Binance review

What Binance is

Few exchanges come close on raw depth. Binance's BTC/USDT perpetual regularly carries $5 billion-plus in open interest. In PerpFinder's order-book sweeps, a $1 million BTC market order on Binance fills with one of the lowest measured slippage figures among the venues we probe (see the live cost comparison).

That order book depth explains why most serious futures traders keep at least a portion of their activity here. This holds regardless of their opinions on the company itself.

Binance launched in 2017 under Changpeng Zhao and scaled from zero to the world's largest exchange in under two years. The platform operates across spot, futures, options, margin, earn, NFT, and Web3 wallet products. That breadth means you can run a full crypto portfolio within a single login.

But it also means the interface serves many audiences at once. Traders who want a cleaner futures-only experience often prefer Bybit or OKX as day-to-day platforms. They route large orders through Binance for the depth. See the live Binance volume and open interest on PerpFinder.

Fees in detail

Base fees are 0.02% maker and 0.05% taker on USDT-margined perpetuals. Holding BNB in your account cuts both rates by 10%, bringing takers to 0.045%. VIP tiers gate further reductions by 30-day volume:

• VIP 0 (default): 0.02% maker, 0.05% taker
• VIP 1 (5,000,000 USD 30-day volume and 5 BNB): 0.018% maker, 0.05% taker
• VIP 5 (1,000,000,000 USD 30-day volume and 1,000 BNB): 0.008% maker, 0.027% taker
• VIP 9 (25,000,000,000 USD 30-day volume and 5,500 BNB): 0.0% maker, 0.017% taker

For a $10,000 BTC/USDT trade opened and closed at market, base-rate round-trip cost is $10.00 in taker fees. Using BNB, that falls to $9.00. At VIP 5, the taker rate is 0.027%, so the round trip is $5.40. Run your specific scenario at the PerpFinder fee calculator.

MEXC offers 0% maker fees with no volume need. Gate.io and Binance both charge 0.02% maker at base. Binance's order book depth can also help limit orders on major pairs fill faster and at tighter spreads than on either rival.

The USDC-margined and coin-margined (inverse) contract structures let traders choose their settlement currency. Inverse contracts are useful for traders who hold BTC and want leveraged exposure without converting to USDT first.

The copy trading module surfaces signal providers with verified drawdown histories and live win rates. For larger accounts running multi-leg strategies, portfolio margin is listed. It nets margin needs across correlated spot, futures, and options positions. This reduces idle capital.

Security and proof of reserves

Binance publishes monthly Proof of Reserves covering BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, and other major assets. The method uses zk-SNARK proofs and a published Merkle root hash. PerpFinder read the Binance proof-of-reserves page on 2026-09-04. The most recent audit on that page carried the date 2026-08-01 and BTC block height 962079.

It listed BTC at 100.25%, ETH at 100.25%, USDT at 103.62%, and USDC at 107.64%. The SAFU emergency insurance fund is a separate reserve layer. Binance set up SAFU in 2018 and funds it from a portion of trading fees.

PerpFinder could not read a current SAFU balance from a Binance page on 2026-09-04, so this review states no SAFU figure. The mechanism has never been tested by an actual breach.

The 2023 DOJ/FinCEN/CFTC settlement cost Binance $4.3 billion and imposed AML remediation needs through 2028 under a court-appointed compliance monitor. Changpeng Zhao resigned as CEO. He was sentenced to four months in prison for AML violations. On October 21, 2025, the US President granted him a pardon (DOJ clemency record).

The DOJ record names Zhao, not the company. Richard Teng took over as CEO. The exchange does not serve US users on binance.com. A separate US entity, Binance.US, operates on its own but has faced its own SEC and CFTC actions.

Binance has had one exchange-level breach. In May 2019, an attacker took about 7,000 BTC from a Binance hot wallet. Binance covered the loss from the SAFU fund, and no depositor lost funds. Binance reports no exchange-level breach since that incident. Binance regularly runs above $50 billion in daily spot and futures combined.

Leverage and pairs

Over 350 perpetual futures pairs span USDT-margined, USDC-margined, and coin-margined (inverse) structures. Leverage reaches 150x on BTC/USDT but steps down for larger positions. On 2026-09-23 the BTC/USDT schedule gave 150x up to 300,000 USDT, 100x up to 800,000 USDT, 75x up to 3,000,000 USDT and 50x up to 12,000,000 USDT.

The full schedule is in the Binance leverage bracket documentation.

Portfolio margin mode nets needs across correlated spot, futures, and options positions. For traders running delta-neutral or multi-leg structures, this reduces margin drag without closing any single leg. Compare this against Hyperliquid, which lacks portfolio margin but runs on-chain settlement with lower base taker fees and full trade openness.

The copy trading module lets users follow signal providers with verified drawdown histories and win rates. European-style options on BTC and ETH round out the product set.

Who Binance is for

Active futures traders who need some of the deepest BTC and ETH perp books we measure, a broad altcoin list, and VIP tiers that compress fees at scale: Binance is the default answer.

US residents: Binance.com is geo-blocked. The US-only Binance.US platform offers a narrower product set. EU/EEA residents: Binance withdrew its EU (MiCA) application and halted regulated EEA services on July 1, 2026, so any sign-up offer applies to non-EEA users.

Traders who want the tightest legal reach: Kraken holds FCA, FinCEN, and CFTC licenses that Binance cannot match. Traders who want the lowest headline maker fee without volume needs: MEXC at 0% is structurally cheaper.

How it compares

The PerpFinder team tracks daily volume across 22 CEX venues. In PerpFinder's daily snapshot on 2026-09-04, Binance's 24-hour perp volume was 4.3 times Bybit's and 2.5 times OKX's. That is one dated observation, not a trend.

A $500,000 market order on Binance will see less slippage than the same order on Bybit, and far less than on Gate.io or HTX.

On a $10k round-trip at base taker rates, Binance costs $10.00 — level with OKX and Kraken, $1 under Bybit ($11.00), and well above MEXC's $4.00 outlier. Use the cost comparison tool for current rates. The $4.3 billion settlement and ongoing compliance monitoring are the central party risk factors to weigh against the liquidity edge.

PerpFinder read the Binance proof-of-reserves page on 2026-09-04 and recorded a BTC ratio of 100.25% in the audit dated 2026-08-01.