FTX is among the most popular crypto exchanges in the world. With over 10 billion USD traded each day through the platform, many crypto-natives wonder if the platform is worth using. The main concern of crypto traders around the world when choosing an exchange is its safety.
Today, we’ll be looking at whether or not FTX is able to exceed the industry standard when it comes to security.
FTX At A Glance
FTX was founded in May of 2019 by Gary Wang and Sam Bankman-Fried. The former is a serial entrepreneur and novelist multiple successes behind him with while the latter is a highly successful entrepreneur and MIT graduate,
In September of 2021, FTX decided to move its HQ from Hong Kong to The Bahamas in light of the People’s Bank of China banning all cryptocurrencies.
FTX is designed to provide a crypto exchange delivering derivative and options trading while maintaining a degree of user-friendliness. The exchange is regarded as highly secure due to the fact it hasn’t been involved in any data breaches or scandals since its inception.
The FTX platform intends to be both deep enough for professional traders to be able to use advanced features and strategies, while not being overwhelming to beginners. FTX also has its own native token(FTT), as well as a low-fee payment processor called FTX pay.
How Does FTX Ensure Your Safety
Keeping Account Protection At The Forefront
FTX has a great number of security features ensuring that your account stays protected.
The exchange uses a combination of cold wallet technology and 2FA to keep your account safe from hacks. Furthermore, you can whitelist certain IP addresses, so that your account can only be accessed from certain IPs. Alternatively, you can make it so that some IP addresses can only look at your account, but not interact with your funds in any meaningful way.
FTX also understands that people will sometimes want to give access to their accounts to someone. Because of this, FTX allows you to set up subaccounts where you can give someone access to only a certain part of your account. For example, you can set up a subaccount that is read-only, allowing people with that login to look at your account, but not trade or withdraw funds.
Finally, FTX makes 2FA(2-Factor Authentication) mandatory in order to conduct any kind of transaction on your account.
Making Withdrawals Difficult For Hackers
Most hackers will look to withdraw the funds from a stolen account as quickly as possible so that they’re not busted. FTX combats this in a myriad of ways:
- Once crucial account data(like 2FA or your password) is changed, withdrawals are locked for 24h.
- You can whitelist specific wallets so that the hacker has no way of withdrawing funds to their own wallet.
- Withdrawals have their own 2FA and password
- FTX uses KYT(Know Your Transaction) to ensure that users with high-risk accounts have to go through a human review process before being allowed to withdraw funds.
This provides you plenty of time to contact support in the case of an account breach and get your account back.
Backdrop Liquidity Fund
FTX has a massive backstop liquidity fund. This allows FTX to always have enough funds to cover any crisis that might arise. In fact, they have more funds in their backstop liquidity fund than there are funds in high-risk accounts.
Track Record
FTX has never been a part of a data breach or security scandal. Given that it’s a large exchange with millions of users, this is a great testament to its security.
The platform also continuously monitors all activity using Know Your Transaction, a real-time anti-money laundering software. Whenever the software detects suspicious activity, FTX ensures that the transaction is valid.
Finally, FTX always keeps its users informed of attempted logins. Even if someone simply tries to use your username and password without 2FA, you’ll get a notification from FTX just to be safe.
Minting And Depositing NFTs Safely
FTX allows its users to easily mint and deposits their NFTs on FTX. The platform aims to provide a simple and intuitive way for its users to mint their NFTs and present them in front of the millions of traders using FTX worldwise. FTX supports both the ERC721 and ERC1155 standards, the two most popular NFT standards today.
Minting NFTs over FTX is fairly easy to do as the platform holds your hand through the entire process. It’s notable that FTX only publishes NFTs it approves to ensure the platform stays home only to high-quality projects. It costs $3 to submit an NFT to their approval process which you can pay for through any cryptocurrency supported on the platform.
FTX provides one of the safest ways to deposit NFTs on the market. Due to its robust account protection and security-first approach, FTX maintains its place as one of the safest places to deal with NFTs. In contrast to this, OpenSea, the most popular NFT marketplace has already been part of 2 security breaches.
All things considered, FTX is one of, if not the most secure cryptocurrency exchange today. With its robust account protection system, large backdrop liquidity fund, and flawless track record so far.