PrimeXBT – The Best Choice for Crypto Traders

I have covered a couple of ways to get started with day trading in the crypto space. You can find some inspiration in this post for a daytrading setup that shows multiples times every single day on the bitcoin chart. You can also choose something like the market god indicator, the BSI indicator from Ivan on Tech, or something very different like what Moonin Papa is teaching.

Regardless of how you chose to go about trading, you need a place to execute your trades -and the tough question is, who do you choose? The list is long, and every single broker/exchange comes with many advantages and disadvantages compared to all of their peers. There are many variables to take into account before making up your mind.

Enter PrimeXBT

Today we are taking a look at PrimeXBT. PrimeXBT was founded in 2018, so they are new to the brokerage scene. But that should not scare you. They have a brilliant offering, with lots of features. If you are looking for an excellent broker to handle your crypto day trading activities, PrimeXPT is a solid choice. In this post, I am going to cover PrimeXBT and everything they have to offer. Read on for all the details.

Instruments – multiple asset classes

While the name may indicate that PrimeXBT’s single focus is on cryptocurrencies, this is far from the truth. Unlike most other crypto brokers, PrimeXBT allows you to trade cryptos, as well as FX, indices, precious metals, and commodities. Below is a full list of all the instruments you can trade with a single account on PrimeXBT.

More instruments equal more opportunities. As long as you have a positive balance on your account, you will be able to trade all the different instruments. If you deposit BTC, you will still be able to trade ETH, GBPUSD, and SPX. There is no need to have a BTC, ETH, and fiat balance. It’s straight forward.

PrimeXBT Fees & Commission

Fees on PrimeXBT are very fair. With other brokers, we see funding fees on cryptos multiple times per day. With PrimeXBT, the funding fee is charged once per day at EOD. While you won’t receive funding on PrimeXBT, you will only pay it once. I prefer this method compared to how other brokers do it. A single daily financing fee makes things much more manageable than if applied multiple times throughout the day. Just as with other brokers, the funding rate is fluctuating. It currently shows the following for BTCUD:

Financing day / Long 0.4167% Daily Funding Rate

Financing day / Short 0.0417% Daily Funding Rate

Commission is 0.05% for Cryptos, 0.001% for FX and 0.01% for indices. This is, in my opinion, very fair and better than most competing brokers.

The industry standard setup is with a maker and taker fee, where you pay around 0.075% as a taker and receive 0.025% as a maker (pay 0.075% for market orders and receive 0.025% for limit orders). This looks good on the surface, but I think it’s fair to say that most day traders won’t be able to execute profitable short term trades using limit orders continuously. Successful day trading is a difficult skill to master. Day trading with limit orders only, does not make this any easier. It is a very different game compared to day trading with market orders.  I am sure most day traders end up using market orders, and because of this, you will be better off with PrimeXBT than one of their peers with the standard maker/taker setup.

The short version is that PrimeXBT will be a better option for most day traders. It is cheaper and easier to manage

Platform

The platform itself is good as well. If you are used to tradingview, you will be familiar with the charts shown on the platform. Initially, you will see a default setup, but you can amend this to your likings.

Let’s start with the five sections in the top menu of PrimeXBT.

Main

The main tab shows your wallets, balances and your various accounts. This is where you go if you need to deposit funds. Next to the wallet information, you will see your trading account balance. To trade on PrimeXBT, you first need to deposit funds to your wallet and then transfer funds from your wallet to your trading account (which can be done in a minute or less).

from the main page you have access to six sub-sections:

Dashboard (this is the the default site when you go to the main section, and what was just covered above.

Buy Crypto

Promo Codes

Referrals

Reports

Settings

These sub-sections should be pretty self-explanatory, but there are a couple of things worth highlighting. From the “Buy Crypto” section, you can purchase cryptos directly via Coinify or Paxful. If you buy through Coinify, you will be charged a 3.7% fee if you purchase with Visa/Mastercard and 2% with SEPA. In the “Promo Codes” section, you can enter a promo code if you have any, in order to get a discount on trading fees, or receive a bonus on your deposit at PrimeXBT. You can also see your account status, where you can get a trading fee discount, all depending on the volume done on your account. Finally the referrals section allows you to earn money by referring other traders to sign up as a client of PrimeXBT.

