Guide and review of Binance futures

Trading on cryptocurrency exchanges enjoys great interest. Most traders prefer platforms with high liquidity. Binance exchange has the highest liquidity, where you have all cryptocurrency products together. Among them is futures contract trading.

🏆 Binance Futures
Highest Liquidity Derivatives Trading
📊 Spot Trading
Represents buying and selling assets at market price. Direct ownership of cryptocurrency with immediate settlement.
📈 Futures Trading
Contracts between two parties with obligation to sell or buy an asset at a specific time in the future at a price determined today.

While spot trading represents buying and selling assets at market price, futures are contracts concluded between two parties about the obligation to sell or buy an asset at a specific time in the future at a price determined today. On a futures exchange, you don’t realize buying and selling, but place bets on growth (long position) and bets on decline (short position).

The futures exchange is often called derivative: you trade derivative contracts on it, which allow traders to “speculate” about the future price of an asset without expiration date. The advantage of futures is mainly their high liquidity; they are very popular and traders usually have no problem finding a partner to close a trade.

💧

High Liquidity
Easy order matching

📊

Price Speculation
Long and short positions

Leverage Trading
Amplify your positions

🔄

No Expiration
Perpetual contracts available

In this article, we will focus on Binance futures exchange. After the review and guide to Binance futures, you will have an overview of how to close a trade and how to navigate the trading platform.

Futures on Binance

First, you must register on Binance exchange and verify your account through KYC process (Know Your Customer) by importing personal documents. Then deposit money to the exchange. You can find the Futures section in the main menu.

1

Registration
Create Binance account

2

KYC Verification
Upload identity documents

3

Deposit Funds
Add money to exchange

4

Access Futures
Navigate to Futures section

Futures and Options
Binance offers not only futures trading but also options trading. What’s the difference between them?

  • Futures are contracts where two parties agree to buy or sell an amount of asset at a pre-specified price on a given date. A firm trade where one party has an obligation to buy and the other an obligation to sell.
  • Options are contracts that give the right to the buyer to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price during an agreed period. It’s a conditional trade because the buyer has no obligation, but the right to sell or buy. If the right is exercised, the seller must fulfill their obligations.

After logging into Binance exchange, you first need to transfer capital from the spot wallet to the futures wallet. Financial resources for futures are separated separately. You can transfer both fiat currency and cryptocurrency. Just go to Assets → Futures → Transfer section.

Transfer Money from Spot to Futures
Source: Binance

📋 Types of Futures Contracts

Now everything is ready to start trading on Binance futures exchange. The trading platform offers several types of futures contracts. Besides traditional futures contracts we defined, you can also trade:

🔄 Perpetual Futures
No expiration or settlement date
📅 Delivery Futures
Have expiration and settlement date (e.g., quarterly contracts)
📈 Traditional Futures
Standard contract specifications
Types of Futures Contracts
Source: Binance
TIP
Register on Binance and get a $100 bonus.

Placing a Trade

🖥️ Trading Platform Overview

In this section, we’ll show you how to place trades on Binance futures exchange. The process is simple and everyone will understand it immediately. Let’s do it!

1

Header
Navigation & Account

2

Price Chart
TradingView Integration

3

Order Book
Buy/Sell Orders

4

Order Entry
Place Your Trades

5

Positions
Open & Closed Orders

First, we’ll select a contract for trading. In our example, we’ll choose the BTCUSDT perpetual contract.

Now you get to the trading platform section where you’ll place trading orders. We’ll divide the platform into basic sections:

  1. Header. In this top part, you can navigate between the trading platform or the exchange’s homepage. You have access to your account, wallets, or orders.
  2. Price chart is paired with TradingView platform and provides various information needed for executing trades.
  3. Order book with a list of instructions that the exchange uses to record interest from buyers and sellers. Something like an accounting book for contracts.
  4. In the Order Entry section, you enter the specific type and conditions of the trading order. The exchange provides countless types of trades. Basic orders are limit, stop, and stop limit.
  5. In the Open and Executed Orders section, your open positions and closed orders with their history are displayed.

⚠️ Financial Leverage

Futures trading often uses financial leverage, also called margin. In the previous procedure, we showed where to find this section when placing a trading order. On Binance, you have two basic leverage options.

🔗 Combined Leverage
Can cause loss of entire balance including open positions. Risk: entire account. Advantage: assets can be used for any pair transactions.
🔒 Isolated Leverage
Tied to specific position. Risk: only specific trading pair account. Disadvantage: asset can’t be used for other pairs.

Besides choosing the type of leverage, you can also select the leverage amount. Binance offers maximum financial leverage of 125x, but only for some pairs, such as perpetual futures contracts ETHUSDC, ETHUSDT, BTCUSDC, and BTCUSDT.

Financial Leverage Futures
Source: Binance
Financial Leverage
Financial leverage is essentially a loan to achieve higher profit. For example, if you have $100 of your own and use 5x leverage, your entry investment will be $500.

📊 Leverage Example

Remember that trading with high margin is risky. The higher leverage you use, the closer to market price a liquidation price occurs, which will cancel your trade. Let’s explain with an example.

Example:
Bitcoin costs $50,000. You use 125x leverage. Your personal investment is only $400 ($50,000/125), the rest is borrowed money. If price rises to $51,000, you profit $1,000. However, just a move below $49,600 (by $400) and the entire position is liquidated.

💰 Fee Structure

If you decide to trade futures, you’ll definitely be interested in the fee structure. You can view fees not only for regular users but also for all VIP levels. You can also filter by futures type.

🏗️ Maker
Brings liquidity to exchange
Lower Fees
📈 Taker
Takes liquidity from market
Higher Fees
Futures Fees
Source: Binance
Maker vs. Taker
As you may have noticed, Binance exchange also divides fees based on whether you’re a Maker or Taker. Usually, the Taker fee is slightly higher since it takes liquidity from the market. The difference is as follows:

  • Maker brings liquidity to the exchange.
  • Taker takes liquidity from the market.

In conclusion, we can evaluate that trading on Binance futures exchange is user-friendly and simple. Even though it might seem complicated at first, it won’t take long to get used to. For this reason, even beginners can use futures trading (ideally without using financial leverage – if you do decide on margin, we recommend using the smallest one). Binance finally rates as the best choice for derivatives market trading.

xlubecx

Written by

xlubecx