Phemex is the fastest Bitcoin futures trading platform, founded by 8 Ex-Morgan Stanley Executives. No overload, no downtime. We provide 24/7 hours customer service support.
Is Phemex legit?
Phemex (phemex.com) has a 2.1 out of 5 rating on OK.one, based on 217 user reviews collected here. It is listed under Money & Insurance and its reputation is poor. 68% of reviews are 1 star, a relatively high share; The business has replied to 78% of negative reviews; 29 of them were added in the last 12 months. Last updated 2026-10-24.
I earned a free month of premium. I decided to put many trades through to make small profits in bitcoin through the browser. I took a quick break, then I come back and my account was restricted from trading. Phemex accused me of running a browser bot simulator. They threatened to charge me the spot fees by taking my money from my balance. I was paused while my money was in Bitcoin and Bitcoin's price dropped and there was nothing I could do. I had some cash in the earn part of their site and that money was held hostage as well. They forced me to send a video of myself holding my ID (even though I had already done KYC) and to read out a phrase. Phemex made me feel like a criminal when all I was doing was placing spot limit orders. They reopened my account, but they threatened me that if I repeat the same behavior again, they would take my money for trading fees and ban me. I withdrew my funds. My advise is to not do too much spot trading if you get the free plan, or you will face the same fate as me. Do not place market orders because you will get horrible prices due to a large spread in the order book. If you place limit orders, your account could get banned. Beware.
Reply from Phemex2022-04-10
Dear Chris,
Phemex is the most trustworthy crypto trading platform and we have currently over 2 million happy users worldwide.
As per checking, your account was restricted due to that it's trading pattern was perceived as risky and harmful by risk control monitoring system. Please note we aim to build a secure and trustworthy platform benefits and acts fair for every individual, thus we don't tolerate any misconduct bypassing our term of use, such as HFT trading by means of web simulation. Phemex reserves the right to pursue the missing trading fee. Kindly keep in mind that no web simulation is allowed, and further action will be taken if your account is found with any violation again. Please check again here the terms of use https://phemex.com/premium
If you have any further questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com. We are available 24/7.
Best regards,
Phemex Team
I tried to send in a pic for verification, they typed back in ALL CAPS saying it wasnt sufficient, then even accused me of doing it on purpose! After I complained, they erased my account which had 130 dollars in it. This company is shady and I dont know who to report this THEFT to.
Reply from Phemex2022-03-30
Dear Paul,
we want to sincerely apologize for the negative experience, that you had with our customer service team. We do our best to train all of our representatives on how to properly handle customers issues. There might have been a misunderstanding and we hope we can clarify matters again.
Upon checking, your account has not been banned and your assets are still available. You had requested in past per email the activation of deletion yourself. I would like to clarify that the customer support team does not have the authority or permission to delete the user accounts. We can only activate the deletion button availability, but only the account owners can delete it themselves.
As soon as you confirm the deletion in your account, you will be granted a 30-day grace period, if you change your mind and attempt to log in during the 30 days, your account will be reactivated, same to the sub-accounts.
Should you have any inquiries, please open a new live chat and ask to be transferred to human agent, we will attend your concern in a timely manner.
Best Regards,
Phemex team
Phemex lures people in with promises of large sign-up bonuses, but there are very significant strings attached to virtually all of the offers (e.g., a requirement that you have to trade a cumulative total of $50,000 before claiming the advertised deposit bonus).
Since they charge fees for withdrawls and other transactions, the "bonus" will end up as net loss, and you can't get assets out without paying more fees.
Stay away from "Feemex" and stick to more established sites like Coinbase.
Reply from Phemex2022-03-13
Dear Evan,
the special deposit bonus come with terms and conditions please check following link https://phemex.com/announcements/new-trading-bonuses-for-deposits-and-trades-limited-time
What are Trading Bonuses for?
Trading bonuses can be used for Contract Trading.
