Overview
Consistently ranked in the top 5 crypto exchanges for volume, Malta based Okex is, in their own words, “the world’s leading one-stop crypto exchange”. And we can see why. Right off the bat, you have loads of fiat onramp options, from wire transfer to credit card, wich offers very reasonable fees and a “best market” system. As well as, of course, straight up crypto funding. At this point you will immediately have access to what is one of the largest spot markets in the space. The trading pairs are almost 400 at the time of writing. Okex has also very deep liquidity in their futures markets, ranking consistently in the top 3, offering both perpetual swaps and futures. They also have a recently launched DEX, based on their coin OKC and it’s native chain, that is garnering more and more traction. And finally, they recently introduced an options trading suite. So we can see how their claim is pretty well substantiated.
Okex Interface
OKex’s interface is very clean and straightforward, especially when it come to the homepage/onboarding part of the website. You can convert over 30 local currencies into Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT or other cryptos in minutes via Visa, Mastercard, and a slew of other payment methods. They offer certified merchants for your transactions and a comparison view of different service providers, which is pretty useful. Their trading interface is also in line with what we are used to with top level exchanges in the space. It gets a little trickier with futures and perp trading, with lots of powerful options and tools which, although great for more experienced traders, might be a little disorienting for newcomers. That being said, in this section they do clearly cater to professionals, so it’s a feature and a choice in the end, really.
They also have some of the lowest fees on the market, 0.15% taker and 0.10 % maker and tiered discounts for high volume traders and OKC holders, with the industry average arguably sitting around 0.25%. Unfortunately, they do not offer maker positive rebates, and that’s definitely something to keep in my mind for daytraders, as those fees do add up. Their mobile app is also quite neat and responsive, and makes trading on the go pretty easy.
Other features
In terms of security, OKEx ranks right up there with the very best, and it’s one of the very few exchanges to have never been hacked. They also have a lot of neat little features that we are getting used to expect from top notch exchanges : tailored IEO offers, again tied to their OKC coin holdings, and a pretty vast array of earn options. This option in particular is again, very well presented and intuitive. And although rates are as not as enticing as the ones offered at crypto.com for example, it is a welcome extra. By inserting your desired coin and the amount you consider putting into earnings, you’ll immediately get a visual in projected returns in all three options they offer : staking, term deposit and savings. Here’s a visual of our sample test, done using 100 EOS holding as an example.
It’s little touches like these that make the experience on exchanges more pleasant and user friendly, and helps them stand out in a crowd. They also offer a very well constructed Academy, to help newcomers get used to basic concepts with ease, and learn the ropes of their exchange gradually. It includes a lot of well crafted 2 minutes videos to explain the most useful procedures, and solve the most common problems.
Overall we believe OKEx to be one of the very best exchanges out there, and it has as complete an offering as they come. It would probably jump to the very top of our list if it didn’t face such fierce competition from two other pretty great one-stop shop exchanges: Binance and Huobi.