Bitfinex Review 2026: Is It Safe? The 2016 Hack, the Tether Link, US Fines, Licences, Zero Fees and Lending

I usually send USDT from OKX to Bitfinex over the Solana network, and the pending deposit shows up on the deposit page quickly. In October 2026 one deposit was stuck for about six hours; after I opened a support ticket, a human replied in under half an hour.

My Bitfinex review in short: founded in 2012, it is one of the oldest crypto exchanges, and its operator iFinex is run by the same group of people as Tether, the issuer of USDT. Bitfinex says about 99.5% of user assets are held in multi-signature cold wallets, and since 17 December 2025 all trading fees are 0%. But its record is not clean: about 120,000 BTC were stolen in 2016 and all users shared a loss of about 36%; in 2019 the New York Attorney General accused it of hiding a gap of about US$850 million; and the US CFTC has sanctioned it twice. Its reserve transparency also lags its peers: it has only published one list of wallet addresses, in 2022, and no regular reserve ratios.

This article shares my own experience and research. It is not investment, tax or legal advice. Fees, rates, licences and service regions can change; every figure here is dated, so check Bitfinex’s official pages before you act. Crypto prices are volatile, and keeping assets on an exchange carries the risk of the exchange itself.

Bitfinex key factsData checked: 2026-10-08

As of 2026-10-08, Bitfinex's general-user spot taker fee is 0% and its futures taker fee is 0%; signing up with the invitation code gives a 6% trading fee discount.

Item	Details	Source
Jason Finance rating	50.4 / 100	rating method
Highlights	Zero trading fees USDT/USD dollar market Wallet addresses only, no full PoR
General-user fees (taker)	Spot 0%, futures 0%	2026-10-08
Invitation code fee discount	6% trading fee discount	2026-10-07
Proof of reserves	Not published	2026-10-08
Main licences and registrations	El Salvador CNAD licence, Kazakhstan AFSA registration	source 1 source 2
USDT withdrawals	Cheapest TRC20 0 USDT; 6 common networks supported	2026-10-08
Order book depth (±2%)	BTC/USDT about 6.7M USD, ETH/USDT about 1.8M USD	2026-10-08

What kind of exchange Bitfinex is

The place of registration and scale come from a same-day snapshot from CoinGecko. The relationship with Tether comes from the New York Attorney General’s 2019 press release.

Bitfinex’s trading volume is not large among the big exchanges. What sets it apart is that it has markets quoted in US dollars, so you can convert USDT directly into dollars and wire them to a bank in a supported region. How to work out the cost of that conversion is in Bitfinex USDT to USD.

Is Bitfinex safe?

Reserve transparency: wallet addresses only, no regular reserve ratio

A proof of reserves compares what an exchange holds in its wallets with the total of all user balances, so you can see whether the reserve ratio is 100% or more.

Bitfinex has done just one thing: on 11 November 2022, during the FTX collapse, it published a list of wallet addresses on GitHub, with cold and hot wallet addresses for BTC, ETH and other coins (official announcement, list). When I checked the list’s change history on 9 October 2026, it was last updated on 12 December 2022.

The list lets anyone see how many coins those addresses hold, and CoinGecko uses it to show Bitfinex’s exchange reserves. But it does not disclose user liabilities, and there is no Merkle tree for users to check that their balance is included, so no reserve ratio can be calculated. I also found no regular, third-party verified reserve report from Bitfinex. Compared with OKX and Bybit, which publish reserve ratios every month, this is a clear weakness. For a comparison across exchanges, see How to check proof of reserves.

Custody: 99.5% in multi-signature cold wallets

According to Bitfinex’s security overview:

• About 99.5% of user assets are held offline in multi-signature cold wallets. Every outgoing transfer needs approval from 3 of 5 hardware security modules (HSMs), held by members of management in different countries.
• The hot wallet holds only what is needed to process the withdrawal queue, about 0.5% of total assets; topping up the hot wallet from cold storage needs approval from 4 of 7 HSMs.

This is Bitfinex’s own description, and there is no external audit report to check it against.

About 120,000 BTC stolen in 2016, with all users sharing about 36%

In August 2016 hackers stole 119,756 BTC from Bitfinex, then worth about US$72 million. Instead of putting the loss only on the accounts that were hit, Bitfinex spread it across all accounts: every user’s balance was cut by about 36%, and BFX tokens were issued as compensation. All of the tokens were redeemed in under a year, and some users chose to exchange them for iFinex shares (Coin Bureau, Fin24).

Recovery so far:

For the arrests and sentencing, see the Wikipedia summary. According to reports, Bitfinex has said that if it gets the bitcoin back, it will first redeem the RRT (Recovery Right Token) issued to some users at the time, then use 80% of the net amount to buy back and burn its platform token LEO (The Block). I found no official announcement that Bitfinex has recovered all of it.

