As a crypto platform, part of our job is to understand what other providers are building. My team and I review public documentation, pricing, product flows, and the evidence we can verify. We give credit where it is due, and we state the limits we find. This review explains what we could confirm about Bybit, what it does well, where it may not fit, and who should consider it.
Note that we did create an account to test Bybit's response times, payout speed, support, uptime, and product behaviour.
Bybit at a glance
| Legal entity | Headquartered in Dubai, UAE. Its original BVI entity, Bybit Fintech Limited, was struck off the BVI register in 2021 and dissolved in 2023, and the BVI regulator states Bybit was never licensed there |
|---|---|
| Launched | 2018 |
| What it is | A global crypto exchange with spot, derivatives and P2P trading. NGN is supported through P2P only |
| Platform fee | Spot trading 0.10% maker and taker on crypto pairs. P2P trading is stated as zero fee for both sides |
| Payout speed | Not applicable in the usual sense. NGN moves directly between two individual traders' bank accounts, not through Bybit |
| Supported coins | Several hundred, per third-party trackers. No fixed figure is published directly by Bybit |
| Can you buy crypto? | Yes |
| Can you swap coins? | Yes |
| Can you hold USD? | Yes, via USDT and other stablecoins, globally |
| KYC | Required for all products, including P2P. Standard tier needs a passport, national ID, or driving licence |
| Markets | Global |
| Regulatory status | No Nigerian SEC registration found |
| App type | iOS and Android mobile app, plus web |
Pros and cons
Pros
- A genuinely large, liquid global exchange. Over 70 million reported users and, by its own description, the world's second-largest by trading volume.
- NGN actually works, via P2P. Unlike some global exchanges that dropped naira entirely, Bybit maintains live NGN order books for USDT, USDC and BTC.
- A documented escrow and appeal system, including a fast-track appeal option for USDT orders that can resolve in around 15 minutes.
Cons
- In September 2024, Nigerian authorities froze ₦548.6 million across 22 bank accounts belonging to individuals trading USDT for naira via P2P on Bybit and KuCoin, as part of an investigation into naira depreciation. This targeted individual users' personal bank accounts, not Bybit's own corporate funds, and mirrors the exact mechanism that led to a much larger freeze connected to Binance P2P the same year.
- No Nigerian SEC registration was found. Bybit does not appear among Nigeria's licensed digital asset operators.
- Blocked from the United States entirely, and ceased UK retail derivatives trading in 2021 following a regulatory ban on retail crypto derivatives.
- P2P disputes are not guaranteed to resolve in your favour. Bybit's own help centre states it "may provide a mediation solution in goodwill without guaranteeing a resolution in your favor," and that normal-track appeals typically take over 48 hours.
How Breet compares to Bybit
Naira settles directly, not peer-to-peer. Breet pays out to your Nigerian bank account or mobile money automatically, so no strangers to wait on that might get your account frozen.
No individual counterparty to negotiate with. Crypto converts against Breet's own settlement rather than a stranger's bank transfer, which means there is no payment shortfall to dispute and no appeal process with an uncertain outcome.
Everything happens in one flow. Send, convert, settle, with no P2P chat, no payment window, and no counterparty to chase.
Where Bybit is ahead
- Scale, liquidity and coin selection. Several hundred coins and a genuinely global trading product, far beyond what Breet or any Nigeria-focused platform offers.
- It handled a billion-dollar hack without losing user funds. That is a meaningful demonstration of operational resilience, even though the incident itself is worth knowing about.
