BYDFI Review (Previously Bityard): Complete Exchange Overview

Bityard was the name chosen by the relatively new Singapore-based exchange, before rebranding to BYDFI in 2022. BYDFI is trying to offer a unique and uncomplicated leveraged trading experience. Essentially: complex product, simple trade.

They offer trading on up to 8 different cryptocurrencies with leverage of up to 100x. They are trying to find a unique balance between offering complicated financial instruments through a simplistic and intuitive user interface.

However, can they be trusted?

In this BYDFI review, this is exactly what we will attempt to find out. We will also give you some essential hints and tips when it comes to trading there.

Editors note: BitYard has rebranded to BYDFI and can be found at bydfi.com

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BYDFI Overview

BYDFI is an exchange that was established in 2019 and is based in Singapore. They are registered as Bityard Blockchain Foundation limited and have addresses at Paya Lebar Square Singapore.

The main products offered by the exchange are leveraged trading instruments on numerous different cryptocurrencies. The main differentiators of this is exchange is the low entry levels as well as well as their unique contract offerings. They are trying to be more simplistic than the likes of BitMEX or Prime XBT.

They are also one of the few leveraged cryptocurrency exchanges that have regulatory licences. These include licences in the USA, Australia, Estonia and Singapore.

Since they launched last year they have expanded their offering to over 150 countries around the world. They have translated their website into 8 different languages in order to cater to this expanded client base.

Something else that immediately differentiates them from some of the other exchanges that we have reviewed is that they do not have any restricted regions. Anyone in the world can create an account there and start trading.

Is BYDFI Safe?

This is one of the most important questions that any trader can ask. The safety of your funds and the security that the exchange provides is of paramount importance.

So, how does BYDFI stack up?

Well, there are a number of things that we like to individually look into when assessing this. These include the exchange security, licences, risk management and user side security.

Regulations

The first thing that you should note is that BYDFI has licences from 4 different country regulators. These include the likes of the United States, Estonia, Singapore and Australia.

You can see the full licences on their website. These regulations are important as they show that BYDFI has the authority to operate in these regions as a money service business. So, you can be sure that they will not be running away with your funds.

Exchange Security

Given that you are sending cryptocurrency to the exchange, you will want to make sure that they are protecting your coins. This is why BYDFI uses multiple wallets stored offline in cold environments.

"Cold storage" is perhaps the best way to protect the funds from a hacker as it cannot be accessed from the internet. BYDFI keeps the majority of the funds in cold storage with only a smaller portion in "hot wallets" that are used to pay withdrawals / take deposits.

When it comes to market risk, BYDFI is not like other leveraged exchanges in that they do not have an insurance fund. Instead, they have real time risk auditing and risk management tools that monitor market positions and exposure.

Communication Security

As you will have noticed, BYDFI has full SSL encryption which means that whenever you are sending documents or communicating with them - it is a secure communication.

This is also a great way for you to be able to spot phishing attempts. If you land on a website and they do not have the secure padlock in the browser it means that you are most likely on a phishing site. This means you must leave immediately to avoid the risk of having your details exposed.

User Side Security

Very often, you are the first line of security with your account. That is why it is great to see that BYDFI have provided tools in order to protect your account from being compromised by a hacker.

The first of these are two factor authentication. If you bind your phone, when you log in you will receive a text message to verify the login. This means that even if the hacker has your password, they cannot login.

Another level of security is to set up a pin in order to be able to accept withdrawals. This is one added layer of protection and could prevent any sort of unauthorised withdrawals from your account. Do take note though that your pin has to be different from your password.

Asset Coverage & Instruments

When it comes to the instruments traded on BYDFI, these are not futures. They are leveraged contracts that work very much like a Contract for Difference (CFD).

As such, there are no order books at BYDFI. When you trade you are placing a trade that is matched by the exchange themselves. The benefit of this is that you won't get any order slippage on your trades.

Slippage ❓: This is when the size of the order is too big for the market to handle and the price that you are likely to get is "slipped" from the current one.

