BTCBox Exchange Review

Cryptocurrency exchange BTCBox was established in Japan in April 2014 by BTC Box Co., Ltd. BTCBox is a member of the Japan Cryptocurrency Business Association (JCBA) – an association that provides support to banks and other business entities that launch crypto projects in the Japanese market. It seems that they also operate under license from the Japanese Financial Services Agency (JFSA) - a financial regulatory agency based in Japan.

A review of BTCBox shows that this fiat-to-crypto exchange originally only served the crypto space via one market and one currency pair, namely BTC/JPY. Today they seem to offer more than one JPY-to-crypto currency pair, including JPY-to-crypto currency pairs that include Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC) and Ethereum (ETH). This effectively boils down to trading only being available in Japanese Yen (JPY).

The BTCBox website is available in Chinese, English and Japanese, but the options available in English are extremely limited as it is only partially translated. It is unclear if the same can be said of the Chinese version of the website. Chances are that BTCBox focuses primarily on the Japanese market. A BTCBox review also shows that they started Bitcoin lending in February of 2016. They seem to offer both spot and margin trading as well as finance.

BTCBox seems to enjoy the support of banks in Japan. They accept deposits in JPY and there don’t seem to be any deposit fees, although withdrawals seem to attract fees. In addition, margin trading doesn’t seem to be instant.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) seems to be available as a security option.

Deposits on this platform can only be made through bank transfers, as credit cards are not accepted as a valid form of payment. BTCBox also does not offer crypto-to-crypto trading, which is demonstrated on their website through a graphic. 

BTCBox offers a flat trading fee of 0.20%, which is slightly lower than the global industry average of 0.25%. This gives the platform a slight competitive edge compared to other platforms in the industry with higher trading fees. Its withdrawal fee of 0.001 BTC is also in line with the industry average. 

BTCBox’s security has been a point of issue, not because the exchange has a weak security system but because there is another website by the name btcbox.in. This website claims to provide “free Bitcoin” but has received negative reviews in the past. BTCBox, however, goes by the domain of btcbox.co.jp. 

The fact that the exchange has two interfaces and is an entry-level exchange makes it quite user-friendly. However, as it is focused on the Japanese market, there aren’t any English reviews made by international users, which lowers the trust that global users might have in the exchange.