Margin

The Trade tab’s default setup shows four workspaces (as tabs on the platform); TRADE, Charts, Trading History, and Activity Log. You can add more as you please. Each workspace contains widgets, which can be added, moved, and removed. You can choose from the following: Chart, Watchlist, Dashboard, Positions, Orders, Trades, Messages. They should all be fairly self-explanatory. Moving widgets around can feel a bit laggy at times, but I got no complaints besides this. It is all very clear and intuitive.

In the trade tab, below the upper menu, you will see;

• A drop-down menu where you can choose between regular trading, one-click trading, and dbl. click trading.
• Regular trading: To execute a trade, you can right-click on the chart, followed by a click on buy or sell. As an alternative, you can click on the buy or sell button at the top left corner of any chart. This will bring up a window where you can amend the details of the trades as you please.
• Symbol: Default will be the symbol from the chart you entered in the window. You can change the symbol here merely by typing it in.
• Order type: Here, you can choose from the following types:
• Market: Entering at market is the most common order type for the majority of retail traders. It merely means you will enter a position at the current market rate. What is important to note here is that with a market order, order size has priority, whereas entry price is secondary. This means you are guaranteed to get a fill for the requested amount of the trade. There is, however, no guarantee of the price, your trade will be executed at. With a market order, you agree to get the best price available for the amount requested at the moment the broker receives your request.
• Limit: With limit orders, we are placing an order to buy below the current market rate or sell above the current market rate. Limit orders are different from market orders in that they are latent orders at specific price levels, which will be triggered once the price is reached. They also differ from market orders in that with limit orders, price prevails, and volume is secondary. This means that you are guaranteed to get the price requested, but you may not get the full position you requested (a partial fill, that is).
• Stop: Stop orders are latent orders similar to limit orders and identical to market orders in terms of execution. More specifically, you will place a stop order to buy above the current market rate and a stop order to sell below current market rate. Once the requested price is triggered, your order will be sent for execution with volume as priority, and price is secondary. Hence, on stop orders, you will get the requested volume of the trade, but there is no guarantee of the fill price, as it will be sent to PrimeXBT’s LPs as a market order.
• OCO (One-Cancels-The-Other): An OCO order or One-Cancels-Other, is a conditional order. An OCO order allows you to combine two different orders under particular conditions. Once one of the orders is triggered and executed, the second order is automatically canceled. As an example, you can combine a stop and a limit order. Say the price of BTCUSD is trading at 30,000. If price reaches 31,000 you want to sell. If price goes down to 29,000 you want to sell. In this example, you would place a limit sell at 31,000, and a stop sell at 29,000. Once either one of the two pending orders is triggered, the other one is canceled.
• One-Click Trading: This will execute a trade with one single click. There is no need to confirm the actual trade.
• Dbl.-Click trading: Two clicks will execute the trade with no need for confirmation.

As a general rule of thumb, I think it’s safe to say that most day traders and short term traders should strive to use market and/or stop orders rather than limit orders. There are certainly advantages to use limit orders, but most retail traders won’t be able to utilize this profitably – more on this in a future post about day trading.

Next to the drop-down, we have:

Balance: Your account balance listed in BTC and USD

Equity: Your balance +/- any floating PL, in BTC and USD

Unrealized PL: Floating PL from open positions in BTC and USD

Used margin: Margin that has been locked at as a result of your current open position. This cannot be used towards opening up new positions. This is also listed in BTC and USD

Available Margin: Available margin is margin available to open new positions. This is listed in BTC, USD, and %.

On the charts, you will many of the standard features available on tradingview charts. You can change the timeframe, chose candlesticks charts, bar charts, or line charts. You can also add trendlines and a wide range of different indicators.

You can see the symbol traded in the positions widget, direction of the trade, size, fill price, current price, PL, and TP / SL  (if any). Every single trade you enter will be listed below one another. You also have the option to tick “Net Aggregation”, which will show you a single compressed deal with the net volume of all your deals and the weighted average entry price. This is a neat feature if you scale into your deals, or execute any hedging deals.

