BitBay

Review

Although BitBay was founded in Poland, the provider is considered to be an Estonian company because of its regulation and the location of its head office. Except for Estonia, the company also has its branch offices in other European countries such as Netherlands and Malta. BitBay also operates a local office in India.

Since the date of its foundation in 2014, the company has managed to earn not only over a million loyal clients but also a reputation as a well-established European cryptocurrency exchange.

In 2017, the company was with the Polish Innovation Award, which acknowledged the company’s desire to implement innovation in cryptocurrency trading. The same year, BitBay has declared the Best Cryptocurrency Exchange and received the award at the Cryptocurrency World Expo.

A year later, Berlin Summit proclaimed BitBay the Best Crypto Exchange for the second year in a row. In 2019, the company received the Blockchain Exchange of the Year award from Invest Cuff.

In 2021, the BitBay exchange made rebranding. Today the company is operating under the name Zonda. As it is reported on the official website of the provider, the move was made in order to satisfy the global ambitions of the company.

Nevertheless, BitBay is a more familiar brand name than Zonda. That’s why we will continue this review and name the company by its initial name.

Safety & Regulation

Trading cryptocurrencies is one of the mainstreams on the financial markets today. Every day, new users try to enter this competition. They are looking for a reliable provider that would provide beneficial trading conditions and complete privacy safety. The first characteristic to check out is the licensing of the company.

As experts say, the reason for moving to Estonia was clear – Estonia is one of few European countries that have clear rules for crypto exchange regulation. So the company moved there in order to obtain a proper license will well-defined requirements and conditions.

BitBay moved to Estonia in November 2019. Since then, the exchange platform has been operated by BB Trade Estonia OÜ. In the same year, the BitBay platform is licensed under the requirements of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU)

The Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit is an independent government agency operating under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance of Estonia. This regulator was established in 1999.

Today, today the regulator defines its primary goal as ensuring the transparency of financial transactions and preventing the use of the financial space of Estonia for committing financial such as money laundering, financing terrorism, and others. The regulator ensures this by collecting, analyzing, and sharing financial intelligence information.

Account Protection

If you want to open a BitBay account, you need to be aware of the fact that the company ensures to provide complete security to its users. The platform states that its specialists have developed advanced solutions to keep clients’ funds and data safe.

Two-step Verification

BitBay enables two-step verification, which is one of the most reliable ways to secure users’ credentials. Except for creating a strong password to secure one’s account, a user is also required to provide a second factor of authentication. Otherwise, one’s account cannot be authorized, and the client won’t be allowed to execute financial operations.

Confirmation

The provider also enables a confirmation feature. This solution guarantees that no one, except for the account owner, won’t be able to perform any action on the account. To make confirmation active on your BitBay account, you have to turn this feature on. After this, any action you will try to perform on your account won’t be accepted without your verified confirmation.

Funds Safety

BitBay guarantees to provide complete safety of clients’ funds by storing them in cold wallets. In addition to this, every money transaction executed on or out of the trading account is authorized by the specialists of the provider.

Encryption

The company also ensures the trading platform is operating on encrypted servers.

What are Trading Costs?

When trading on cryptocurrency exchanges, clients pay certain fees. Fees on any exchange are defined in accordance with the status of the participant.

As you may know, there are two parties in a deal. The first one is called maker because it is the participant who places the order before the deal is formed. The second participant is called a taker. Takers’ orders match the orders of makers.

On different cryptocurrency exchanges, makers and takers pay different trading fees. Let’s see what fees are charged by BitBay.

BitBay Fees

Trading Fees

BitBay offers competitive trading fees. They depend on the type of deals.

If the parties are trading fiat-to-crypto, they are charged bigger trading fees. On BitBay, makers have to pay a 0.30% commission, while takers are charged a 043% payment.

Trading fees on crypto-to-crypto trades are lower. Makers don’t need to pay anything at all. In this case, they use the service of commission-free trading. Takers, on the other hand, are charged a 0.10% payment.

The only option here that comes without fees for both takers and makers is ETH tokens trading.

Non-trading Fees

Providers might charge non-trading fees as commission paid for services that aren’t directly related to trading activity. These are deposit fees, withdrawal fees, account maintenance fees, and others. BitBay doesn’t charge account maintenance fees.

Deposit Fees

If you deposit digital currencies, you don’t have to pay additional commission charges. They are paid in specific cases when depositing money in fiat currencies.

