Write-ups
Everything published here on what it costs and how long it takes to move money through a crypto exchange. Grouped by what you are here for rather than by date, because none of this goes stale on a weekly cycle.
If something has already gone wrong, skip to troubleshooting. If you are trying to work out what a thing costs before you do it, the long reads and reference pieces carry the arithmetic. The calculators run the same maths on your own numbers.
Long reads — the full treatment
- 01 Opening a Binance account, and where people get stuck The whole sign-up path: which entity you actually get, where the referral field hides, what verification checks, the wallet compartments that make a deposit look missing, and the people who will contact you afterwards.
- 02 What moving USDT actually costs you Every layer of the cost, one at a time: the flat withdrawal fee, the network cost, the conversion spread, and a table of the transfer size at which the fee stops mattering.
Reference — look it up, keep the tab open
- 03 Binance fees, line by line Spot maker and taker, the tier table with a dated screenshot of the source, what the BNB discount is worth in money rather than percent, and the spread hidden inside instant conversion.
- 04 How your liquidation price is actually calculated Both formulas derived rather than asserted, why the maintenance margin rate rises with position size, and why the mark price rather than the last trade is what closes you out.
Explainers — why the number is not the number
- 05 Perpetual funding rates: what it costs to hold overnight Funding is charged on the position, not on the margin behind it. At twenty times leverage that distinction is the whole trade.
- 06 Reading P2P prices without overpaying Benchmark the quote against the spot mid and the gap is your real cost. Plus which merchant statistics predict a smooth trade and which are decoration.
- 07 Why your market order filled worse than the price you saw The ticker is the last trade, not an offer. A worked order book showing the blended fill coming out above the top of book, and how to stop an order walking it.
- 08 TRC20, ERC20, BEP20: choosing a network The same ticker on two chains is not the same asset for transfer purposes. Cost matters less than what the receiving end will credit.
- 09 Maker or taker: how order type changes what you pay A limit order is not automatically a maker order. What post-only enforces, and the honest note that at the entry tier both rates are identical anyway.
Troubleshooting — something has already gone wrong
- 10 Deposit didn’t arrive: memos, wrong networks, and what’s recoverable Start at the block explorer, because whether it confirmed decides everything else. Then a straight answer on which cases get recovered and which do not.
- 11 When identity verification keeps failing The rejection message is generic on purpose. Most causes are photography rather than identity, and they can be worked through in order.
- 12 Your withdrawal says pending Four separate stages hide behind one status word. Whether you have a transaction hash tells you which one you are in, and whether waiting is the right move.
- 13 Why your withdrawal limit is lower than you expected Verification tier, a rolling twenty-four hour window rather than a calendar day, and security holds that quietly restart the clock. Three mechanisms, one confusing number.
How this section is maintained
Platform figures carry the date they were checked, and anything that turns out to be wrong is logged rather than quietly edited.
Fees, tiers, limits and confirmation requirements belong to the exchange and change whenever it decides. Where a piece here states one, it says when it was read and points at the page it came from. Where that later turns out to be stale, the change goes on the corrections log with a date, so a page that has been fixed is distinguishable from one that was right all along.
New pieces are added to this list rather than to the front page, so this is the page worth bookmarking. There is also an RSS feed if you would rather not check.