The 2019 gap of about US$850 million and the New York settlement

In April 2019 the New York Attorney General obtained a court order, alleging that Bitfinex had handed customer and corporate funds to Crypto Capital, a Panamanian payment processor, that about US$850 million of it could not be recovered, and that Bitfinex had not disclosed this and had used at least US$700 million of Tether’s reserves to cover the gap (New York Attorney General, 2019 press release).

On 23 February 2021 Bitfinex and Tether settled with New York State, paying US$18.5 million, stopping all trading with New York residents and agreeing to report regularly to the Attorney General’s office on the segregation of funds and on USDT’s reserves (New York Attorney General, 2021 press release).

Regulatory record and warnings

The table lists, in date order, the regulatory actions, warning lists, court cases and service restrictions I found. Where possible the sources are regulators’ pages or Bitfinex’s own; items found only in media reports are marked.

I found no sanctions record against Bitfinex itself. The CFTC and New York actions concerned misleading disclosures and serving US users without a licence.

Account security settings

According to the official security overview:

• Mandatory 2FA: you must turn on Google Authenticator or a U2F hardware security key to use the account; SMS verification is no longer supported.
• IP whitelist: you can restrict logins to specific IP addresses.
• Email confirmation for withdrawals: a withdrawal not confirmed within 12 hours is cancelled automatically (official explanation).
• Login notification emails, automatic logout when the IP address changes, separate API key permissions, and PGP-encrypted emails.

Bitfinex licences and service regions

The El Salvador licence is the only formal exchange licence I have found so far. The information comes from Bitfinex’s own announcement, and I did not check each entry against the CNAD register. For the warnings and checks in the UK, Japan and Hong Kong, see Regulatory record and warnings above.

Regions where Bitfinex is unavailable:

• United States: US citizens and residents (including green card holders and US passport holders) cannot open accounts (official FAQ).

• Ontario, Canada: no new accounts since October 2021, and service stopped from 1 March 2022 (official FAQ).

• New York: trading stopped under the 2021 settlement.

• USDT has regional limits too: depositing, withdrawing and trading USDT requires at least Basic Plus verification, and it is unavailable in some regions (official explanation).

• European Economic Area: no sign-ups with an invitation code since 19 December 2024 (official explanation).

• Bitfinex Securities (security tokens) has more restrictions: it is not available to US persons, Canadians, Spaniards, non-exempt Japanese and UK persons, the Venezuelan government, or residents of comprehensively embargoed regions such as Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria and Ukraine’s Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia (official explanation, updated 7 October 2026).

The full list of restricted regions for the main exchange is in the terms of service. That page loads dynamically and I could not read the full text, so the list above only covers regions spelled out separately in the Bitfinex help centre, and the main platform’s full list was not verified on an official page. Before signing up, check that your country of residence is not on the restricted list.

How to sign up for Bitfinex

Create an account with an email address, enter the invitation code in the invitation code field, turn on 2FA, then complete identity verification (KYC).

Two things to note:

• Signing up is not enough: Bitfinex has four verification levels: Basic Access, Basic Plus, Intermediate and Full. Basic Access is essentially view-only; USDT requires Basic Plus; for accounts opened after 1 March 2022, margin trading and lending require Intermediate; US dollar wires require Full (official explanation).
• The invitation code fee discount: signing up with an invitation code gives a 6% fee discount. Since Bitfinex’s trading fees are already 0%, the 6% applies to the lending (Margin Funding) fee: when you lend out USD or USDT, Bitfinex takes 15% of the interest income (18% for hidden offers), and signing up with an invitation code reduces that fee.

Bitfinex fees: 0% to trade, withdrawals and fiat transfers extra

According to Bitfinex’s fee explanation and fee page (checked 9 October 2026), since 17 December 2025:

Bitfinex’s zero-fee Q&A says this applies to all eligible users, regardless of trading volume and without holding LEO. So Bitfinex has none of the VIP tiers and platform token discounts other exchanges use. For a comparison with other exchanges’ fees, see the international exchange fee comparison.

Zero trading fees do not mean zero cost: market orders incur slippage, and Bitfinex’s volume is smaller than the big exchanges’, so check the order book depth yourself. For how to work out the actual average price when selling 100,000 USDT on USDT/USD, see Bitfinex USDT to USD.

USDT deposits and withdrawals

Bitfinex supports USDT on networks including Ethereum, Tron, Solana, Avalanche, TON, Aptos, Polkadot, Near, Celo, Tezos and Kaia, as well as USDT0 on Polygon (official explanation). Points to watch:

• Native USDT only: it does not accept USDT bridged from other chains (such as USDT.e), and funds sent by mistake may not be recoverable.
• Old Solana addresses no longer work: Solana deposit addresses generated before 25 November 2022 must be replaced.
• TON needs a memo: if it is missing or wrong, Bitfinex charges US$150 to help recover the funds, and it may take several months (fee page).
• The minimum withdrawal is about US$5 equivalent.