When you are trading with BYDFI, you are doing so on the margin. This means that the margin that you are putting down is a fraction of the full trade amount and implies a leveraged position. At BYDFI, the leverage goes all the way up to 100x.

This brings us onto an important point though: You do not need to use the 100x leverage. Indeed, this is perhaps too risky. You can always start out at lower levels like 10-20x leverage.

When it comes to the asset coverage, you have a pretty decent selection to trade at BYDFI. They offer the following: Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin, DASH, EOS, Ethereum Classic, Ethereum, LINK, Litecoin, Tron & XRP. This is pretty extensive and is more than other exchanges such as Bybit et al.

Margin

The exact margin and consequently leverage, that you can take on will depend on the size of the trade. The margin may be adjusted down for some of those larger trades just to manage the risk at the exchange.

We encourage you to take a look at the individual margin limits over at the exchange but to give you an idea of what these are, below is the margin limits for Bitcoin.

It is also important to point out that at BYDFI, you will not get liquidated. This is because they have a system of isolated margin. This means that the margin that you have set aside for your trade is kept separate from the rest of your trading positions.

This is opposed to those other exchanges that have "cross margin". In this case, the margin can be adjusted across the various other positions.

K-Line Weighted Average

Given that BYDFI does not have their own order books, they will have to pull in external Bitcoin pricing data. In order to make sure that this has been done in a transparent way they will use a "K line" weighted average approach.

What this means is that the price that they reference for their contracts on the exchange is an average of the price on a number of different exchanges. In this case the exchanges referenced are Binance, OKEx and Huobi. The weights are 30%, 40% and 30% respectively.

BYDFI Fees

Fees are no doubt one of those things that could come back to bite in the long term. They do, after all, directly impact on your long term profitability.

Something that you can appreciate at BYDFI is just how simple their trading fees are. You will be charged a 0.05% commission on entry and exit of the position. So, in other words, the fee that you will be charged is:

Opening Fee = Margin*leverage*0.05% Closing Fee = Margin*leverage*0.05%  

Unlike with those exchanges that have order books, unfortunately there are no examples of "maker" or "taker" fees. This is because there is no need for liquidity as it is met by BYDFI themselves.

In terms of the other fees that you are likely to incur, you also have what is termed the "overnight fee". This is basically the fee that you will have to pay in order to keep your order on overnight. This is calculated as:

 Overnight Fee = Margin * Leverage * 0.045% * Days  

You should note though that positions are not automatically kept open overnight. This is something that you have to select when you are making your trades on the platform (we will cover in a bit). The Overnight Fee will be charged at 05:55:00 (GMT+8, Singapore time).

Finally, when it comes to deposit and withdrawal fees, you won't be charged any fees on a deposit. However, when making a withdrawal you will have to pay 2 USDT.

BYDFI Registration

If you have decided that you would like to give BYDFI a try then you will need to create an account. This can either be done with an email address or a mobile number. Once you have submitted that you will have to verify your email.

Once you are logged in you can start trading immediately. There is no need to complete any sort of KYC here unless you are going to be funding your account with Fiat currency.

Demo Account

One of the best ways to get a sense of how the BYDFI platform works is through the use of a demo account. These allow you to use the platform to its full functionality without risking your initial funds.

It is also free and included the moment that you register an account. You do not have to register a separate demo account to start trading with. You will be able to switch between the demo and the live account at the bottom left of the platform.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Deposits at BYDFI are pretty simple and can be done with any cryptocurrency. While you are logged in you will head on over to "Panel" then hit "Deposit". Here you have an overview where you can select a coin.

Do note that if you are going to be funding in Tether (USDT) there are three different options here. You can either fund in TRC20, ERC20 or OMNI. When you click on the coin it will pull up either the QR code or the address.

How long the deposit will take depends on the coin that you are sending. Each of the different coins require a certain amount of confirmations to be completed before they are credited in your account.

Block Explorer 🔎: If you wanted to see exactly how long your deposit was going to take you could make use of a blockchain block explorer.

When it comes to fiat funding, this is currently only available in Vietnam and Mainland China. However, when I spoke to the team on live chat, they told me that they will be rolling out this "OTC feature" to the rest of the world in due course.

