Summary

FXOpen is a reputable foreign exchange trading platform that has been around for more than a decade. It was the first to offer ECN trading – basically, connecting end users to large liquidity providers – through the exceptional metatrader 4 platform, which is accessible via desktop or android/iOS apps.

While FXOpen is a reasonable option for any forex trader, and the review below will be relevant to any prospective customer, as a bitcoin-related site we will focus mostly on their crypto trading offerings. And indeed, for the bitcoin trader, FXOpen offers a number of unique services, including 3:1 leverage on a number of crypto-fiat pairs, and of course, the ability to trade on the industry’s best FX trading platform.

Unfortunately, FXOpen does not operate in the United States.

Opening an Account

FXOpen offers three account options, personal, joint or corporate. The personal account requires name, address, country, email and phone, joint requires the same info for both holders, and the corporate account requires a bit of additional cursory company information.

Opening a crypto account requires a few additional steps on top of the standard registration. Navigate to the “add an account” button at the top left-hand corner of the site, and select “Crypto” under “trading accounts”. Add your account currency – this includes all the standard fiat currencies as well as litecoin and bitcoin, which is referred to as MBT (mBTC), the leverage you would like to use in trading which can range from 1:1 to 1:3, a phone password and then accept the terms.

You’ll be taken to a thanks for registering screen, which lists your account number, a trader’s password, and an investor’s password – the trader’s password allows for actual trading, and thus is the one you’ll want to jot down. On the right hand side of the screen is a download button for the metatrader 4 platform – please make sure to download from that link – other platform downloads might load the inappropriate configuration, and make trading crypto impossible.

You will also receive a “trading account opened!” email, which contains within your trading account number and password, as well as the “trading server address” – you’ll need to jot down that address as well, which will be needed in order to login.

After you’ve successfully logged in, right click anywhere within the “market watch” box located on the left-hand side of the screen and select “show all”. This will load all the crypto-currency pairs available for trading.

Making a deposit

FXOpen operates a multi-currency e-wallet, which allows depositing in different fiat and crypto currencies, as well as the transfer to and from relevant trading accounts. While transferring funds to a trading account denominated in the same currency is free of charge, transferring funds to a different currency account will accrue substantial conversion fees. Deposits and withdrawals are managed through the website itself, after logging in.

In order to transfer funds from the e-wallet to a trading account, users must undergo a KYC process which consists of:

Once submitted accounts are generally verified within two working days, though depending on volumes it might take longer.

Users may also deposit directly into their trading accounts, which allows for trading prior to account verification. However, prior to withdrawing – which is done by transferring the funds to the e-wallet – the same verification process must be completed.

Making a trade

FXOpen utilizes the consensus choice for best forex trading platform in the market, metatrader 4. We are not inclined (nor particularly capable) of providing here an in depth review of the capabilities of this exceptional platform. We will give a quick overview of how to get yourself set up for trading crypto – any additional research, a good place to start would be this investopedia series.

FXOpen offers trading of about 5 different cryptocurrencies against a large assortment of different fiat currencies, and against each other if liquidity permits. And speaking of liquidity, FXOpen does present very narrow spreads and solid liquidity, which is accomplished through liquidity aggregation from a number of different bitcoin exchange platforms, most notably BTC-e.

A right click on your desired trading symbol under market watch allows for a number of different actions. Most importantly, you can select “chart window” to pop the symbol out into chart form, which allows for utilizing the myriad of different charts, tools and trading systems available through the platform. A right click on the market watch symbol, or on a relevant chart itself, also allows setting up a new order.

Market and limit orders are offered, with any combination of stop loss / take profit attached. The default volume sizes are a bit off at times, so simply manually input the amount you would like to trade. Once your trade has been executed, it will display in the “trades” box at the bottom of the screen. If you would like to add a trailing stop to your existing order, you may do so from this interface.

Note that, depending on which leverage you selected when setting up your account, the amount it will cost to purchase your order will vary. For instance, if 1:3 leverage was chosen, an order to buy $10,000 worth of bitcoin will require only $3,333 from your account balance. Please note that a margin call will be executed at 20% – meaning that should the total amount of account equity falls to 20% or less of the position – i.e. $2,000 – the position will be closed.

Support

FXOpen support is ever-present, very knowledgeable about their product, polite, efficient, and humorless. Perfect in every way.

Might look elsewhere if:

You are willing to buy bitcoin.

FXOpen provides good service to fiat holders looking to trade cryptocurrency derivatives.  If you are willing to collateralize your trades in crypto check out bitmex, which offers lower fees, a transparent price index, a greater variety of cryptos, and much higher available leverages.

You want instant and anonymous trading.

Check out 1broker, a CFD platform that accepts only bitcoin and offers tons of instruments at a relatively cheap price.

Bottom Line

FXOpen is a forex trading platform that has had about 11 years of real market experience to perfect their product. And this experience shows in the scale and depth of their offering. Of course, plugging into metatrader as a forex operator is both a no brainer and ensures an unparalleled trading platform to offer customers. Add to this FXOpen’s exceptional language coverage, variety of liquid currency pairs and exceptional support, and you have quite a complete product.

More importantly for the crypto trader, FXOpen was the first to offer ECN trading – basically, peer to peer – through the metatrader platform, which allowed them a quick path to integrating third party liquidity providers of bitcoin and other cryptos. This now allows the bitcoin trader the ability to trade bitcoin with 3:1 leverage on metatrader 4.