With all the recent drama between BitMEX and crypto manipulation I think it’s time to switch exchanges.

Personally I don’t want to trade on an exchange that’s ‘Number 1’ in being affiliated with Pumps and Dumps together with manipulating price into liquidating shorts or longs depending on the market situation.

Before diving into the comparison let’s bring to light what BitMEX has been doing recently.

August 22nd , 01:00 UTC — BTC Pumping 10% soon as BitMEX resumes trading

Bitmex performing "maintenance"

The resulting pump from ‘the maintenance’

Bitfinex shorts getting liquidated as soon as BitMEX trading was resumed.

August 22nd , 15:46 UTC — BTC Dumping 5% soon as BitMEX encounters an alleged ‘DDOS’ attack.

BitMEX being attacked by an alleged DDOS.

BTC Dumping 5% right after the alleged DDOS attack on BitMEX servers.

This is just ONE case study showcases by these screenshots I took recently of the fishy price action happening whilst BitMEX is ‘under maintenance’

Deribit VS BitMEX

1. Fees

BitMEX: Perpetual Contract (XBT) 100x
Taker Fee: 0.075%
Maker Fee: -0.025%

Deribit: Perpetual contract (BTC)
Taker Fee: 0.05%
Maker Fee: -0.02%

2. Leverage

Whilst BitMEX provides Isolated and Cross margin trading, Deribit only provides Cross margin trading.

The difference between Isolated and Cross is the following:
Isolated — A percentage of your portfolio is isolated and used as collateral with which you pay BitMEX in case you get liquidated. Isolated margin goes from anything above 1x to 100x leverage.

Cross — Your whole portfolio is used as collateral in case you get liquidated but you can use ANY position size with this leverage.

In my opinion Cross has always been the way to go and with Deribit having it automatically on it just means that the maximum position size for you will always be 50x of your entire portfolio.

3. User Interface

BitMEX prevails in the category of user interface, in the end UI comes down to preference but being able to drag and drop orders around the chart is something most traders are used to.

I found it annoying I can’t immediately close the position on Deribit, if I was long I had to close the entire position by going short. On BitMEX I can easily click ‘close’ and be done with it.

BitMEX:

Drag and drop trades on the live chart.
You can edit your layout to your preferences.
Immediately edit and close positions.

Deribit:

Can’t drag and drop trades.
Compared to BitMEX you have to click around much more to edit positions and add new ones.

BitMEX User Interface.

4. Products

BitMEX: XBT Futures, XBT Perpetual, ETH Futures, ETH Perpetual, LTC Futures, XRP Futures, TRX Futures, EOS Futures, ADA Futures, Bcash Futures.

Deribit: BTC Futures, BTC Options, BTC Perpetual — Soon adding ETH Perpetual.

5. Conclusion

Deribit is lightning fast, has no downtimes and doesn’t do any shady shit like BitMEX does. Even so, BitMEX for me personally still has a better UI for trading and has more products such as the altcoins to trade with which provide more trading opportunites during the day.
What Deribit needs to become the top exchange:

A cleaner, simpler UI with everything in one place.
Drag and drop trades, faster edits for trades.
More products to trade with though this isn’t necessarily the priority right now.

Personally I’m still trading 80% of my time on BitMEX but am slowly moving the 20% to Deribit.

I’ll leave you all with some words from the CEO of BitMEX.

Thanks Arthur!

BitMEX: https://tinyurl.com/y7zkznmv

Deribit: https://tinyurl.com/y8kqgloo