There are plenty of cryptocurrency exchanges you can use to start investing in digital assets. But if you’re a serious trader, many exchanges lack the order types and trading tools you need and mostly cater to beginners.

In contrast, FTX is one of the most comprehensive cryptocurrency exchanges out there. While it’s not available in the United States, its advanced trading features and competitive fees make it a compelling choice for international investors.

Our FTX review is covering all of the features, pricing, and pros and cons of this exchange so you can decide if it’s worth using.

What Is FTX?

FTX is an international cryptocurrency exchange that began in May 2019. The company was founded by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang and originally operated out of Hong Kong. Currently, FTX’s main office is in Nassau, the Bahamas.

Despite its infancy, FTX made headlines in 2020 after acquiring Blockfolio, a cryptocurrency portfolio tracker and broker with over 6 million users.

FTX isn’t as large as other international exchanges like Binance. However, with support for over 275 coins and a variety of trading features, it's still a contender for one of the best international exchanges.

What Does It Offer?

FTX.com isn’t available in the United States and several other markets. But, like Binance.US, FTX.US is a workaround to let U.S. residents get in on the action. It currently has over 1 million users and lets you buy and sell dozens of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins through its mobile app. You can also trade NFTs and there’s even a crypto rewards card.

However, FTX.US isn’t nearly as comprehensive as the flagship exchange. And while it’s nice to easily trade crypto from your smartphone, FTX.US doesn’t have as many features as other U.S. exchanges like Coinbase or Gemini.

Ultimately, this means FTX.US isn’t the best choice for U.S. investors. But for international investors, FTX certainly has an impressive number of features you can take advantage of.

Features For Advanced Traders

One of the main reasons to use FTX over other exchanges are the advanced trading types you get.

Like most exchanges, FTX supports spot trading for popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, and Solana. But you have several order type choices which isn’t something you get with a basic Coinbase trade. FTX order types include:

• Limit order
• Market order
• Stop market
• Stop limit
• Trailing stop
• Take profit
• Take profit limit

These options give you more control over how you trade. Furthermore, FTX supports futures trading and gives you up to 20 times leverage. You post various stablecoins as collateral for future trades, including USDC, TUSD, USDP, BUSD, and HUSD.

You can also trade long and short move contracts. For example, you can buy a long daily move contract on Bitcoin if you think the value of Bitcoin is going to change a lot over a single day. Move contracts expire to the amount the price moves. So if you’re long and Bitcoin’s price changes significantly, you benefit.

FTX also offers tokenized stock trading on its exchange for companies like AMC, Netflix, and Tesla. This means international investors can buy tokenized versions of U.S. equities without actually owning actual shares of stocks or ETFs.

Overall, FTX has some of the most comprehensive trading options for cryptocurrency exchanges. The ability to trade on margin caters to more serious traders. And you can even make prediction-based trades on the results of things like presidential elections.

Staking Rewards

Cryptocurrency staking involves locking up Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies to help validate blockchain transactions. In exchange for using your cryptocurrency, stakers earn crypto rewards.

Staking is popular with cryptocurrencies like Cardano, Cosmos, and Polkadot. But you also earn rewards by buying and staking FTT, FTX’s native token.

You buy and stake FTT through your main account. Once you stake FTT, you earn different rewards and trading fee discounts depending on how much you stake. You also get higher referral bonuses, airdrop rewards, and extra votes on polls to decide on new platform features.

Here’s how FTX’s staking rewards currently work:

FTT currently costs approximately $42, meaning it costs roughly $1,050 to reach tier one.

The main benefit of staking FTT are maker fee rebates. FTX also rewards users with 500 or more FTT with Serum token (SRM) airdrops, which are basically free tokens of a Solana-based blockchain project. But owning this much FTT is a significant investment, so this staking rewards program certainly benefits early purchasers of FTT.

FTX also lets you stake SRM, Solana, and Ray. Staking Ray currently pays 20% APY. Overall, staking isn’t FTX’s focus, but it’s nice that stakeholders can earn trading discounts and some passive income with a few tokens.

If you’re really interested in earning passive income with crypto, you’re better off looking into Celsius and BlockFi which offer crypto savings accounts that pay rewards.

OTC Trading

With FTX’s over-the-counter (OTC) trading portal, you can trade larger amounts of cryptocurrency and remain more private.

OTC trading is ideal if you want to buy or sell a large amount of crypto without potentially disrupting an exchange or having your transactions be public knowledge.

FTX’s OTC service lets you get instant quotes on most major coins and you set up an OTC wallet to make deposits and withdrawals. This service definitely caters to higher net worth crypto investors. But it’s another way FTX provides more trading options to its users.

NFT Marketplace

NFTs are extremely popular as of late. So it’s no surprise that exchanges like Coinbase and FTX are opening NFT trading to users.

FTX.com lets you buy and sell single NFTs and collections with other users. You can also mint and deposit NFTs on FTX.US if you want more options.

NFT marketplaces like OpenSea are still king when it comes to trading volume. However, it’s encouraging that more cryptocurrency exchanges are adding NFT support since this adds another asset class investors can consider.

FTX Pay

FTX Pay lets you accept fiat and cryptocurrencies as payment. If you run an online store or accept online payments as a freelancer, this simple widget helps you get paid without suffering high fees.

You add the FTX Pay widget to your online store, website, or app. From there, customers can click the button, quickly create an account, and then pay you with credit card, ACH, or crypto. There’s a 1% transaction fee. But this is much lower than payment processors like PayPal which charges around 2.9% per transaction.

FTX Pay is available for legacy international users who already have payment accounts. But the service is currently migrating to FTX.US.

Are There Any Fees?

One advantage of using FTX.com is its relatively low trading fees. Like other exchanges, FTX charges a maker/taker fee. But fees depend on your 30-day trading volume to benefit more active traders.

Here’s how FTX’s fee structure works:

As mentioned, you can get trading discounts if you stake FTT. Furthermore, FTX grants trading discounts just for holding FTT. For example, if you hold $100 worth of FTT, you get a 3% discount on trading fees.

FTX doesn’t charge deposit fees. And you don’t pay fees for withdrawals unless you’re withdrawing ETH, ERC-20 tokens, or small amounts of Bitcoin. In these cases, you pay blockchain fees unless you’re staking FTT which can grant bonus free withdrawals.

Overall, FTX has some of the lowest trading fees out there. And the fact that you don’t pay deposit fees and can often avoid withdrawal fees are big pluses.

How Does FTX Compare?

FTX is a popular international cryptocurrency exchange. However, it’s not necessarily the best choice if you want more staking features or support for more digital assets.

Here’s how FTX compares versus Binance and KuCoin, two other leading international exchanges: