Bitfinex
3.6/10 total
Trading since 2012 and the venue behind the largest exchange theft of the early era: in August 2016 an attacker took 119,754 BTC, worth about $71 million at the time, and Bitfinex spread the loss across all customer balances as a roughly 36% haircut repaid in BFX tokens. Ilya Lichtenstein admitted in August 2023 that he was the original hacker, he and Heather Morgan were sentenced in November 2024, and US prosecutors moved in January 2025 to return roughly 95,000 recovered bitcoin to Bitfinex. Since 17 December 2025 it has charged no maker or taker fees at all.
Scores
Weights are published in the method and applied identically to every entry.
For
- Zero maker and taker fees since December 2025 across spot, margin and derivatives, with no tier to qualify for
- Fourteen years of continuous operation, one of the longest records of any venue still trading
- Deep order books and a well-documented public API that predates most competitors
- The 2016 loss was eventually made whole: BFX token holders were redeemed and the recovered bitcoin is being returned
Against
- Mandatory identity verification before trading
- Lost 119,754 BTC in the August 2016 hack and socialised the loss as a roughly 36% haircut on every customer balance rather than absorbing it
- Narrower asset coverage than the large altcoin venues
- Fully custodial, no verified onion service, no no-JavaScript path
- Zero-fee trading means the revenue comes from somewhere else, so check withdrawal and funding costs rather than assuming the venue is free
Agent access 5/10
Long-standing documented REST and WebSocket API, widely used by trading bots, but keys require a verified account.
Reported separately and not counted in the total. It measures what an autonomous agent can do unattended, not whether the service is safe to use.
Fees
0% maker / 0% taker
Bitfinex removed maker and taker fees entirely on 17 December 2025 across spot, margin, derivatives, securities and OTC, with no tier or qualification required. This is a base-tier rate in the sense that it now applies to everyone; withdrawal and other non-trading fees still apply, so it is not free end to end.
Specification
- Type
- Custodial exchange
- KYC policy
- KYC required
- Custody model
- custodial
- Account required
- yes
- Assets
- 150+
- Chains
- 30+
- Operating since
- 2012
- Jurisdiction
- British Virgin Islands
- Onion service
- no
- Works without JS
- no
- Open source
- no
- Facts checked
- 2026-07-31
Links
Plain links, no referral parameters. Verify the domain yourself; phishing clones of every service in this table exist.