Review on Binance.US by Nickolas Landry
Limited availability, high fees and 5 months of waiting was enough to show me why I should never use Binance.
From the time I began the KYC process in January, until the date of this post (May 8th), I still have not received authorization to purchase cryptocurrency from their exchange, despite having successfully completed the highest levels of KYC possible on Kraken, Coinbase Pro, Cash App, Xwallet, Nexo, Uphold and many other platforms. have sent numerous emails to support, only to recieve blanket auto responses that say they are overwhelmed with the amount of inquires and are working hard to address my issue.
So, my sister living in England has both a Binance and Binance US account that I've been able to successfully utilize for this review. First discrepancy I noticed was the sheer amount of available crypto options on the Non US platform compared to the US. Their website interface is absolutely disgusting, very Hodgepodge and appears to be thrown together by a drunk 8 year old. No rhyme or reason, just a mishmash of different size boxes haphazardly thrown together to form a page that is extremely non intuitive and off putting for anyone that doesn't have ADD. After checking prices on some of my own cryptocurrency on other exchanges,and returning to Binance, I noticed Ethereum Classic was available at 95 usd, a stark difference from the 79 I had just witnessed on Kraken. That's quite a jump, and very alarming considering the trust we put into these exchanges.
Next, I sent about $75 of Ethereum to the Binance wallet and made a trade for Binance Coins, as they can help with fees and gas. I should have paid more attention to the fee, because I wound up with about 46 dollars of the $75 I had before the trade. That is absolute robbery, and enough for me to not ever want to do business with them again. I haven't been back since.
Pros
- Decent variety of available crypto.
- Well known and trusted exchange.
Cons
- High fees for purchases, trades and withdrawals.
- KYC takes FOREVER and has the most strict acceptance standards of any exchange.
- Will occasionally list cryptocurrency at vastly different prices than other exchanges.
- Binance US does not carry anywhere near as many options as it's non American counterpart.
- Very clunky, non intuitive interface though web portal.
- Non-existent customer support, only auto responses with the false promise for future contact.
- Not good for beginners or those who don't understand how much of your cryptocurrency they are going to take from you when you decide to withdraw.
- Can leave coins stuck until minimum amounts are met, incurring yet more fees from purchasing more just to send it to a different wallet.
