The LSE Directory / Crypto exchanges
WhiteBIT is a centralised cryptocurrency exchange offering spot, margin and futures trading alongside staking and other yield products, delivered through its own web and mobile platform. As of February 2026 it listed more than 360 cryptocurrencies across roughly 750 spot pairs and 270 futures pairs, with margin trading available at up to 10x leverage and futures up to 100x. Trading carries a flat base fee of 0.1% on both crypto to crypto and crypto to fiat transactions, and users can lock supported assets into staking for terms of up to 360 days. The exchange differentiates itself from many larger global rivals by presenting explicitly as a European platform built around EU compliance, and by extending well beyond spot and derivatives trading into a group of businesses it controls end to end. It operates its own EVM compatible layer 1 blockchain, Whitechain, launched in August 2023 on a Proof of Authority consensus with roughly two second block times; the network's native gas token is WBT, WhiteBIT's own token, capped at 400 million units, which also earns holders trading fee discounts, free withdrawals and priority access to new features on the exchange itself. In 2025 WhiteBIT organised itself under a holding company, W Group, alongside seven sister businesses: crypto payment processor Whitepay, the Whitechain network, P2P marketplace white.market, crypto news outlet The Coinomist, education channel ByHi show, and two Georgia licensed financial entities, PayUniCard and HashBank. WhiteBIT was founded in 2018 by Volodymyr Nosov, who remains its public founder and now serves as President of W Group; the exchange's registered entity is in Estonia, tracing back to its original 2018 launch in Ukraine. As of mid-2026 the exchange reports around 8 million users across roughly 150 countries, while W Group as a whole claims more than 35 million customers and a self-reported total group capitalisation of $38.9 billion. On security, WhiteBIT says it holds 96% of client funds in cold storage, and in December 2024 it became the first centralised exchange to record a 100/100 score on CER.live's cybersecurity rating, following a two and a half month audit by security firm Hacken that certified it to Cryptocurrency Security Standard (CCSS) Level 3, the top tier of that scheme. The exchange also carries sponsorship agreements with Visa, esports organiser FACEIT, FC Barcelona, Juventus and the Ukrainian national football team. On 19 June 2026, days ahead of the EU's MiCA compliance deadline, WhiteBIT's Vienna based entity, WB-Shield Innovations GmbH, received a Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) licence from Austria's Financial Market Authority, operating under the name WhiteBIT EU. The licence allows it to offer crypto asset services across the European Economic Area and underpins a forthcoming dedicated EU platform, whitebit.eu, which was accepting early access registrations at the time of writing.
