Deribit Review | Great For Futures Trading or Overated?
Jack Moreau
Feb 2024
9 min read
Fact checked
Welcome to our unbiased review of Deribit, where we'll take a deep dive into this somewhat infamous trading venue. If you're wondering about Deribit's features, fees, security, and user experience, we've got you covered. Read on to find out if Deribit is the right crypto exchange for you.
Deribit is a Panama-based futures exchange that was founded in 2016 by John and Marius Jansen. The exchange boasts a small team of over 50 employees and is available in most countries around the world, except for the United States and Canada.
Deribit exchange
Deribit was created to cater to users searching for a professional-grade cryptocurrency derivatives platform, with the goal of creating an efficient and fair marketplace for traders of all backgrounds and trading styles.
Its user base is relatively small compared to other exchanges, but its focus on professional-grade trading is likely a factor in this. In addition to its desktop platform, Deribit's services are also available on Android and IOS, where the exchange has over 10,000 downloads.
Deribit app
Deribit KYC requirements
Signing up on Deribit is a breeze as it only requires an email and password. However, KYC is mandatory for all users and trading cannot commence until the verification process is completed.
Deribit KYC
The KYC process on Deribit is quite comprehensive and involves providing personal information such as full name, country of residence, address, nationality, financial profile, ID verification, and proof of residence. Once all the necessary documents and information have been uploaded, the Deribit team will verify the account within 1-2 business days.
Deribit Products & Services
Deribit is a cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform that offers spot trading, futures, and options trading to its users. While the options for spot trading are limited to BTC, ETH, and USDC, users can trade perps for cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOT, and others with up to 50X max leverage.
Deribit futures trading
The exchange has a customizable interface, which allows users to add and remove different elements as they see fit. Deribit also offers a wide range of data and metrics for the cryptocurrencies that can be traded on the platform.
Deribit data
While Deribit is not designed with the average user in mind, it is an excellent platform for professional traders. The exchange offers high matching engine capacity, low latency, advanced risk management, and high liquidity, making it a unique player in the market.
Deribit options trading
This however is clearly not an exchange for beginners or those new to futures and options trading. Besides the complexity of the products themselves, the interface is also quite busy and somewhat clunky to navigate.
When it comes to the spot trading fees on Deribit, those are hard to beat as it's 0% for makers and takers. Moving on to futures fees, Deribit charges a 0% maker fee for BTC/ETH weekly futures plus futures & perpetuals. The taker fee on the other hand is 0.05%.
Deribit trading fees
Deribit does not offer discount for high volume traders but either way, the trading fees that they charge for spot and futures are very competitive.
Unfortunately, fiat deposits are not available on Deribit. In order to deposit funds, users must use one of the five supported cryptocurrencies, which include BTC, ETH, SOL, USDT and USDC.
To comply with KYC requirements, users must complete the verification process before they can deposit funds on the exchange. This means that while Deribit is a convenient platform for traders interested in cryptocurrency trading, it might not be suitable for those who prefer to use fiat currency.
Deribit Withdrawal Methods
Unfortunately, there are no fiat withdrawal methods available on Deribit either. As such, users must withdraw their funds as cryptocurrencies.
For those looking to withdraw their cryptocurrencies from Deribit, Bitcoin withdrawals come with a fee of 0.0005 BTC, while Ethereum withdrawals are charged 0.0006 ETH. ERC-20 Tether withdrawals are charged a fee of 5 USDT. Additionally, the fees associated with cryptocurrency withdrawals on Deribit are relatively low compared to other exchanges.
Deribit is a niche exchange that targets advanced traders that are looking to trade futures and options with high leverage. The whole interface has been developed around that user group and as such, for those that do not fit that category, Deribit will not have something to offer.
The user experience on Deribit could be more polished and beginner friendly to appeal to a larger audience but this has seemingly not been a priority for Deribit.
Deribit also offers a very limited range of products and services centered around futures and options. For users looking for additional products, they have to turn to alternative exchange.
Having said that, when comparing Deribit to more well known and bigger exchanges such as Binance and OKX, it's clear that Deribit still offers less advanced trading services than it's main competitors.
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Author
Jack Moreau
Jack is a crypto writer and reviewer who has been active in the space since he caught the crypto bug in 2017. With a passion for trying out new shiny things, Jack is always eager to try the latest cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets or DeFi applications.