Copy-Trading

This is the next section in the top menu, and in my opinion, the most exciting section on PrimeXBT. Covesting is a social trading platform where you can;

• Trade and let other people follow your strategy. This will allow you to earn a commission from the number of people following you
• Follow different strategies enabling you to make money when they turn a profit from trading

I love this platform for a variety of reasons. First of all, it is straightforward and intuitive. There are no strict prerequisites to create a strategy nor to follow any existing strategy. If you want to create a strategy, the only requirement is a deposit of min. 0.1 BTC.

Strategies are ranked up to 5 stars based on the following

• managers equity
• Number of active trading days
• Drawdown and trading volume
• profitable vs. unprofitable trades
• Turnover

It is quite apparent there are a lot of cowboys in here with reckless trading behavior, but if you do a bit of groundwork, I think it’s reasonably easy to pick the good from the bad and make a nice side income from simple trade following.

If you are a profitable trader, there are zero reasons not to do your trading via the covering platform. If your trading is stable and you manage to turn a profit over an extended period, you will get followers, earning you an additional income from your trading.

In the Covesting section, we have seven subsections:

Rating: A list of all available strategies for you to follow. You can sort the strategies by Total profit, Today’s profit, Active days, Followers, Performance, Followers Equity, and Rating.

Portfolio: This section shows you an overview of the strategies you follow and their performance since you started to follow them.

Manage Strategy: If you have created a strategy for others to follow, this is where you can get the breakdown of your historical performance. Here you will also be able to see the profit distribution from your followers.

Trade: If you have created a strategy for others to follow, this is where you will manage all the trade execution.

Cov Token: The Cov token is one of my favorite parts of PrimeXBT. This is a token that allows you to get a trading fee discount. Purchase 2,500 COV tokens, and you will receive a 75% trading fee discount. This is a no-brainer, and this truly makes PrimeXBT a much better option than their peers.

Trading History: This is self-explanatory. A list of all your historical trades from your strategy.

Strategy History: A lot of all the strategies you have followed and their performance.

I will drop a post soon, going more into details about the Covesting platform. Stay tuned for that.

Yield

The yield section is a fairly new addition to the PrimeXBT platform. Here is what PrimeXBT tells us about it:

The Covesting Yield Accounts service acts on behalf of users to participate in selected DeFi products and obtain and distribute realized earnings, all with a single click.

I have not tested this, but from the looks of it, it does look very simple and intuiative (unlike other defi options out there!). With that being said, they clearly dont offer the most attractive rates in this space, but it probably a lot safer than many of the alternatives with far higher APYs. A standard yield account will, at this point give you an APY of 1.41%. If you hold COV token, you can get an APY as high as 2.83%.

Contest

Finally we have the Contest section. Here you can find all available contests currently hosted on PrimeXBT. Here is your chance to win actual USDT. Joining the contests are free of charged, and if you end up on the 1st, 2nd or 3rd place, you will win an actual USDT price. Once you join a contest, you will be receive free virtual funds so you can start trading. There are often special contests, and always a weekly contest. I think this is a good way to get started for new traders, as you do not need to risk any funds, but you still have the chance to win actual money. Because of this, you are likely to experience some of the psychological aspects of trading, without risking any money. Whats not to like.

Multiple ways to earn

As you can tell by now, there are multiple ways to earn from PrimeXBT. You can sign up for a normal margin account and trade a wide range of different instruments. You can copy other traders automatically. If they mange to make a profit, so will you. As an alternative, you can create your own strategy. If you get followers, you will receive a performance fee based on the amount of funds allocated to you. You can also earn from APYs from their yield section, and finally you have the chance to win money by participating in their weekly contests.

Conclusion

PrimeXBT is a solid broker. Their platform has everything you need to execute trades. You can book hedge deals (unlike ByBit), trade a wide range of different instruments and the trading fees are low (lower than on ByBit). The only downside I can think of, is that you wont be paid for providing liquidity. Overall, PrimeXBT is a very solid broker, if you are looking for a place to start day trading.