC verification. The advantage of this include:
- Withdrawal of up to 100 BTC per 24 hours;
- Access to participate in projects’ public sales facilitated by BitMax.io and offered to BitMax.io users;
- and, Eligibility to participate in various activities and events including, but not limited to, airdrop and trading competitions.
NOTE: BitMax.io does not provide services to users in certain countries. Kindly refer to the list of countries that are not eligible at the end of this article.
Start Cash Trading
Now that your account is all set, let’s have a look at BitMax.io’s cash trading interface. At first glance, the interface is similar to other trading platforms - making it easy and intuitive. Here are some quick tools you will be using as you trade on BitMax.io.
Candlestick Chart
This is a style of financial chart used to describe price movements of the trading pair. It shows how far and the direction the price of an asset is moved during a specific time period. Each “candlestick” shows one day. For beginners, the most important thing to note about this chart is that these patterns that the price is likely to rise (Bullish patterns) or fall (Bearish patterns).
Experienced day-traders may use candlestick charts to analyze patterns to provide insight on potential trading opportunities and market trends. To learn more about Candlesticks, here’s a great reference: Introduction to Candlesticks
Trading Pair
Here you can choose which pair you want to trade. BitMax.io currently lists 82 assets, and offers access to over 191 trading pairs. Popular trading pairs include BTC/USDT and ETH/USDT.
Place Order
Here you can place your trading orders including the amount you want to buy/sell, execution price (price at which you buy/sell) and the types of orders you want to execute.
For a quick recap, you can execute up to 4 types of orders using BitMax.io's Cash Trading:
- Limit Order (An order to buy/sell at a specific price)
- Market Order (An order to buy/sell at market price)
- Stop Limit Order (An order to execute limit order once an asset reaches a price)
- Stop Market Order (An order to execute market order once an asset reaches a price)
Check open orders, order history and asset summary
Just like most other trading interfaces, you can also check for any open orders (Orders that are currently live and not executed), order history (orders that have been executed), as well as a summary of all the assets you currently own.
Trade History
Trade History shows all the trades that occurred within the asset’s market by traders across BitMax.io’s userbase.
Order book
An Order Book refers to the list of open orders arranged at different prices. This also refers to the market depth, which can give you a sense of the market’s liquidity, i.e., how much can you buy before your orders start affecting the market price of the asset.
How to Trade on BitMax.io
Now that you are somewhat familiar with BitMax.io’s interface. Let’s look at how to execute a simple order on the trading platform.
STEP 1 - Select Trading Pair
STEP 2A - Select an Order Type
Similar to other trading platforms, BitMax offers four order types: Limit Order, Market Order, Stop Limit Order and Stop Market Order
Limit Order
A limit order is an instruction to trade at the best price available, but only if it is no worse than the limit price specified by the trader. For buy orders, the trade price must be at or below the limit price. For sell orders, the price must be at or above the limit price. Limit orders are rest on the order book and therefore provide liquidity to the market. The limit order remains open until executed against a trader that removes the liquidity.
Market Order
A market order is an instruction to trade at the best price currently available in the market. It can be used to quickly buy or sell against available liquidity resting on the order book.
STEP 3 - Check your order status, order history and asset summary
Trading Fees
BitMax.io’s dynamic Fee & Rebate Structure allows traders to receive up to a 2.5 bps (0.025%) rebate for providing liquidity (“maker”) and pay as little as a 1.5 bps (0.015%) fee for taking liquidity (“taker”) on the platform.
Click here for all of BitMax.io’s fees.
BitMax.io’s Strengths
Along with its various products, some of BitMax.io’s key value propositions include:
- Transparency: Robust marketplace control mechanisms designed to prevent deceptive trading practices such as self-crossing and disruptive trading; Real-time post-trade settlement; comprehensive transaction records available upon request.
- High-Performance Connectivity: Institutional-grade trading architecture capable of handing over 400,000 transactions per second ("TPS"); Order entry via REST, streaming market data via WebSockets; future FIX connectivity.
- Innovative Margin Trading: Trade with up to 10x leverage with cross-asset collateral margin trading system; 0% interest on margin borrow when repaid within 8 hours.
- Robust Platform Security: Majority of customer assets maintained in cold storage with multi-sig requirement for transfers to hot wallet; Multi-level firewall and segmentation; Real-time system monitoring.
- Trading Efficiency: Deep and resilient liquidity driven by a diverse range of professional traders, market makers, investors, and globally distributed communities.
Conclusion - Easy, Quick and Simple
For those looking to get into crypto trading, BitMax.io’s advantage is its no frills approach of not having to KYC immediately and its relatively low trading fees. This makes it easy for you to get started. For more sophisticated clientele, the platform’s suite of products and services offers various investment and trading opportunities. Of course, with all investments there is a risk, and we recommend you take time to fully understand the market.
This is a sponsored beginners’ guide by BitMax.io.
*The following are countries or regions that BitMax.io does not serve: USA, The Balkans, Belarus, Burma, Cote D'lvoitre (Ivory Coast), Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cambodia, Ecuador, Nepal.
Market Research Analyst at CoinGecko and cryptocurrency fan since 2014. I like to geek out about things in the crypto space. You can read some of my stuff at kristiankho.com. Follow the author on Twitter @Kristian_Kho
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