Bitrue Exchange Review

Bitrue was launched early 2018, and initially gained significant traction due to their introduction of an XRP base market, which was very popular among XRP enthusiasts who promoted the exchange. Bitrue remains true to its early venture and continues to maintain and develop its XRP base market, making it probably the number one exchange, liquidity wise, for traders who prefer to trade assets against XRP as a base.

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User Experience at Bitrue is mostly positive, with the site being relatively responsive and accessible, customer support responding quickly and there is no need for initial KYC to start depositing crypto and trading, if you view it as a positive. However, the English level of Bitrue's site and customer support is lacking, and we alongside other users had some trouble communicating with the exchange or understanding some of its features, as their explanations are not too clear. We believe that for users who speak Chinese the experience will be a bit more positive, since most if not all of the exchange team is of Chinese origin and it is geared more towards Chinese audiences.

On the features front, Bitrue does have some interesting tidbits: it offers a mobile app and a wide variety of coins to trade, high-caps alongside low-caps, but liquidity between pairs differs a lot: some pairs see significant trading volumes (at least reported, it is estimated by some sources that Bitrue reports some fake volume numbers), while others see very little daily volumes.
Bitrue's Power Piggy, which allows users to gain interest on their crypto would grant them more points - if Bitrue made a good enough job of explaining how it assures customers their funds will be 100% secure, something we very much doubt, since what allows Bitrue to pay its users such interest is probably the fact that they loan it out themselves, but on the other hand offer no insurance for these assets under custody.
What brought Bitrue's Features score down significantly is its decision to issue and sell BTR or Bitrue Tokens, which came more than a year after the exchange's launch and therefore can't be justified as an excuse to bootstrap the business, its model is not completely thought-out and seems more like the copying of Binance Coin's (BNB) properties, and more than anything - another attempt to take money from users while not providing much in return. We would argue the same effects for the users could be achieved though some other incentive system or promotions, although that way Bitrue wouldn't be pocketing the profits.

The Bitrue team is a modest one, consisting of CEO Curis Wang and a total of 8 people if LinkedIn is to be believed (we have no other source - the is no "Team" page), who appears to have worked in Telecom before starting the exchange, and the rest of the team have mostly also worked in Cheetah Mobile - the same company the CEO used to work for. It also appears many of them still work for Cheetah, and the employment model of Bitrue might be that of a part-time basis.

Our trust score for Bitrue is below average: The exchange was hacked for $4.2M in XRP and ADA tokens in June 2019. Aside from this incident, it also shows a lack of enough security layers for accounts and regulatory clarity - while it appears Bitrue operates in Singapore, the company doesn't publicly reveal its actual operative model - and so we can't predict its stability. Generally, when that is the case, stability is all but assured.

In conclusion, Bitrue is an OK exchange. It is probably not a scam designed to steal funds, it does work hard to stay competitive in the crypto exchange industry - but unfortunately, not enough. There are better alternatives out there for many use cases, due to this industry being as competitive as it is. Bitrue has some positives, such as the XRP base market for those interested or the Power Piggy (earn interest on your crypto) - if you're comfortable with the ambiguous terms. All in all, Bitrue is ok - nothing more than that.