You can apply these bonus fund to:
* Open New Positons
* Pay Fees
* Cover Losses
NOTE: Bonuses will cover up to 50% of your fees and losses before your own funds will be used.
Restrictions and Limitations
* Trading bonuses cannot be withdrawn or transferred between accounts and wallets. Attempting to withdraw any trading bonus will immediately cause all bonus funds to be removed from that individual trading account. Any bonus funds in a separate trading account will still remain available. Only profits generated from trading bonuses can be withdrawn.
More info here https://phemex.com/announcements/new-welcome-bonus-and-restrictions
You can trade all coins with your bonus if you choose USD-M on this link: https://phemex.com/markets?tabType=Contract
Our fees and conditions are also stated here: https://phemex.com/fees-conditions
You can withdraw for example for zero fees via USDT tr20.
If you have any further questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com. We are 24/7 available.
Kind regards,
Phemex | Break Through, Break Free
Scam crypto platform with fake competitions. I entered the Doge Airdrop competition on 18 January.
On 28 January I received an email 'Congratulations! You are among the lucky winners of 100,000 Doge Giveaway!'
The email said that I won 500 Dogecoin and "The prize will be distributed starting from Feb.18. Please activate your Doge wallet in advance!".
On 23 February, I contacted Phemex about the prize.
I was told "Please note that we send the prizes on patches and the prize will be in your wallet very soon."
Then 2 March, I sent another email asking about the prize, and received the following response:
" We have check with the relevant team and would like to apologize that after confirmation account registered is not one of the selected winners. Due to our database and technical issue the winner email was send out incorrectly to some user and for this we would like to express our sincere apologies for the disappointment and inconvenience caused.
We truly believed in building a trustable and reliable platform with our users. We do also appreciate the time taken for you to write in to us so we know what we could improved on and take it as a constructive feedback to further improvise our service moving forward.
As a small gesture of good will, we would like to offer you a 10$USD trading bonus.
Please reply to this mail to confirm the acceptance of the bonus."
This entire competition was fake and a scam.
The exact same thing happened to my friend also, who was advised that he won 500 DOGE too, then received the same message when inquiring about when he would receive it.
Reply from Phemex2022-03-06
Dear Skyler,
we apologize again to you both, the emails where sent out wrongly.
The DOGE campaign took place and 2000 lucky winners received their airdrop.
Kind regards,
Team Phemex
If I could give it a negative star I would. STAY AWAY, this is basically a scam site. I transferred some money into it to try it out, quickly I learned this is not the platform for me as you can't trade leverage with USDT (how stupid) so I tried to withdraw my funds and now they've locked my account. So in summary, don't put any funds in because you'll be unable to get them out. Use bybit or byget instead. This platform is a joke. What's the point of having 2FA if you you get you password wrong once and they lock your funds up. Absolute scam and no reason for it STAY AWAY
Reply from Phemex2022-02-13
Dear Brandon Gore,
if you are experiencing any issues regarding your 2fa please don´t hesitate to contact the online support at www.phemex.com.
We are here for you 24/7 and we could investigate your problem that you encountering and find a solution.
We point out many times to users to save their Google Authenticator private key in case they lose access to their 2fa, so they can easily rebind it and not go through the whole process of reset. https://phemex.com/getting-started/how-do-i-enable-google-two-factor-authentication
For the reset process we ask many questions from users, so we can verify the ownership.
Why is 2FA important?
While important, usernames and passwords on their own are vulnerable to attack by third parties that use programs to randomly generate usernames and passwords to hack a user’s devices.
2FA gives your accounts an extra layer of security by keeping cybercriminals out—and your personal information in behind closed doors.
You might wanna take a look about User Account Security and general Security Practices on following link https://phemex.com/security
Rest assured your funds are safe with us.
Best regards,
your Team Phemex
today my account was blocked when withdrawing funds, the level of this exchange is not higher than a bookmaker like 1xbet, I don’t feel my funds are safe in such situations, no matter what conditions the company justifies it, I don’t recommend it to anyone!!!
Reply from Phemex2022-01-21
Dear Danil,
apologies for the bad experience, our system deploys multiple security measures to avoid bonus farming with multiaccount.
It is forbidden to create multiple accounts for multiple bonuses https://phemex.com/announcements/new-welcome-bonus-and-restrictions.
If our system detects accounts with the same IP Address or GUIDs, all offending accounts will immediately be frozen and banned.
Sadly there could be a false positive if you share wifi (in a cybercafe for example).
Anyway you won't lose any deposit, please contact us directly at www.phemex.com.
We have a live support and are 24/7 available.
Kind regards,
Team Phemex
I saw they had learn and earn + other ways to earn money, I love when companies do this, it allows me to test out everything, and see how it all works (figuring out withdrawal fees, transfer fees, checking out the cryptos they have) just to realise that the money I win is not usable for someone like me who only knows as crypto as crypto, and not as contracts, which is the only way to use the money, I don’t mind what they’re doing, it just seems weird to advertise it as a learn and earn type of thing, when what you earn has no real use, unless you know what contracts are. Coinbase is much better, i actually started using them, and investing money into them, just because i I found out about them from learn and earn, and though that was such a great features so is Binance, I think they have futures and contracts and stuff, this company doesn’t have the trust imo, seems the reviews aren’t great, after trying to do my research on why I can’t exchange my money. Contracts isn’t something you can just do, you need to research about it. This isn’t really a great way to give money. I’d rather they make it, I can’t take that money out for a whole year, than having to make money out of contracts. I believe this company should specify it more than this money is really unspendable.
Reply from Phemex2022-01-21
Dear Izenx xxx,
we are one of the top derivates exchanges in the world, traders come to Phemex especially for contract trading.
What are Trading Bonuses for?
Trading bonuses can be used for Contract Trading: You can apply these bonus fund to:
Open New Positons
Pay Fees
Cover Losses
NOTE: Bonuses will cover up to 50% of your fees and losses before your own funds will be used.
You can trade the following coins with your bonus if you choose USD-M on this link: https://phemex.com/markets?tabType=Contract
Restrictions and Limitations
Trading bonuses cannot be withdrawn or transferred between accounts and wallets. Attempting to withdraw any trading bonus will immediately cause all bonus funds to be removed from that individual trading account. Any bonus funds in a separate trading account will still remain available. Only profits generated from trading bonuses can be withdrawn.
More info here: https://phemex.com/announcements/new-welcome-bonus-and-restrictions
Also there are many differences between exchanges, therefore the following info can be also useful. If you don't have much experience with our platform, may be a good idea to avoid risking your real funds, get familiarized with Phemex and try your strategy in our testnet (Demo Account) https://testnet.phemex.com/
There are also many tutorial videos around internet, just search for keywords like "trading phemex tutorial" in YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9oCj2ZvKIg
and you may also find the following links helpful:
https://phemex.com/getting-started
https://phemex.com/user-guides
https://phemex.com/academy
https://phemex.com/fees-conditions
You can also join one of our communities on telegram https://t.me/Phemex_EN.
We hope the above info, could help you with your questions and we hope to see you soon again.
If you have any remaining questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com.
We have a live support and we are 24/7 available to support you.
Kind regards,
Team Phemex
Beware this exchange is a organised scam network. It’s run by Indian scammers. They will close your trades to scam your money when their site and or app is down and crashing repeatedly so you cannot do anything. When you try to do live chat it will crash too. If you email them they take about a month to respond and then give excuses that nothing is wrong with their severs. An Indian scammer called Vishal will email you. He will also ring you to try and get more money out of you. The platform is a load of bull. They are hiding behind it as an organised criminal network. Do not use them under any circumstances. Also if they have scammed your money please file a report to the law enforcement agency in your country to the online crime branch. And also contact the SEC to have them investigated for their criminal and fraudulent activities!
Regardless of the fact that they reply to your review. Just be aware they are lying scammers. Look at others reviews they block accounts too so they can steal your crypto and other funds you have. Spread the word on social media. So others don’t get scammed. Biggest scam ring in the crypto world to date.
Reply from Phemex2022-01-21
Dear Badshah Hussain,
Phemex is not located in India, it is Singapore based and our team members are worldwide located. The person you mention, Vishal, is a skilled agent of our trading desk department with a reputable combined experience of 12 years in traditional finances and cryptocurrency.
Please read more about our company here https://phemex.com/about
Phemex is the most trustworthy platform. Safely deposit and trade your funds on a platform that is entirely worry-free.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/why-phemex-is-one-of-the-most-secure-exchanges-in-the-crypto-space-10863689
You can read also more about our security practices in general here https://phemex.com/security
For your info, we don’t provide any phone services at all. We offer only support per email or live chat. For security reasons, everything has to be recorded correct. We provide a 24/7 customer support service, so just open a chat and have please ready all your details, screenshots, etc. so we can submit to tech team to check and find the best solution to fix your local issue.
Kind regards,
Team Phemex
This Exchange is an organized License scam.
I opened a new account, did my 2FA on the account yesterday morning and transfered 177.8 XRP from my Balance account to the just opened account with wallet address:0x49022C5559F278E54444a149DAC98414AEA11D19
Tag: 165667596
Binance has sent me a mail that it's was successfully withdrawn. As at the time of this writing (19 hours) later, I have not seen my deposit. I have been around the industry for over 5 years. This is my worst nightmare. This is definitely a red flag.
I wrote to support after two hour and they are as good as non existent. I had to check what people are saying about them online.
I will update your guys with my experience when eventually they do something. Open your eyes crypto lovers.
Reply from Phemex2022-01-14
Dear Edeunazy,
apologies for the bad experience, we had a spot wallet upgrade and deposits got delayed.
Please read here for more info https://phemex.com/announcements/spot-wallet-upgrade-completed
As we can see in the back end your deposit has been credited to you at 2022-01-12 12:44:34 UTC.
If you have any remaining questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com.
We have a live support and we are available 24/7 to support you.
We hope you reconsider your review.
Best regards,
Team Phemex
I want to add to the pain too. I opened a limit order at the certain price but instead the system decided to open a position. Don't understand why.
Price when down after about 4 min waiting for the next candle to appear. The system is terribly slow to update for the next candles. Lost some money as consequence of it. Definitely no good for scalping.
I'm pulling out of it.
Never again.
Reply from Phemex2022-01-14
Dear Peter Timkovic,
did you contact the live support to help you about your trading order execution?
Please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com, we are available 24/7 to support you.
Also might be good idea to use the latest version of chrome browser, since it´s the most compatible browser with phemex, so you can avoid any lag.
Kind regards,
Team Phemex
My experience with them is the worst since my crypto journey in 2016. Deposit takes several hour if not a day to arrive, support takes 48 hours minimum to respond. This guys are close to being scammers
Reply from Phemex2022-01-10
Dear Gedefx Trading,
first of all we wanna apologize for your deposit delay
and we hope that meanwhile your issue has been solved.
If you have any remaining questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com.
We have a live support and we are available 24/7 to support you. We hope to see you soon again.
Best regards,
Team Phemex
I only got a Phemex account to buy vpad for staking on vlaunch. I only have 17 hours left to stake to get whitelisted for a project I want to invest in. I spent hours doing the same tasks over and over again. I finally bought my vpad, but I can't withdraw for another 24 hours. The whole point was to transfer to metasmask asap. I have my money in there, and they've ruined my opportunity to get in on this project. Negative 100 stars, if they allowed it. DON'T GET AN ACCOUNT ON THIS B S EXCHANGE. I'm withdrawing everything tomorrow morning and closing this terrible crypto exchange account!!!! So angry
Reply from Phemex2022-01-10
Dear Lina,
please note to avoid any unexpected issues or delays, your withdrawals may be disabled for 24 hours after successfully disabling 2FA Authentication. To ensure the safety of our users withdrawals will be suspended 24h after a user requests to reset his 2fa or password! More info here https://phemex.com/getting-started/how-do-i-reset-my-password or here https://phemex.com/getting-started/what-to-do-after-losing-google-authenticator. Also when installing the 2fa we make our clients aware to save the Google Authenticator Key, as it can be used to re-bind your account if you lose access to your app, so you can avoid the reset. More info here https://phemex.com/getting-started/how-do-i-enable-google-two-factor-authentication
We understand your frustration of the delay, but the security of our users comes first and this is a commonly process across all crypto exchanges. We hope you reconsider your review.
If you have any remaining questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us. We are 24/7 available.
Best regards,
Team Phemex
"Phemex processes all pending withdrawals three times a day, at 0:00, 08:00, and 16:00 UTC. " Say what?? At all other exchanges I use it's instant. A huge no-go
This was my original review. Reading the response from Phemex, I understand why they do it like this and it actually makes a lot of sense. I even think the added safety is something I prefer. So I change from 1 star to 4. Thanks.
Reply from Phemex2021-12-29
Dear Elvin,
Phemex processes 3 times a day withdrawals, because we store our assets in cold wallets and credit every withdrawal manually. The inconvenience is worth the value added; and at least for the majority of customers, the most important is the safety of the funds. Please read more on following link about our wallet security practises https://phemex.com/security .
If you have any remaining questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com. We are 24/7 available.
Best regards,
Team Phemex
My VPAD withdrawal already missed two withdrawal windows and stuck for 10 hours. Only support is via email, and they have 48 hours reply window, not helpful.
Transfer got REJECTED eventually, what a bunch of scammers.
Reply from Phemex2022-01-02
Dear Bohdan Orlov,
first of all we wanna apologise for your withdrawal delay
and we hope that meanwhile the issue with VPAD has been solved.
The VPAD listing had been a huge success, which was beyond our expectations.
We had high volume as well as traffic and we needed to perform extra security checks,
which in last instance had an impact on VPAD withdrawal delays.
Rest assured our user's funds are the most important for us.
Please read more on following link about our wallet security practises https://phemex.com/security .
If you have any remaining questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com.
We have a live support and we are available 24/7 to support you.
Kind regards,
Team Phemex
Phemex has a poor layout, it is difficult to use, withdrawal fees are high, no support, they state you get usd bonuses for completing actions like kyc and other various gimmicks, you receive it as usd and can't use it or trade it except in leverage trades. withdrawal only once every 8 hours unless on a premium account.
Probably 50 other things I could complain about, it's a bad user experience.
Binance and coinex are way way way better
Reply from Phemex2022-01-03
Dear Jason,
if you have any suggestions what we could do better please write us at [email protected].
We always strive to give our customers the best user experience and we would be grateful if you could tell us what we could change in future.
If you are new to the exchange and don't have much experience with our platform, may be a good idea to avoid risking your real funds, get familiarized with Phemex and try your strategy in our testnet (Demo Account) https://testnet.phemex.com/
there are also many tutorial videos around internet, just search for keywords like "trading phemex tutorial" in YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9oCj2ZvKIg
and you may also find the following links helpful:
https://phemex.com/getting-started
https://phemex.com/user-guides
https://phemex.com/academy
About our withdrawal fees we understand your disappointment, but this is not something arbitrary in Phemex and it is an industry standard for centralized exchanges.
Miner´s fees are high, for example Phemex charges 0,00057 BTC, which a competitive one.
Has been exactly the same since exchange was launched in Nov 2019.
Sadly, BTC is not worth 3500$ anymore, but around 47.000$, so instead of less than 2$, mining fee is currently around 30$.
Another solution could be that you withdraw for example USDT via tr20 for zero fees!
You can find our conditions about withdrawal limit and fees here https://phemex.com/fees-conditions
Phemex also processes 3 times a day withdrawals, because we store our assets in cold wallets outside the exchange and credit every withdrawal manually. The inconvenience is worth the value added; and at least for the majority of customers, the most important is the safety of the funds. Please read more on following link about our wallet security practises https://phemex.com/security .
About our trading bonuses they can be used for Contract Trading:
You can apply these bonus fund to
-Open New Positons
-Pay Fees
-Cover Losses
-NOTE: Bonuses will cover up to 50% of your fees and losses before your own funds will be used.
More info here, all is clear stated on our website https://phemex.com/announcements/new-welcome-bonus-and-restrictions
If you have any remaining questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com.
We have a live support and we are available 24/7. We hope to see you soon again.
Best regards,
Team Phemex
Today was VPad tokken listing on Phemex. The listing was announced for 14h UTC. Of course the listing was 2minutes late, so exchange owner’s have the time to fill up their bags. A lot of people lost money on this one, and Phemex is a scamy exchange. Been waiting for my XRP withdrawal from Phemex to Okex for more then 10h now. Avoid at all cost, one star!
Reply from Phemex2022-01-02
Dear Greedy Sandman,
first of all we wanna apologize for your withdrawal delay
and we hope that meanwhile the issue with XRP has been solved.
The VPAD listing had been a huge success, which was beyond our expectations.
We had very high volume as well as traffic and we needed to perform extra security checks,
which in last instance had also an impact on withdrawal delays.
Rest assured our user's funds are the most important for us.
Please read more on following link about our wallet security practises https://phemex.com/security .
If you have any remaining questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com.
We have a live support and we are available 24/7 to support you.
Best regards,
Team Phemex
I accidentally sent them a nonregistered stable coin and they sent it back to me, even though the policy gives no guarantee for that!
You saved my savings Phemex :-) Thousand thanks!
Reply from Phemex2024-12-23
hi, Kevin, Thank you so much for your kind words! We're glad we could help you recover your funds. Please feel free to reach out anytime if you need help. Happy trading! 🙂
I was very happy with my account till 5 days ago when it was locked with no explanation.
I have contacted the customer service and I have still not received a response and my funds are frozen.
The answer of the automatic chat is that probably I would abuse of the social bonus, but I hadn't claimed any bonuses.
The work of the platform is great till you have a problem, in this case, you can be in a mesh.
Reply from Phemex2021-12-29
Dear Carolina Felici,
apologies for the bad experience, our system deploys multiple security measures to avoid bonus farming with multi-account.
It is forbidden to create multiple accounts for multiple bonuses https://phemex.com/announcements/new-welcome-bonus-and-restrictions.
If our system detects accounts with the same IP Address or GUIDs, all offending accounts will immediately be frozen and banned.
Sadly there could be a false positive if you share wifi (in a cybercafe for example).
Anyway you won't lose any deposit, please proceed with the KYC verification.
If you have any remaining questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us directly at www.phemex.com.
We have a live support and we are available 24/7 to support you.
Kind regards,
Team Phemex
Phemex is one of the best platform I ever exchanged so far, their customer service representative is superb. After a couple times of interacting with their support team their team seem knowledgeable and their know their customer needs and it's hassle-free. Their live-chat support are 24/7. Lastly I gonna recommend Phemex to my friends about Phemex.
Reply from Phemex2024-12-23
Thank you so much for your kind words and for taking the time to share your experience! We're thrilled to hear that our customer service team has been able to assist you effectively. We appreciate your recommendation and look forward to continuing to support you in your trading journey. If you ever need anything, don't hesitate to reach out. Happy trading, and thank you for being a part of the Phemex community! 😊
Phemex is the best exchange that I have found so far, easy to use, and lots of great opportunities to earn extra bonus. They keep listing a lot of cryto currencies on offer too.
Reply from Phemex2024-12-23
Hi there Lauren, :)
Thank you for your awesome review! We're so glad to hear that you find Phemex easy to use and that you're enjoying the bonus opportunities and the wide variety of cryptocurrencies available.
If you ever have any questions or need assistance, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].
Happy trading!
The Phemex Team
