Contributor, Benzinga
May 2, 2022
Pionex
Overall Rating:
securely through Pionex's website

Pionex is a cryptocurrency exchange with built-in trading bots. You can access 12 unique trading bots for no additional fee. These bots allow you to automate your investing strategy so you don’t need to constantly monitor the market. Pionex features low trading commissions and a fully fleshed-out mobile app. We believe Pionex would be a great option for high-volume and mobile investors.

Best For
  • High-volume investor looking for the lowest fees
  • Mobile cryptocurrency investors
  • Traders with limited time
  • Those looking for a lower risk investment strategy
Pros
  • 12 free-to-use trading bots
  • Low fees on all transactions
  • Well-designed mobile offering
Cons
  • Cannot fund account with fiat currency

Pionex Ratings at a Glance

Product Selection
Pricing
Customer Service
Mobile App
User Experience
User Benefits
Security
Overall Rating

Pionex is a unique cryptocurrency exchange that allows you to use 18 free bots to automate your trading. But is this strategy too-good-to-be-true? Our Pionex review will help you learn more and decide if you’ll benefit from opening an account. 

It’s free to sign up, and you can get started at any time.

Pionex Product Selection

Though Pionex supports manual trading using crypto-to-crypto conversions, its primary product is its trading bot selection. A cryptocurrency trading bot is an automated program that executes buy and sell orders with no manual input when specific, pre-defined market conditions are met.

Pionex currently offers 18 automated trading bot options. Let’s take a look at a few of the company’s most popular offerings.

  • Grid trading bot: The Grid trading bot automatically buys an asset when the price reaches a predefined “low” point and sells when it hits a defined “high.” This feature allows the user to continuously capitalize on market volatility.
  • Leveraged grid bot: The leveraged grid bot works using the same method as the standard grid bot but allows you to access margin to amplify returns. Current available leverage levels include 1.2x, 1.5x, 2x and 3x.
  • Trailing sell bot: The trailing sell bot was developed to appeal to investors who tend to sell too early in a pumping market. The trailing sell bot allows you to set multiple target prices that subsequently increase in value. When each target is reached, the bot will automatically sell a predefined percentage of your holdings. This practice also limits potential losses if the market suddenly reverses its direction.
  • DCA (dollar cost averaging) bot: The DCA bot allows you to set a series of buy orders at time-based intervals. Instead of basing the execution of buy orders on price, the bot will buy at the current market price at each of your intervals. This strategy provides you with a simple way to get a better average price over time. Pionex currently supports 10 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week and 1 month intervals.
  • Spot futures arbitrage bot: The spot future arbitrage bot allows you to capitalize on differences between the current spot price of a cryptocurrency and the current price in the futures market. This bot aims to provide a “return of 15-50% APR with extremely low risk,” and you can get started with as little as a $50 deposit.
  • Martingale bot: This bot performs DCA buy, one-time sell to capture fluctuation profit.
  • Rebalancing bot: This bot helps you to hodl the coins.

In addition to trading bots, Pionex also supports manual trading between some of the most popular cryptocurrencies. The Smart Trade terminal allows traders to set up stop-loss, take profit, and trailing in one trade.

However, the platform only supports crypto-to-crypto trades; unlike some other exchanges, you cannot use fiat currency via a credit card or bank transfer to fund your account. If you don’t already own cryptocurrency, you’ll need to open an account with a broker that accepts fiat transfers (like Kraken or Coinbase), buy a base currency like Bitcoin or Tether and transfer the base currency to your Pionex wallet. 

Pionex Pricing

Pionex uses a maker-taker fee schedule, which means that you’ll pay a fee when you place trades that “make” liquidity on the market and that “take” liquidity away from the market. If you place a trade that isn’t immediately matched by an outstanding order on the books, you’ll pay the maker fee. If you place a trade order that is matched immediately with an outstanding order, you’ll pay the taker fee. Currently, Pionex’s maker and taker fee are both set at 0.05% of your total trade value. Your fee is taken from the total outstanding balance deposited to your account when your trade closes.

If you’re a very high-volume trader, you might want to apply for Pionex’s Market Maker program. To qualify for the Market Maker program, you’ll need to deposit $300,000 or more in USDT to your account. You can also apply for the program if you maintain the equivalent of $300,000 USD or more in another supported coin or token (Bitcoin, Chainlink, etc.). If you qualify for the Market Maker program, you’ll pay 0% in maker fees. Taker fees remain at 0.05%.

You can only apply for the Market Maker program in the first 10 days of any month. Once accepted into the program, you must consistently maintain a total account balance of $300,000 or more. If you are disqualified from the program due to a low balance, you may not apply to be a Market Maker member for at least 30 days from your date of disqualification. 

Pionex Customer Service

Pionex offers a few unique methods that you can use to access its support team.

  • By email: To get in contact with Pionex’s team by email, send a message to service@pionex.com.
  • By live chat: To access Pionex’s team via customer service, visit the homepage for the broker and click on the tab labeled “Support.” Then, click on the button labeled “Live chat.” A popup will appear on your screen where you can connect with a representative.