Deposit fees are only charged for funding your account in Euro or Polish Zloty via card payment. For these fiat currency deposits, the commission amounts to 2.99% with the charging of the minimum fee of 2.50 EUR and 10 PLN.

Withdrawal Fees

When withdrawing funds in fiat currencies, withdrawal fees depend on the currency and payment method. For a bank wire transfer, you will pay 2 GBP, 2 EUR, or 0,5% of the transfer value made in PLN.

Withdrawals via bank cards might be executed only in PLN or EUR. For both currencies, the withdrawal fee amounts to 2.99% of the transfer value.

For cryptocurrencies, commissions for transactions are different for each digital currency available. In this review, we will pay attention to BTC transactions. The complete table of other cryptocurrency withdrawal charges is displayed on the Zonda exchange’s official website.

So the withdrawal fee per BTC withdrawal amounts to 0.0005 BTC. This is thought to be lower than the industry average. Other exchanges may charge up to 0.0008 BTC.

BitBay Trading Platforms

API

API was developed to provide clients with the possibility to conveniently access financial instruments listed on the exchange and execute operations, including placing orders via external software. With this API by BitBay, traders can create dynamic charts displaying all the statistical and historical data from any market, which might be accessible from the crypto exchange.

Mobile Application

If you just started trading, you should also examine the mobile application of the exchange. This is what will allow you to trade on the go.

BitBay mobile app provides all the necessary features to buy and sell cryptos. It also enables solutions that allow users to set preferred currency pairs in the favorite options, select default fiat currency options, apply customizable crypto trading instruments, and track all BitBay wallets in real-time.

Trading Conditions

As of the day of writing this BitBay review, the total trading volume for 24 hours exceeded 4 million USDT.

The total amount of financial instruments listed on the exchange exceeds the number of 50 digital currencies. The range is supposed to be quite extensive. The listed digital coins might be paired with fiat currencies, such as Polish Zloty, Euro, Great Britain Pound, US Dollar, and with cryptocurrencies such as Tether, Bitcoin, Ether, and USDC.

Some digital currency assets cannot be paired with some fiat assets. With GBP, for instance, only Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tether, USD Coin, and Dai might be paired. PLN, on the contrary, is traded in pairs with 53 digital currencies.

Deposit Methods

Different exchanges of cryptos have different rules for making deposits. Some of them do not accept fiat currency deposits, which is inconvenient for users because they might have to look for platforms to convert their fiat funds into digital money. BitBay enables both online and offline payments.

BitBay accepts deposit methods to fund your account with PLN, EUR, GBP, or USD. PLN and EURo might be deposited via both wire transfer or debit card, while GBP and USD payments are accepted when made only via bank wire transfer methods.

PLN might also be withdrawn via ATM withdrawals. You just need to make a special request and enter a 6-digits token to complete the operation. PLN cash might also be withdrawn via at Polish Post Office.

To withdraw crypto funds, select the necessary wallet and enter all the required data.

Withdrawing Funds from BitBay Account

If you want to withdraw funds on a debit card, you can do this by buying PLN or EUR funds for cryptocurrency, and only then you can withdraw money on a MasterCard card. The withdrawal process usually doesn’t take longer than a few minutes.

If you want to withdraw money to a bank account, make sure this is the account from which the last deposit was executed. Otherwise, the request will be declined. This is done to secure the platform and accounts of users.

BitBay Services

BitBay Pay

BitBay Pay (Zonda Pay) is the service that enables secure online payments in cryptocurrency. It is reported that over 50,000 online payments are executed via this service daily.

Affiliate Program

Clients are offered to invite more users to the trading platform and earn up to 80% of the commission made by the exchange from the invited users.

Academy

Participants of the Academy have the possibility to take part in different educational courses for beginners. With them, it will be easy to start trading even if you are a complete newbie.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• availability of many digital financial instruments;
• a license from a trusted European regulatory body;
• advanced cryptocurrency trading platform;
• cutting-edge charting tools.

Cons

• the exchange only warrants cryptocurrency funding and trade;
• selected offerings are available to only Polish users.

BitBay Review 2022: Final Thoughts

BitBay users claim that this is the best crypto exchange in Europe. BitBay warrants a safe ecosystem for trading cryptocurrencies, provides many offers to invest money in, and guarantees complete transparency to its crypto community.