LakeBTC Review
LakeBTC originates in China and was founded in 2013 as a Bitcoin exchange. However, it is registered in the name of an American, Michael Smithland, who is actually based in New York, but owned by Lake Investments Limited, with Shanghai Trading IT Inc providing the technical and the customer support. The site primarily serves the Asian market.
The BTC in LakeBTC does not stand for Bitcoin. Instead, BTC stands for Banking Technology Company an its origins are in traditional trading technology, as opposed to specialising in blockchain specifically. The company has years of experience in treasuries, agency bonds, currencies, commodities and more.
The site is aimed at traders who want to trade big – rather than newbie traders trying to learn. The site claims to boast features to help all types of traders and the user interface is simple. As well as a variety of trading options, LakeBTC also provides a bitcoin wallet.
Pros
The site includes some excellent features to support experienced traders. You can engage in market making, algorithm trading or arbitrage. Even though the site claims to appeal to all level of traders, it is more appealing for those wishing to make lucrative deals with high risk.
The merchant tools on the website can help people across the globe accept payments for almost free. There is also no worry about charge backs or delays – the tool is also easy to integrate into a site.
It is one of the top four sites in terms of trading volume – so can handle high trading limits.
Cons
There are only a limited number of cryptocurrencies available on the site – these being Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. This is because it was set up to trade traditional, fiat currencies – of which there are many options.
The load time for the site is slower than some other exchanges and there is no app.
Payment Methods Accepted
LakeBTC accepts a huge variety of payment methods. These payment methods include:
- Bank wire
- Western Union
- Neteller
- Leupay
- MoneyGRam
- OKPAY
- PayPal
- Payza
- Perfect Money
- Skrill
Supported Countries
LakeBTC can be accessed across the world. The only exception to this global reach is New York State, where it is necessary to have a Bitcoin licence to trade.
Privacy
You do not have to verify your account and there are no trading limits for unverified accounts. Therefore, you can trade anonymously in cryptocurrencies. If you are trading in fiat currencies, then you will need to:
- Give your full name and address
- Provide copies of your driver’s license or passport
- Provide a verified phone number, which they usually expect to be a mobile phone number
- Provide proof of address
- A photograph, especially if trading in high volumes or you reside in countries where this is expected for all traders of fiat currency.
There is a Darkpool facility that hides particularly large trades – making them invisible – and so protecting the market for impact. There is a higher fee to make such trades invisible.
Limits and Liquidity
There are no limits on deposits, withdrawals or trading volumes.
Liquidity on the site is excellent – and suitable for merchants, individual traders, arbitrageurs, miners, institutions and traders. It is the top four for trade volume in the world.
Speed
It can take up to 5 days for deposits via bank transfer to make it to your account. Cryptocurrency deposits can be done within a day, but this is only after completing a number of confirmation steps.
The deposit and withdrawal also depend on the payment method used and can take some time. The verification process is also reported to be quite slow.
Reputation
LakeBTC is focused heavily on safe and ethical trading. To ensure fairness the site offers a market surveillance program; strict internal controls and a comprehensive focus on risk management. The corporate background of the company shows a commitment to the privacy and security of customer’s funds. To ensure this Lake BTC employ some impressively sophisticated security to avoid bot bugs, theft, online fraud, crashes and potential scams. These measures include:
- SSL encryption
- Google authenticator
- SMS and email notifications
- Cold Storage
However, there have been some worries about accounts being locked – though these reports seem rare. There is a lot of chatter about the company being based in China – but there is no foundation to these concerns.
Fees
The fee structure for the site is complex. The fees are different for withdrawals, deposits and trading. Deposits made in bitcoin are free, but fiat currency deposits incur a fee, and this varies depending on the currency. The user must also add third-party and bank fees to the deposit fee from the site. This is the same with withdrawal.
If you are trading takers, you pay a fee of 0.2% and trading makers are charged based on monthly trade volumes. If you are trading below 3000 BTC then you pay 0.6%, below 6000 BTC it is 00.4%, below 15000 BTC it 0.02% and it free below 20000 BTC. This is an incentive for traders to keep the monthly volumes high. If you fall below 500BTC then you are heavily penalised – with a percentage of 0.15%.
Customer Support
You have a lot of options when wishing to contact customer support. You can use text message, email, social media, instant messaging and the phone. The company offer this service in many languages, including English, Chinese, French and more. There is also a comprehensive FAQ section that includes most of the information you are likely to need.
LakeBTC Alternatives
Binance
Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange that allows crypto-to-crypto trading. People are attracted to the exchange because of the impressive coin offerings and low trading fees.
Coinbase
Coinbase is best known as one of the most popular digital wallets. It is a digital currency exchange based in San Francisco – and trades in most of the major cryptocurrencies and the fiat currencies from 32 countries.