Pionex doesn’t currently list hours of operation for its customer service team on its website. We attempted to access live chat features at around 10:30 A.M EST and were told that their customer service team was offline. However, you can access useful tutorials offered on the broker’s YouTube page. In the future, we’d love to see Pionex expand its customer service offerings to include phone chat and to list its hours of operation. 

Pionex Mobile App

Pionex’s mobile app is fully functional, mimicking all of the features that you’ll find on the desktop platform. We found the user experience to be simple enough that new users will have no problem navigating features, and we could even set up our own trading bot in as little as 1 minute. 

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With so many bots to choose from, exploring is just as much fun as creating your own trading experience. 

In addition to bot features and manual trading, you’ll also be able to access the following features on the app.

  • Simple manual trading: Prefer to do your investing manually? The Pionex app also supports easy, straightforward manual order placement.
  • A comprehensive, responsive interface: In the constantly open cryptocurrency market, having access to up-to-the-second market data and pricing information is important. We found no lag between Pionex’s desktop platform and its mobile app, meaning that traders can access reliable information no matter where they’re investing.

The Pionex mobile app is available as a free download for Android and iOS platforms. A proprietary application is also available for tablet users. 

Pionex User Experience

After downloading the Pionex app and giving it a test run, we were pleasantly surprised with how easy the platform was to use. Though we were unable to locate a few features on the desktop platform (for example, CopyTrader features), setting up and activating our bots was simple and straightforward. If you’re a new user, we recommend downloading the mobile app, which we found to be a bit more streamlined and easier to operate.  

Pionex User Benefits

The following users will benefit most from Pionex’s platform.

  • Mobile investors who do the majority of their trading on-the-go
  • Traders who tend to abandon their trading strategy due to emotions
  • Traders who already own some type of cryptocurrency 

Pionex Security

Pionex is backed by Gaorong Capital, Shunwei Capital and ZhenFund for more than $10 million. In addition, it has acquired MSB (Money Services Business) licensure from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the United States government that analyzes online financial transactions to limit fraud and money laundering. Pionex does not inform users of the type of encryption features it uses to prevent data hacks, which we’d love to see the broker add in the future. 

Pionex Overall Rating

Pionex is a comprehensive cryptocurrency broker that will especially appeal to mobile investors. We love the broker’s free crypto trading bots and easy-to-master platform. In the future, we’d love to see Pionex expand its customer service options and enable fiat deposits. 

Pionex vs Competitors

Pionex offers the following benefits to its users that may not be found with competitors.

  • Low fees: Pionex’s maker-taker fee schedule means that your trades will be executed with just 0.05% in fees, no matter your trading volume.
  • Trading bot access: Pionex offers access to 18 unique trading bots for no additional fee.
  • A comprehensive mobile app: When it comes to cryptocurrency trading apps, user experience is always hit-or-miss. We found the Pionex app to be easy to use and navigate, with documents and common commands easy to find and utilize. 

Is Pionex Safe?

Pionex is regarded as quite safe by both its users and the crypto community as a whole. Most of its users rate it well on Trustpilot and other independent rating sites and it has attracted a large supportive community through its social media accounts. It has been under the regulation of the governments of both the United States and Singapore since 2020. Overall, it seems to be about on-par with other top crypto exchanges in terms of safety and security.

Pionex Tutorial

Pionex’s YouTube channel features a few tutorials that you can use to learn more about how to activate and use some of the platform’s most popular trading bots. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Q

Is Pionex safe?

A

Pionex keeps its funds on secure exchanges like Binance and Huobi, which means that the company benefits from these high-level exchanges’ security features. It also has received a MSB license from FinCEN. The broker is safe to use thanks to these features.

Q

Is Pionex insured?

A

Pionex is backed by Gaorong Capital, Shunwei Capital and ZhenFund for more than $10 million.

User Reviews

Todd Kouma

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

Gride Bots

PS

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

I have registered but not started yet. There are some reddish flags, but I can't list them because of the word limit of this review: :(

Dustin

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

Leveraged trading and bots

anderson max

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

good

Shiree

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

Actual fees are .1% ea transaction not .05% stated by Benzinga & other influencers. Pionex responded to me stating that they charge .1% to US customers.

Will

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

It's a lot of fun to use. I play with a bunch of different bots at different times for different results. Haven't tried them all yet. Customer service was great, helped me recover funds within days, not weeks.

Chris Wagener

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

CAUTION: I had 30,000 USDT on Pionex. It seemed great. Then I had 3 bots error out while in unrealized losses that became realized. Pionex did nothing to compensate me for the losses caused by their tech. I moved it all to Kucoin, who has similar bots.

Dan

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

They dont let you withdraw your funds after you make a deposit

Daniel

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

Bot trading

Johnny

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

The bots are amazing! Team always engage with the community on Telegram and Discord. Really responsive.

Ali Bilal

How do you use this product to boost your finances?

Not using it anymore due to its bad customer service

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About Sarah Horvath

Sarah is an expert in the insurance, investing for retirement and cryptocurrency space.