Is Bitskins Legit?
Bitskins is a legit skin marketplace for CS2 (CSGO) and Dota 2 Items. Bitskins has been operating since 2015 and is still one of the most popular skin marketplaces out there. As for the website’s security, Bitskins comes with DDoS protection and a Valid Padlock (SSL) which ensures that the communication between the server and the device is encrypted.
If we look at its website traffic using tools like similarweb, then (at the time of writing this article) Bitskins boasts as many as over a million visits per month, making it one of the most popular marketplaces for people to buy and sell CS2 (CSGO) skins. Moreover, Bitskins is registered as a legitimate business in Poland (called "Bitskins Sp. z o.o"), making the website even more trustworthy.
With all that said, you can rest assured that when using Bitskins, you will not have to worry about running into a scammer who will commit payments fraud, getting robbed of your money while you sell CS2 (CSGO) skins, or losing your entire Steam inventory. Now that we know that it’s legit, let’s find out what does the website offer and, most importantly — is it worth it?
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Reputation (5/5)
As we've mentioned above, Bitskins has nothing to do with a scam and there are no alarming negative reviews of the site online. Over the years, the website has collected numerous positive reviews from users on websites like Trustpilot or Reddit, mainly written by Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players. Bitskins is also independently listed on the CS2 (CSGO) Trading Subreddit's whitelist (like SkinPort) as a legit site to sell, buy and trade skins.
Bitskins is also active on their social media profiles, especially on Twitter, where they have gathered a pretty good number of followers for a marketplace website. However, its outstanding reputation is no surprise. After all, it has been in operation for six years now, and even though it may not look so modern, every game items trading veteran knows that it is definitely not another scam website, regardless of what occasional negative reviews might say.
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Prices (3.5/5)
The pricing aspect on Bitskins looks pretty average. It's not the best, but it's not the worst either. Sure, most of the time, it will be better than on the Steam Market, but that's not always going to be the case. We genuinely like that "suggested prices" feature, which helps you catch the best deals.
Another good part about Bitskins is that users are the ones to set the item's final price, not a site bot like on marketplaces like Skincashier or Dmarket, so if you've sold an item it will sell at the price you've set. One annoying thing we need to mention is the 10% seller fee, and that's another aspect where Bitskins fares a bit worse than its competitors especially when it comes to the money you receive on sold items. It’s still far better than on the steam marketplace. However, your seller fee decreases as your transactions' volume increases, except that these numbers are so large that many users will not even realistically benefit from it.
If the thresholds were smaller, we'd probably raise the rating to 4/5 because we like the initiative.
So, rather not the best marketplace if you want to focus on making money, but things are different regarding buyers' perspectives, as there are no additional hidden fees for the users! The displayed price of an item is always the final price, and as we mentioned earlier, the site has a feature that makes it easy to search for good deals. That said, it can definitely be an attractive place for skin investing enthusiasts.
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Item Variability (5/5)
The item variability aspect looks excellent for each game covered by Bitskins; that is CS2 (CSGO), Dota 2, and Team Fortress. The CS2 (CSGO) section is especially worth a look, as it's full of rare items with unique patterns and stickers that you'll never find on the Steam Marketplace. And for the pickier ones, there are two features that you will genuinely love about Bitskins if you're looking to buy skins.
- Inspect the item in-game to check if it really has the pattern you're looking for by clicking on the eye icon under the item's price.
- Check the exact wear status of an item by hovering over the bar at the bottom.
So, this high item variability is mostly due to the excellent reputation that Bitskins has earned over the past 6 years of its operation. Traders know that they can sell their skins there and find a buyer, and buyers know that they are likely to find what they are looking for without getting scammed. Simple as that. To put it in perspective: we think that it has a better item variability than Dmarket.
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User Experience (2.5/5)
We have mixed feelings about Bitskins’ user interface. First of all, it's clear that the website design is not the most modern, and it just doesn't look good. Well, at least it’s clear and simple to use, but seriously, it doesn't look appealing. Another thing we really dislike about Bitskins is that you have to go through a KYC verification (Know Your Customer) process to withdraw money.
Furthermore, Bitskins has a refunds policy on a trade, which we also don't like. If you can't receive an item you already paid for, the website offers a 30-day money refund. And that's fair, right? However, many users complain that this process takes twice as long, and that’s not so good. Moreover, this doesn’t work for cryptocurrency transactions. We don't want to be too negative here, but besides the super straightforward buying and selling process, Bitskins falls short of today's standards in terms of user experience.
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Customer Support (4/5)
Bitskin has a pretty efficient support ticket system. Sure, we'd prefer 24/7 live chat, but you can easily access the ticket system, which works seriously well.
You can expect a response within hours, and the site claims that you can create tickets in any language you want, which adds to the convenience and ease of access. They also have a pretty extensive FAQ section (similar to CS.Money) which is worth a look before creating a ticket, as it has plenty of answers that can even solve some complex situations. Overall a pretty good service, suitable for a good site like Bitskins.
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Payment Methods (3.5/5)
As for the deposit methods, we have no complaints at all. PaySafeCard, PayPal, Bank transfers, anything you want, really. It is also worth mentioning that Bitskins does not have withdrawal fees, and it supports G2A Pay, which means we have access to over 250 payment methods.
Again, this is great news for buyers; but how do things look on the other side of the table? Well, slightly worse. The only options for withdrawing real money are actually PayPal, Visa card, and cryptocurrencies. However, Visa is not supported on Bitskins as a deposit method for many countries, and it doesn't look like that's going to change.
Considering that not everyone is into cryptocurrencies, PayPal will be the only option to withdraw Bitskins funds for many users, and that just doesn’t sound too good. If it were about deposit methods alone, we'd give it a 5/5, but since we also include the seller's perspective, we have to lower our rating to 3.5/5.
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