Foxbit – Is It Good?

Foxbit is an important Brazilian bitcoin exchange with a large amount of traffic. In fact they trade around 300 BTC every day! But besides getting a lot of business, Foxbit is also one of the players actively trying to create a BTC ecosystem in Brazil.

But how good is Foxbit? Is Foxbit trustworthy? Is it only for Brazilians? And, most importantly, how does it stack up against other platforms?

What Does Foxbit provide?

Being one of the largest traders in Brazil, Foxbit is definitely not a scam service looking to keep Brazilian’s cash. It’s a service designed to help them buy and adopt Bitcoin as a currency. So far it seems to be working, with Foxbit claiming to have 43% of the Brazilian market.

Foxbit is a member of the BLINKTRADE network which also serves clients in other countries with less Bitcoin penetration such as Venezuela with SurBitcoin, Chile with Chilebit and Vietnam with VBTC to name a few.

The main mission of Foxbit is to help Brazilians acquire cryptocurrencies. To achieve this, fiat deposits in Brazilian coin is supported to exchange for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether and TrueUSD. They also don’t charge any fee when depositing fiat to an account, instead the fee you pay is only the bank’s commission. Buying is quite simple and can even be done through a smartphone with their Android and iOs apps.

Their focus goes further than just making it easy to buy crypto for Brazilians. Instead the team behind Foxbit has made several video-series explaining the intricacies of the cryptocurrency world. They have tutorials on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Blockchain with more being added periodically.

Foxbit isn’t just one of the largest exchanges in Brazil, it’s also the one with the highest liquidity in the country. With over half a million registered users and almost 6 billion Reales traded, we can see why. However, this large amount of trades always invites trouble, and Foxbit isn’t immune to it.

Although they claim to keep large amounts of funds in cold storage, Foxbit has had a few security breaches and other tech inconveniences. The platform seems to be uncapable to handle the large amount of traffic so they’ve had to block newcomers from joining the platform a few times, and even then they kept having issues.

The worst of these issues was in March 2018 when a virus infiltrated the platform. This virus gave 130 users the ability to make double withdrawals leading to a loss of over a quarter of a million dollars and a series of cancelled orders. This triggered the need of an urgent upgrade that led to the platform being inaccessible for several days. This is one of the reasons why we always suggest people to keep their crypto in separate wallets.

This unfortunately hasn’t been the only security breach, with DDoS attacks dating back to 2015.

Supported Countries

Although Foxbit is strongly focused on its Brazilian clients and the only fiat supported is the Brazilian Real, you don’t have to be Brazilian to use it. Foxbit is available in most of Asia and Africa as well as most of Latin America and the Middle east, Australia, Canada and the United States.

It’s also available in most of the European Union, China and Russia.

Foxbit Rates and Buying Limits

Foxbit has the huge plus of not charging deposit fees for either fiat or crypto. Instead the fees charged when making a deposit to your account are from the banks, not the platform. It also has average trading fees:

Foxbit fee: Maker 0.25%, Taker 0.50%

Verified Foxbit accounts without provided photos have a limit of R$5,000 deposits/withdrawals per day. Once the user has submitted photo verification they can deposit limit of R$25,000 and double for withdrawals. You can also contact Foxbit if you need higher limits.

Foxbit Cons

• Caters mainly to Brazilians: The exchange strongly focuses on its Brazilian audience so although it’s available in most of the world, you probably won’t get too much out of it if you’re not Brazilian
• Lack of support for alt-coins: You can only buy Bitcoin and a handful of alt-coins.
• Security issues: Although very few users were affected, the security flaws on the platform denotes a lack of support for their growing traffic.
• Bothersome verification process: Besides giving away personal information, Foxbit also requires users to take selfies holding their documents and sometimes even proof of income to fully verify their account.

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Is Foxbit Good for Bitcoin?

Foxbit’s main focus is to help Brazilian people buy and adopt cryptocurrencies in a country where, until recently, crypto was seen as a very foreign concept. And some may argue that they’ve been too successful. Foxbit is a younger platform and we can see how it has experienced some growing pains. It seems to have issues keeping up with the demand with all of the platform issues related to traffic and security.

We love the fact that they take the time to educate users about cryptocurrencies instead of just taking money, however the whole verification process may put some users off. After all what’s the point of a decentralized currency if to get it you need to give your information and selfies to some company?

All in all, Foxbit is not a scam and no one is looking to steal your money. You can trade safely even if you experience some hiccups on the way.