Withdraw

When it comes to withdrawals, these can only be done in Tether (USDT). Do note though that on top of the $2 fee, the minimum withdrawal amount is $50. So, you will need $52 in your account in order to withdraw.

Withdrawals are just as simple as funding. You will just need to head on over to "withdraw" and then choose the type of Tether address you will be withdrawing to.

Warning ⚠️: Make sure that you have chosen the correct address to send to. If you send to the wrong USDT address you could lose access to your funds forever.

Before you can make the withdrawal, you will need to set up a pin address in case you have not already. Finally, you just need to hit "Withdraw" and they will process it with their next round of transactions. You can use the same blockchain explorer tool that I mentioned above.

BYDFI Trading Platform

It's time to take a look into the belly of the beast - the trading platform.

The first thing that you will notice when you land on the BYDFI platform is just how simplistic it is. Firstly, you should note that the layout is adjustable. You can also increase the size of the chart in order to do your analysis.

However, with the standard layout you have all of your markets on the left where you can select which one you want to trade. Then in the center you have your charts, to the right your order forms and then below that you have all of your previous and live orders.

When it comes to the charts itself, they are not the most advanced that we have seen. You can't really use any sort of technical indicators and tools. However, you can map some trendlines and patterns with some of the drawing tools that they have provided.

Night Owls 🦉️: You can switch the color scheme of the site and move it over to the dark UI if that is something that you prefer

While you cannot do any sort of advanced technical analysis on these charts, you can always do that on a separate charting site such as tradingview. You can then place your orders on BYDFI. They have chosen this simple chart as they want to make it uncluttered for the beginners.

As mentioned, below the chart you have all the order management where you can adjust live and pending orders. A pretty neat feature that they have is that you can close all of the positions that you have all at once.

If you scroll down a bit just below the order form you will see the description of the asset. This gives you more information on what the cryptocurrency is and how the contracts function.

Order Forms

Like the rest of the platform, you will notice how simple the order form is. You don't have that much functionality around the order parameters like order life etc.

There are two types of orders that you can place at BYDFI:

• Market Order: This is an order that you place at the exact market rate. It will be the latest traded price that has gone through on the BYDFI platform
• Limit Order: This is an order that is placed away from the market rate and which will be executed once it reaches that. This can be above for a sell order or below for a buy order.

Once you have chosen the order that you would like to place you will have to select the leverage you are willing to trade with. Don't forget that this exact number will depend on how large the total trade size is.

You will also see in the top right of the order form, you have the option to select your Take Profit (TP) level as well as your Stop Loss (SL) ratio. Here you can also select whether you would like it to be held overnight as well as order confirmations.

Top Tip 💯: You should always set Take Profits and stop losses when you are starting your trade out. This can remove the emotional component from the trade and will execute the trade while you are asleep

You should also note that the max Take Profit that you can set is 500%. This is because of how volatile cryptocurrencies can be.

Mobile App

There may come a time when you need to be away from your desk and this is where the mobile app could come in handy.

The BYDFI mobile app takes a lot of its same queues from the platform itself. You also do have pretty neat functionality like being able to pull up a chart and monitor your positions as well as one touch order features.

The App is available on both iOS and Android in both the iTunes store as well as Google Play. In order to get a better sense of what users think about it we decided to head on over to the ratings here.

As you can see, there are pretty good reviews of the app in iTunes where they have over 4.3 stars in total. Over at the Play store the rating is much more polarised where they appear to only have 3.2 stars.

It seems that most of the feedback over here seems to be centered around the fact that it is only in Chinese. There has not been any feedback from the developers over at BYDFI but one hopes they are to release an English version soon.

So, should you use mobile trading?

Well, I am not the biggest fan of it in general but if it is the only option for you when stuck for choice then you should give the BYDFI app a go.

Customer Support

Often, one of the most frustrating things that we see with traders is when they have to deal with shoddy customer support at exchanges. Days waiting on end for those tickets to be answered. Hence, this is why it is such an important criterion that we test at the exchanges.

