Bitfinex

Bitfinex is a centralized exchange for trading crypto against dollars, euros, stablecoins and other coins, with margin trading, perpetual derivatives and a peer-to-peer lending market where users lend funds to margin traders. The site footer names iFinex Inc. as the copyright holder, and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission's 2021 order describes iFinex Inc., BFXNA Inc. and BFXWW Inc. as doing business as Bitfinex.

Wikidata dates the exchange to 2012 and lists Raphael Nicolle as its founder. When Tether announced in October 2023 that Paolo Ardoino would become its chief executive, Decrypt reported that Jean-Louis van der Velde would keep his role as CEO of Bitfinex and that Ardoino would remain its CTO. Bitfinex publishes no current leadership page that we could read, so treat those roles as reported.

Bitfinex and the stablecoin issuer Tether share management and history. The New York Attorney General treated them as one matter in its 2021 settlement,. This page covers the exchange.

The group's regulated footprint has moved to El Salvador. Bitfinex Securities El Salvador was the first platform licensed by the National Commission of Digital Assets (CNAD), in April 2023 according to Kitco, Bitfinex Derivatives El Salvador followed, and on 12 May 2026 Bitfinex announced a digital asset service provider licence for its core platform. A separate entity, Bitfinex Securities Ltd, runs a tokenized securities venue in the Astana International Financial Centre in Kazakhstan.

The exchange offers spot trading, margin trading with funds borrowed from other users, and perpetual derivatives through Bitfinex Derivatives. Its order types and API are aimed at active traders, and it supports trading bots through the API, which is documented at docs.bitfinex.com and backed by open-source libraries on GitHub.

Margin funding is the feature that most distinguishes Bitfinex. Users place offers to lend dollars, stablecoins or coins at a daily rate; margin traders borrow from that pool, and the interest they pay goes to lenders. Bitfinex takes a cut of that interest. Lenders carry the risk that a position cannot be closed in time, which the platform covers through its liquidation process and, in a forced takeover, a separate fee charged to the borrower.

UNUS SED LEO (LEO) is iFinex's exchange token. Holding it used to cut trading fees; with trading now free, Bitfinex says the LEO trading-fee discount no longer applies, while its discount on lending fees remains. iFinex has also committed to use 80% of the net funds it recovers from the 2016 hack to buy back and burn LEO within 18 months of receiving them, according to the commitment as reported by The Block and others. How much of the returned bitcoin has reached Bitfinex, and how much LEO has been burned with it, was not published in a form we could verify in October 2026.

On 17 December 2025 Bitfinex cut maker and taker fees to zero for spot and margin, derivatives, securities and OTC trades, for every eligible customer and with no volume or token requirement. Its zero-fee page says the change is the new default, not a promotion, and that all other fees, including lending and withdrawal fees, are unchanged.

The fee page does not list on-chain withdrawal fees for individual coins; those are shown on the withdrawal screen. Zero fees do not make trading free. On 14 July 2026, after the change, we measured the all-in cost of a $10,000 bitcoin purchase at 0.20% and of a $100,000 purchase at 0.2162%, almost all of it spread and price impact, with only 10.5 BTC of resting orders within 0.1% of the best ask. A large order on a thin book can cost more than a fee would have.

Bitfinex's full list of restricted jurisdictions sits in its exchange terms, which we could not load in October 2026, so the list is not reproduced here. What the public record does show: under its 2021 settlement with the New York Attorney General, Bitfinex agreed to stop all trading activity with New Yorkers, and the CFTC's 2016 and 2021 orders concern trading with US persons who were not eligible contract participants and required Bitfinex to keep systems that prevent those trades. US residents should assume they cannot open a retail account.

Bitfinex requires identity verification to use most services, including fiat deposits and withdrawals, and higher verification levels for securities trading. Its securities venues apply their own lists of prohibited persons and jurisdictions, set out in a dedicated support article and the securities terms.