In Bitfinex’s public configuration on 9 October 2026, the withdrawal fee for USDT on Solana was 0.5 USDT; for other networks, go by what the withdrawal page shows.

In the early hours of 8 October 2026 I sent USDT from OKX to Bitfinex over Solana. It was confirmed on-chain within two minutes, but Bitfinex only credited it about six hours later; support replied that there was a technical delay on the Solana network. At the time, Bitfinex’s status page showed everything as normal. What happened, the support replies and the steps to check are in USDT deposit delayed: what to do. Since then my approach has been to send a small test amount before a large one, and not to wait until I urgently need the money to transfer it.

US dollar deposits and withdrawals

US dollar wires require Full verification, and the bank must be in a supported location. A Bitfinex notice to Taiwanese users says it does not accept wire deposits sent directly from banks in Taiwan. Fees and limits are covered in Bitfinex USDT to USD.

How Bitfinex lending (Margin Funding) works and its risks

Bitfinex runs a P2P lending market: users lend funds to margin traders and earn interest. According to the official explanations (introduction to Margin Funding, how-to guide):

• Eligibility: accounts opened after 1 March 2022 need Intermediate verification.
• You set the rate and term: terms run from 2 to 120 days, or you can choose FRR (Flash Return Rate) and let the system price the loan at the market rate.
• Minimum amount: US$150 equivalent per offer.
• Fee: Bitfinex takes 15% of interest income, 18% for hidden offers.
• No early recall: once funds are lent out, they only return to the funding wallet when the term ends or the borrower repays early.

Bitfinex’s lending risk FAQ is clear: borrowers’ positions are collateralised and are liquidated when they fall below the maintenance margin, so the risk is low; but if prices move too fast for liquidation to fill, a borrower can lose more than the collateral, and beyond a certain level the loss is ultimately shared by lenders. Bitfinex says this has never happened, but it is possible in theory. It also states plainly that lending is “not without risk”.

Lending interest comes from other people’s leveraged trading, and rates swing widely with demand for leverage; it is not a fixed income. Besides liquidation risk, funds kept on Bitfinex also carry the risk of USDT and of Bitfinex itself. For the extra risk each option adds compared with Treasury ETFs and Aave, plus actual rate snapshots, see Where to park idle USD and USDT.

My Bitfinex review: pros, cons and who it suits

For more exchange comparisons and how they are scored, see How to choose a crypto exchange and the crypto topic page.

FAQ

Is Bitfinex safe?

Bitfinex was founded in 2012 and says about 99.5% of user assets are kept in multi-signature cold wallets that need approval from 3 of 5 hardware security modules. But about 120,000 BTC were stolen from it in 2016, the New York Attorney General accused it in 2019 of hiding a funding gap of about US$850 million, and it does not publish regular reserve ratios: it has only published one list of wallet addresses, in 2022.

Did users lose money in the 2016 Bitfinex hack?

Yes. In August 2016 about 119,756 BTC were stolen from Bitfinex. Every account balance was cut by about 36% pro rata, and BFX tokens were issued as compensation; all of them were redeemed within a year. The US government seized about 94,000 BTC in 2022, and as of reports in February 2026 these bitcoins were still held by the government, with ownership still before the courts.

What is the relationship between Bitfinex and Tether?

According to the New York Attorney General in 2019, iFinex, the company that operates Bitfinex, and Tether, the issuer of the stablecoin USDT, are owned and operated by the same small group of people. In 2021 the two companies settled with New York State, paid US$18.5 million and stopped serving New York residents.

What are Bitfinex's fees?

Since 17 December 2025, Bitfinex charges no maker or taker fees on spot, margin, derivatives, securities or OTC trading. Crypto deposits are free, withdrawal fees depend on the coin and network, lending is charged 15% of interest income, and fiat wire withdrawals cost 0.1% with a minimum of US$100.

Where can't you use Bitfinex?

Bitfinex says US citizens and residents cannot use it; residents of Ontario, Canada, have been unable to use it since 1 March 2022; and New York residents cannot trade under the 2021 settlement. The UK Financial Conduct Authority added Bitfinex to its warning list of unauthorised firms in October 2023. The terms of service are the reference for the full list.

Is lending on Bitfinex safe?

Bitfinex says lending is not risk-free. Borrowers' positions are collateralised and get liquidated, but if prices move sharply and liquidation cannot keep up, losses beyond a certain level are shared by lenders. Funds that are lent out cannot be recalled before the term ends or the borrower repays, and you also carry the risk of the Bitfinex platform itself.