Bitsgap Review
Bitsgap is a multi-exchange trading platform offering advanced charting, a semi-automated arbitrage interface, as well as comfortable solutions for managing your crypto portfolio from one place.
Bitsgap is a multi-exchange trading platform offering advanced charting, a semi-automated arbitrage interface, as well as comfortable solutions for managing your crypto portfolio from one place.
Parent company | Privately held, company found by 3 board members |
Type | Crypto Trading platform |
Release year | 2018 |
Price | $19/month* |
*All standard features included. $1,000 monthly trading limit. On a Free plan, you may have limited access to some platform features
The advantages of using Bitsgap charts are substantial. Let’s start with summarising the most important aspects before we provide a full review of Bitsgap.
Bitsgap provides traders with must-have tools such as:
The crypto world was highly in need of a service like Bitsgap. As Cryptocurrency trading becomes more accessible the need for advanced analytical tools is growing too. Traders might be familiar with robust analytical solutions such as Coingy or TradingView (limited exposure to crypto), which despite their already established status has not yet (as of Q3 2018) dared to help traders with Arbitrage trading – one of the core values offered by the Bitsgap platform (at the time of the review it is free to use).
Unlike, TradingView for example, Bitsgap does not only take care of this trade information but also offers the ease of trading and managing all of your setups from one platform. That removes the annoyance of having to log in to multiple exchanges each time you want to make a decision. Despite the early start of Coingy, Bitsgap the startup from Estonia also offers traders a method to benefit from the price differences on multiple exchanges.
At its core Bitsgap is the next-generation platform for crypto traders, lifting an amateurish crypto trading world to the level of trade sophistication often seen in Forex, CFD, stocks, and commodity trading.
Originating from Estonia, the company is run by a solid team with decades of experience in trading, investments, asset management, start-ups, cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, project management and marketing.
Bitsgap has 12 full-stack developers and every team member has their project. The customer support team is slowly being added when needed and they will expand it as soon as needed.
Here is more information about the board members:
It’s going without saying that Bitsgap offers access to Bitcoin and the major altcoins, which is the most important for most crypto traders. But Bitsgap also provides a vast pool of available cryptos with more than 4,000+ crypto pairs on all exchanges at the same time… The crypto fanatics will not be disappointed.
Market data is also presented on the website, which can be found when clicking on the tab “market cap”. A list of cryptocurrency pairs is listed from highest market cap to lowest. There are also other info points such as the closed price on which exchange, change in the last 24 hours, and access to the price graph. You can also click on favourite to earmark the most promising altcoins.
When you click a cryptocurrency in the menu, a list of exchange options will then expand, and you are presented with a comparison of the prices at various exchanges.
There is also the possibility to search for any cryptocurrency in the search field. Click on the magnifying glass and type in a crypto name of your choice, and you will see the results appear in the image below.
Bitsgap goes all-in with a functional and neat design that should appeal to most traders. Secure access is, of course, the number one concern for all traders, but it does not hurt to work with a platform that is transparent, quick, and well presented. And in my view, Bitsgap meets these requirements and offers a professional setting and environment for traders.
Let’s take a more in-depth look at the available options, charts and platform settings. When you open the trading platform from the main website, a new URL shows up (https://bitsgap.com/trading), which offers a web-based charting experience similar perhaps to MT4 web trading. This is where Bitsgap must improve if it plans to compete with services like TradingView – admired for its rich pool of analytical tools and community.
In the middle of the screen, there is a price chart available for the platform and cryptocurrency pair of your choice. You can click on the options to change exchange and crypto pair, just as you can change the time frame (of the chart), bar type, indicators, and other tools. There is also an option to fully expand the table if you want to see the price from close up.
The platform also offers an overview of:
Bitsgap is always working on improvements as the below tweets explain.
Agree, we are waiting for destination moon v2! In the time like this, you really need hassle-free trading experience and have everything under one interface. Perfect timing to start using https://t.co/8bBgKESkv2 😉
— Bitsgap.com (@Bitsgap) July 18, 2018
A new feature was also added recently that allows traders to compare two or more pairs at the same time – see image below.
PROTIP: You can use #Bitsgap compare function tool to compare the market movements of two or more different instruments simultaneously. Use it to see how your coins behave related to #bitcoin price changes! #trading pic.twitter.com/DzxBZ6p2HD — Bitsgap.com (@Bitsgap) June 29, 2018
One of the several exciting features is the overview of your assets across several exchanges. Keep in mind that pending orders will not be shown as an asset (at least at the time of the review).
The main window provides the essential data about your portfolio value. You can check the value movement of any period that you choose but also focus on specific exchanges.
If there is only one exchange selected, then the graph will show a breakdown of your coins. There is also the option to export files from your pc or cloud to the Bitsgap platform.
The windows on the bottom and right upper corner also show the portfolio values but in a different way. The bottom part shows information such as the purchase price, the percentage change, and the value per coin and per exchange as text. There is also information about your transactions. The right upper part shows similar data but in a graph.
Did you ever see price differences between exchanges and wondered if there is an easy way of trading them? Yes, there is, and it’s called arbitrage.
An arbitrage trade is a set of transactions of the same pair (or any financial instrument) executed at the same time but on different exchanges, to benefit from the price difference.