On 2 August 2016 attackers took about 119,755 BTC from Bitfinex customer wallets. Rather than absorbing the loss or paying it from a fund, Bitfinex applied what it called a generalized loss: every account balance was cut by about 36%, including accounts the attacker had not touched, and customers received BFX tokens worth one dollar for each dollar lost. Monthly redemptions began in September 2016, and Bitfinex said that by early April 2017 every BFX token had been redeemed at face value or exchanged for shares in iFinex. Holders who took shares also received Recovery Right Tokens (RRT) that pay out from any recovered funds.

The repayment ended the immediate loss, but the precedent matters for anyone holding a balance there: the company has used all customer balances to cover a theft from some of them. Nothing in the material we could read rules out doing the same again, and Bitfinex publishes no theft-protection fund.

The stolen bitcoin was later traced. US authorities seized about 94,000 BTC in February 2022, and in 2025 a federal court approved returning about 94,643 BTC to Bitfinex in kind under the restitution terms of the plea agreements with the two people charged. US government wallets were still moving coins tied to the case for restitution in 2026; CoinDesk reported one such transfer to Coinbase Prime on 17 April 2026. Bitfinex has said the recovery will be used to redeem outstanding RRTs and to fund its LEO buyback commitment.

Bitfinex holds customer assets itself. Its most recent reserve disclosure is a blog post of 11 November 2022, published after FTX failed, with a wallet file on GitHub listing about 204,338 BTC, 2,018.5 L-BTC, about 1,000 BTC on the Lightning Network and 1,225,600 ETH. It showed holdings only: no customer liabilities, no ratio and no auditor. The post said Bitfinex would keep developing its Ballot solution to provide periodic proof of reserves. We found no later report in October 2026. Our guide to spotting a weak proof of reserves explains why an asset list without liabilities proves little.

The other part of the record is Crypto Capital Corp., a payment processor Bitfinex used for customer deposits and withdrawals in 2017 and 2018. According to the New York Attorney General, about $850 million held there went missing in 2018 without being disclosed to customers, and Bitfinex later said the funds had been seized and safeguarded, an assurance the Attorney General said it had no basis to give. The February 2021 settlement required Bitfinex and Tether to pay $18.5 million, stop trading with New Yorkers and report on how client and corporate accounts are kept apart.

Opening an account means registering, completing identity verification and setting up two-factor authentication. Crypto deposits are free. Fiat goes in and out by bank wire or through OpenPayd for euros, pounds and dollars, at the fees in the table above; express wires settle within 24 hours on business days at 1%.

Coins can be withdrawn to any address, and transfers to another Bitfinex user are free. If you deposit a coin that needs a tag or memo and leave it out, recovering it costs $150, so check the deposit instructions before sending.

Support runs through the help center at support.bitfinex.com, where users open tickets; the site also links to official channels on X, Telegram, LinkedIn and YouTube. We found no phone line on its site. Search results for Bitfinex login and sign-in pages attract look-alike domains, so type bitfinex.com directly or use a saved bookmark, and treat any message offering account recovery or LEO airdrops through a link as suspect.

Bitfinex is one of the oldest exchanges still operating, and its timeline mixes product changes with legal events.

• 2012: Bitfinex founded, according to Wikidata.
• 2 June 2016: CFTC fines BFXNA Inc. $75,000 over off-exchange financed bitcoin trading.
• 2 August 2016: about 119,755 BTC stolen; losses spread across accounts and BFX tokens issued.
• April 2017: Bitfinex reports all BFX tokens redeemed or converted to iFinex shares.
• 2018: about $850 million held by Crypto Capital Corp. goes missing.
• 23 February 2021: $18.5 million New York Attorney General settlement with Bitfinex and Tether.
• 15 October 2021: CFTC fines Bitfinex $1.5 million.
• February 2022: US authorities seize about 94,000 BTC from the 2016 hack.
• 11 November 2022: wallet holdings published as a proof of reserves.
• 2023 to 2026: securities, derivatives and core platform licences in El Salvador.
• 2025: court approves in-kind return of about 94,643 BTC to Bitfinex.
• 17 December 2025: zero trading fees across all products.

Bitfinex suits traders who want margin funding and zero trading fees, and who accept a disclosure record weaker than that of exchanges with regular liability-inclusive reserve reports. Our separate exchange comparison shows how Bitfinex compares with other exchanges on measured cost and custody evidence.