At BYDFI, the quickest and easiest way to get hold of them is through the use of their live chat function. When we tried this on a number of occasions we were helped almost instantly.

They connected us to an agent who was incredibly helpful every time we reached out. This was despite the time of day. This is great to see and should be a standard that other exchanges should try to set.

If, however, you are a bit more old school then you can always reach out to them on their email address and they will try to get back to you.

Social Media 📱: If you have tried to reach out to them via email and they have not responded, then you can always reach them on social media. This includes Twitter, Telegram and Facebook.

Finally, if your query is more routine in nature then you can always just use their extensive FAQ section. They have all of the questions that other traders have asked so you can be certain that your more general questions will have been answered there.

Promotion

Something pretty neat about BYDFI is that they have a number of promotions and bonuses that allow you to earn free cryptocurrency. This could be a great way for you to augment your trading.

This crypto is earned from just doing a number of elementary things on the platform. These include things like setting up a username, binding an email or a phone number, conducting a simple live or demo trade, surpassing certain volumes of trades. You can see the full list on their rewards page.

When you create an account, you also have the opportunity to earn their proprietary BYD token. This is a platform token that is issued by BYDFI with a total supply of 210 million. You will get 6 BYD after your activation.

Something else that we found quite exciting about BYDFI is their daily mining. Every day they give away some free crypto which you can mine over on their mining page. All you need to do to claim them is to click on them.

Do take note though that these mining rewards are gift money and can only be used to reduce trading fees. They cannot be withdrawn from your account. The gift money will automatically be deducted when you place an order.

Refer A Friend

If you have been quite happy with your trading at BYDFI then you can make money from referring friends, family and followers. This is through their "refer a friend" framework.

They have some of the highest earning potential on the market where the top tier affiliates can earn up to 60% of the commission from those traders that they refer. You can see a complete breakdown of the commission tiers over here:

Apart from the earning potential at BYDFI, affiliates also get dedicated 1 on 1 support as well as real time settlement of their commissions. You will also get a multidimensional report that can give you an overview of what your referral statistics look like.

Fun Fact 🥊: The famous Muay Thai kickboxer, Buacaw Banchamek, openly endorsed BYDFI in a Facebook post. You can read more about that here.

If you want to join the program then you simply need to grab your referral link.

Areas For Improvement

Now while there are a number of things that we did indeed like about BYDFI, it is only fitting that we run through some of the areas for improvement that we think were warranted.

Firstly, it would be great to see more funding options apart from cryptocurrency. Very often, those new to cryptocurrency do not have their funds in crypto initially. It would be great to have some fiat funding options like USD or EUR.

It would also be great if users could withdraw in other assets apart from USDT. If you are trading a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin on the platform then it is only fitting that you should be able to withdraw it.

When it comes to security, it would be great for their two-factor authentication that they offered Google authenticator. SMS based authentication is risky as it opens users up to sim swap fraud.

It would also be great if there was a bit more charting functionality. We know that they are using the current form in order to simplify but there may be those traders who want a bit more to work with when they are trading.

Finally, this is still a brand new exchange which means that it does not have an established track record. However, if they maintain their same customer service levels and standards this could come in due course.

Conclusion

In summary, this is a great leveraged exchange that is making complicated instruments simple to use for traders of all skill levels. A trading experience with no slippage and liquidations.

It's also pretty secure given that they have licences from 4 different regulators. Add to that their advanced coin management protocols and risk management policies and you have a pretty secure exchange to trade with.

We also found their customer support to be among the best with agents who knew what they were talking about. They answered us in under 1 minute irrespective of the time of day.

Of course, there are some areas of improvement that we highlighted. However, if they were receptive to this review then they could implement changes which could take the trading experience to the next level.

So, should you use them?

Well, if you are looking for a beginner friendly leveraged exchange with decent asset coverage and top-notch support, then it should definitely be considered. True to their moniker, they provide a complex product traded simply.

Warning ⚡️: Trading leveraged futures products is incredibly risky. Make sure that you practice adequate risk management

Disclaimer: These are the writer’s opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.