More precisely, it is primarily buying currency in one market and simultaneously selling it in another market at a higher price, profiting from a price difference.
Bitsgap manages to offer traders a simple way of capitalising on price differences via their platform. The image below shows how you can benefit from buying a crypto pair on one exchange while selling the same crypto pair on a second exchange all at the same time – with one click.
Bitsgap makes things more comfortable as you can easily see the crypto pair you need to buy and sell and from which platform – all of this is done in the Bitsgap software. The best exchange rates can then be traded, which locks in profit. The only thing you need to do is make sure you have an account at that particular exchange.
The main aspects are:
The indicated expected profit from the arbitrage trade is already including all costs. This means that Bitsgap calculates the costs of fees etc so the profit you get is more or less final (no hidden fees). At the time of the review (mid-2018), the solution couldn’t be fully automated due to technical difficulty connected with the speed at which automated trading takes place. But the good news is that one click of the button is sufficient (if you have accounts with the exchanges that are needed for any particular trade). We will keep an eye on Bitsgap and its competition to let you know about the best way for crypto arbitrage.
Bitsgap explains in their introduction to arbitrage trading that the “price on the exchanges differs due to the natural effect of decentralisation and the weak development of the market”. What does this mean?
Simply said, cryptocurrency exchanges are running on relatively slow web technologies, at least from a technical point of view. Price corrections take quite a substantial amount of time, which allows profits to be made via market inefficiencies and traders’ behaviour. The traditional arbitrage possibilities occur more regularly compared in the crypto world than compared with other financial instruments.
Arbitrage made simple? Yes, Bitsgap subscribes to this motto by offering a clear overview of potential arbitrage trades and how much profit could be made and expected. For instance, the arbitrage grid shows all of the potential opportunities that are continually being scanned.
The Bitsgap platform simplifies the process by analysing all of the trading data for you. It then creates an option to make an arbitrage deal, in one click.
Before starting, please note that it is recommended to read more about how to make your first arbitrage trade.
Nothing. There are multiple tutorials along the way for each section. The security concerns are addressed via a separate page, which discusses all of the angles.
Of course, this might remove all of the concerns users could have. Some might wonder whether, for instance, there are any disadvantages of connecting your API key to Bitsgap?
The good news is that traders and investors can place a limit on their Bitsgap account: you can decide on all the settings and are free to trade without an option to withdraw money. See more about the security part in the next paragraph or feel free to check out more information about Bitsgap’s security approach.
Bitsgap is also working on implementing one decentralized exchange to their platform. The biggest challenge is that they are not in the use of API key trading and they have to adjust their system for trading directly from the wallet.
Otherwise, there are fewer indicators and analytical tools than the competition, a small community, and their business model is still being developed, but all of these aspects are minor and can be attributed to a low exposure of the service at the time of review. These aspects do in any way not block the core value of the Bitsgap’s platform for cryptocurrency traders and investors.
Finally, the platform is betting heavily on Cryptocurrencies becoming more popular in future, albeit a whole industry concern, given altcoins and cryptocurrency fire fades, its gap could find it hard to diversify into other financial markets.
Yes, Bitsgap addresses all of the security concerns and explains that it is safer than your internet banking system. Why?
Because Bitsgap uses encryption called RSA 2048, most banks use 1024. This means that Bitsgap is pretty much twice as safe as the bank, impressive. Bitsgap explains in more detail: “when traders add an API key to Bitsgap, the browser already initiates an encryption process on your side and delivers your API to our server already encrypted. To put it in numbers, if a person chooses to “crack” your API key, it will take him well over a hundred lifetimes to go through every possible combination”.
Many traders will still raise concerns, but they are mostly connected to the fact that the project, platform and website are new. Most traders do not have the same concerns with a site that already has name recognition. Bitsgap explains why:
“Trustworthiness is something every start-up is going through. We believe you won’t have any doubts adding your personal and credit card information to any old financial service like transferwise because they are well known and can be trusted, even though they don’t have a clear statement what do they do with your information and how they are planning to protect it. And this is absolutely normal, an old service provider means they can be trusted. This is exactly what we need to prove during the next years.”
It is up to Bitsgap to close that recognition and trust gap.
In general, Bitsgap does an excellent job of addressing security concerns in our view. They emphasise that it uses a secure network structure (only accessible to a few people) and that the servers are only connected to IP addresses from whitelisted exchanges. Bitsgap also mentions that login attempts are secured and that two-factor authentication is a must. More frequently asked questions are answered in this FAQ section.
We asked Bitsgap for an official reaction to security concerns that users might have and here is what they had to say about how they protect your account and your API key. Here’s Bitsgap’s answer:
Bitsgap added that:
“We are trying our best to shape the industry of crypto trading so you will have more free time to spare and don’t worry about how your coins are doing.”
This review of Bitsgap has been relatively positive so far. Some of you might be wondering is Bitsgap a scam? Can you trust Bitsgap? Is Bitsgap dangerous for your accounts?
In our view, Bitsgap is a legitimate platform with a strong team of entrepreneurs, investors, and software engineers backing the development.
Just to recap, Bitsgap offers traders vital information and tools such as: