Is Bybit Safe? Bybit Review 2026 — Fees & Regulation

Short answer: Bybit is a large, licensed crypto exchange, but "safe" depends on which Bybit company you sign up with and what you do there. In the EU it operates as Bybit EU GmbH, authorised in Austria under the EU's crypto-asset rules (MiCAR). In the UAE it holds a licence from the federal Securities and Commodities Authority. It survived a theft of about $1.5 billion in February 2025. None of that protects you from losses on leveraged crypto derivatives, which is where most of its business sits.

Which Bybit you would be dealing with

The FMA's notice lists the services Bybit EU may provide: custody and administration of crypto-assets, exchanging crypto-assets for funds or for other crypto-assets, placing crypto-assets, and transfer services. Leveraged derivatives are not on that list, so expect the EU product range to differ from the global one.

Countries Bybit does not serve

Bybit's own help page (last updated 16 October 2026) says it does not offer services or products to users in excluded jurisdictions including the United States, the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Uzbekistan, Sudan, Syria, Crimea and the non-government-controlled areas of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine. For its UAE licensed company it also excludes Dubai. Bybit warns that giving a false location can lead to the account being closed and open positions liquidated, so a VPN is not a workaround.

Products

Bybit offers spot trading, perpetual and futures contracts, and yield/earn products. The derivatives side is its heritage and where its liquidity is deepest. For traders who want leveraged crypto exposure, the depth and product range are competitive; for simple buy-and-hold, the spot market and earn products are the relevant parts.

Fees, worked through

Bybit's fee page lists these base rates for non-VIP users. It adds that actual rates may vary by region and that your own rate appears on the My Fee Rate page after identity verification.

Lower rates apply at VIP levels, which depend on your asset balance or 30-day trading volume.

Spot example: buy $1,000 of bitcoin with a market order and sell it later at the same price. The fee is 0.1% on each side: $1.00 in and $1.00 out, $2.00 round trip, or 0.2% of the trade.

Perpetual example: a $10,000 position, opened and closed with market orders, pays 0.055% each way: $5.50 + $5.50 = $11.00. If you post $1,000 of margin for that position, the round trip has already cost 1.1% of the money you put up.

Funding: the weekly cost of holding a perpetual

A perpetual contract has no expiry, so instead Bybit exchanges a funding fee between long and short positions at set times. Its help page explains the calculation: the funding rate is applied to your position value, and it includes an interest-rate component of 0.03% per day, which is 0.01% per interval on a contract with an eight-hour funding interval. The full rate also moves with the premium of the contract over the index, so it changes all the time and can be negative.

If the rate sat at that 0.01% baseline for a week on an eight-hour contract, a $10,000 position would see 3 fundings a day x 7 days = 21 fundings. 21 x 0.01% = 0.21% of $10,000 = $21.00, paid or received depending on the sign of the rate and your side. Add the $11.00 of trading fees and the week costs $32.00 on a position backed by $1,000 of margin. Read the live funding rate on the contract page before you hold through a funding time.

Earn features

Bybit's earn products let you put idle crypto to work for yield. Returns vary and are not guaranteed; "earn" in crypto carries platform and market risk, not a savings-account safety profile. Treat advertised yields as variable and at-risk.

Security and access

As with any exchange, enable strong account security (2FA, withdrawal allowlists). Availability and specific products vary by country due to regulation — confirm what is accessible from your region.

Is Bybit safe? The February 2025 hack in context

In February 2025 Bybit suffered the largest exchange hack on record — roughly $1.5 billion in Ethereum drained from a cold wallet through a compromised signing interface. The FBI's public service announcement of 26 February 2025 attributes the theft of "approximately $1.5 billion USD in virtual assets" from Bybit, on or about 21 February, to North Korea, in activity the FBI calls "TraderTraitor". What matters for a prospective user is what happened next: Bybit honoured all customer withdrawals within about a day and stated that client funds remained fully backed, with reserves still exceeding liabilities. The episode is the clearest possible reminder of the core rule of any exchange — keep only your active trading capital on the platform and move long-term holdings to self-custody.

On the regulatory side, the position has moved on since the hack: the EU authorisation came in May 2025 and the UAE federal licence in October 2025, as set out in the table above. A licence is a set of rules the exchange must follow, not a guarantee against theft or loss, and crypto-assets are not covered by the investor compensation schemes that protect some broker clients.

The leverage warning that matters most

Crypto is already volatile; leveraged crypto derivatives can liquidate a position on a sharp move in minutes. This is among the riskiest trading you can do. If you are new, spot first, leverage much later (if ever).

In the EU, ESMA's 2018 measures capped retail CFD leverage on cryptocurrencies at 2:1; our explainer on leverage and margin shows why. An exchange offering far more than that on a perpetual is outside those retail rules, and the margin arithmetic above works against you faster with every step up in leverage.

How Bybit compares with a CFD broker

Buying crypto on an exchange and trading a crypto CFD at a broker are different products with different protections. On the exchange you can own and withdraw the coins; at an EU-regulated CFD broker you hold a contract, but as a retail client you get negative balance protection and the leverage caps. Forex vs CFDs vs crypto sets the three side by side, and our list of crypto trading platforms covers alternatives.

Our verdict

Bybit is a licensed exchange with a deep derivatives market and published fees that are easy to calculate. Its safety case rests on licences in Austria and the UAE and on how it handled the 2025 theft, not on any guarantee. Use it, if you can sign up legally from where you live, for what you need on the platform, keep long-term holdings in your own wallet, and treat its perpetual contracts as the high-risk product they are.

Sources (read 16 October 2026): FMA notice "Granting of Authorisation Bybit EU GmbH" (fma.gv.at); Bybit announcement "Bybit secures UAE's first SCA license" (announcements.bybit.com); Bybit help pages "Service Restricted Countries", "Bybit Trading Fee Structure" and "Introduction to Funding Rate" (bybit.com); FBI public service announcement PSA250226 (ic3.gov). We did not open or test a Bybit account.

Risk Warning

Crypto and leveraged crypto derivatives are highly volatile and carry a high risk of total loss; the majority of leveraged retail traders lose money. Not financial or investment advice. Never trade more than you can afford to lose. AiForexBroker may earn a commission when you sign up through our links, at no extra cost to you.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results.