July 15, 2021, | AtoZ Markets – Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has announced on Thursday that it has expanded into the crypto spot trading market.
According to the announcement, Bybit said spot trading in Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and EOS is now available to users against the Tether (USDT) stablecoin. More trading pairs will follow shortly, it said.
Bybit won't charge maker fees for spot trading
Bybit says it won't charge any maker fees for spot trading, which are levied for providing liquidity to the market in the form of buy or sell limit orders. Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, for instance, charges 0.1000% maker fees for trading a volume worth less than 50 Bitcoin.
Bybit's zero maker fees is a "life-long" feature and not a limited-time offer, the exchange's founder and CEO Ben Zhou said. Bybit's taker fees are 0.1% of trading volume, he said. Taker fees are usually higher than maker fees as taker orders are matched immediately against an order already on the order book, which removes liquidity.
Bybit was established in March 2018 in the British Virgin Islands. The platform is currently the second-largest Bitcoin futures exchange in terms of open interest and trading volumes. When asked why launch spot trading now, Zhou said it will allow the exchange to serve more customers.
"Now that we are comfortably at the top of the derivatives-only lane, and managed to stay operational throughout the bull run as virtually all our peers experienced overload and downtime, we feel it is time that we brought the same level of reliability Bybit has embodied in derivatives to spot," said Zhou.
Bybit will also launch options trading "later this year," Zhou said.
When asked how Bybit will ensure the liquidity of the spot trading offering, Zhou said there is an incentive program in place for market makers and currently "all" market makers are already plugged into the exchange's testing environment.
Bybit's spot trading won't be available to US residents
Like Bybit's derivatives offering, spot trading won't be available to residents of the US, mainland China, Singapore, Quebec (Canada), Iran, Syria, North Korea, and other restricted jurisdictions.
Earlier this year, Bybit ceased its services in the UK following a warning from the country's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Read also: Japan FSA Warns Crypto Exchange Bybit over Unauthorized Operations
Last month, the Ontario Securities Commission began proceedings against Bybit, accusing the exchange of operating an unregistered crypto trading platform in Ontario, Canada.
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