Bybit from Morocco: a strong second P2P market

Bybit at a glance

Yes. Bybit serves Moroccan residents and runs a real USDT/MAD P2P market, with about 140 ads when we last checked. It is best used as a second P2P venue next to Binance. Its EU arm holds a MiCA licence, but its core product is high-risk leveraged futures, and it has no Moroccan licence.

Bybit was founded in 2018 by Ben Zhou and built its name on perpetual futures. The company is now headquartered in Dubai. It added spot trading, a P2P marketplace, savings products and a card programme over time, but derivatives remain the centre of the platform: open the app and the futures screen is never more than one tap away.

For Moroccan users, Bybit plays a specific role. It is rarely the first exchange people join, but it is often the second: its dirham P2P market is large enough to be useful, and many of its sellers are not the ones you meet on Binance. When the best Binance price drifts up on a busy evening, a Bybit ad can be a few centimes cheaper, or simply quicker to answer.

Bybit P2P in Morocco: what we found

For our most recent snapshot, we queried Bybit’s public P2P endpoint for USDT against the dirham.

On the buy side, prices ran from 10.38 to 10.40 dirhams, with one outlier ad at 9.91 for a maximum order of 36 dirhams, which is not a real offer. On the sell side, prices ranged from 10.22 to 10.29. Compared with Binance on the same morning, Bybit was about 4 centimes more expensive to buy and roughly level to sell. On a 5,000-dirham purchase, that difference is around 20 dirhams.

Bybit’s API returned payment methods as numeric codes that we could not map to names. A third-party guide lists Attijariwafa, Banque Populaire, CIH, Bank of Africa and cash deposits at Wafacash or CashPlus, and reports that neither party pays a P2P fee.Datawallet We could not confirm the fee on an official Bybit page, so check the order screen before you confirm.

The selling rules are the same everywhere: trade inside the app, accept payment only from an account in the buyer’s own name, and release the coins only when the dirhams show in your banking app. Our P2P guide walks through a full trade, and our cash-out guide covers the reverse direction.

The February 2025 hack: what happened

On 21 February 2025 Bybit was moving ETH from a multi-signature cold wallet to a warm wallet, a routine operation. The signers saw a transaction that looked correct on their screens. In reality, the interface of the third-party wallet software they used, Safe Wallet (formerly Gnosis Safe), had been compromised, and the transaction changed the wallet’s smart-contract logic. The attackers took control and drained about 401,000 ETH, worth roughly 1.4 to 1.5 billion dollars at the time. It was the largest theft in the history of crypto, well above the Ronin bridge hack of 2022.

Five days later the FBI published a public service announcement attributing the theft to a North Korean group it calls “TraderTraitor”, which security firms often place under the Lazarus umbrella. The FBI said the funds were being converted quickly and spread across thousands of addresses on several blockchains.FBI · IC3 alert

How Bybit responded

The response is the reason Bybit keeps a 4.2 rating rather than a much lower one. CEO Ben Zhou went live within hours to say that the exchange was solvent and that every customer asset remained backed one to one. Withdrawals stayed open while a wave of requests came in. Within about three days, Bybit said it had closed the ETH gap through emergency loans from other industry players, large deposits and market purchases. An audit by Hacken of its proof of reserves later reported collateralisation above 100% for major assets.Decrypt Bybit also offered a 10% bounty on recovered funds.

Is Bybit licensed and regulated?

European Union. On 29 May 2025 Bybit announced that Bybit EU GmbH had received a MiCA licence from Austria’s Financial Market Authority, with a European base in Vienna.Cointelegraph A MiCA licence from one member state allows a firm to serve the whole European Economic Area. That matters for Moroccans living in France, Spain, Belgium or Italy: the EU entity serves them under EU rules, while residents of Morocco deal with Bybit’s global entity.

United Arab Emirates. Bybit received provisional, non-operational approval from Dubai’s VARA in September 2024. It later obtained a full Virtual Asset Platform Operator licence from the federal Securities and Commodities Authority, after an in-principle approval in February 2025. We could not confirm that VARA has since granted full operational approval in Dubai, so we do not claim it.

Morocco. None. No exchange has a Moroccan licence because the legal category does not exist yet. Draft law 42.25 would create AMMC licences for crypto-asset service providers, but at the time of writing it has not been adopted. Our legal guide tracks its progress.

What are Bybit’s fees?

Spot trading on Bybit costs 0.10% for makers and takers at the base tier, with discounts for higher volume. P2P is reported as free for both sides, as noted above. Withdrawal fees depend on the coin and network; for USDT, TRC20 and other cheap networks cost far less than ERC20.

As on every platform, the real cost of buying with dirhams is the P2P premium. In our most recent snapshot, it was about 6–7% above the market dollar rate on Bybit’s best buy ads. Compare Bybit and Binance prices on the day; that matters more than the trading fee.

Derivatives: the warning we put in every Bybit review

Bybit makes most of its money from perpetual futures and other leveraged products. Leverage can reach 100x on major pairs. At 10x, a 10% move against you wipes out the position; at 50x, a 2% move does. Bybit’s marketing often shows trading competitions and big wins. You do not see the many accounts liquidated along the way.

Is Bybit safe after the hack?

After the hack, Bybit reviewed its wallet procedures and published updated proof-of-reserves reports. Account protection includes two-factor authentication, anti-phishing codes and withdrawal-address lists. KYC is required for P2P; Moroccans usually verify with a CIN or passport.

As on Binance, the most common practical problem is not a hack but a frozen bank account after a disputed P2P payment. If someone pays you from a stolen or third-party account, the victim’s bank can block yours. Our scam guide explains how to spot it before you release coins.

Who should use Bybit, and alternatives

Bybit suits Moroccan users who already trade on Binance and want a second P2P venue, and experienced traders who understand derivatives and accept their risks. It is also a sensible choice for members of the diaspora in the EU who want a MiCA-licensed platform with access to the dirham P2P market.

For beginners, the alternatives are simpler. Binance has the deepest MAD market; read our Binance review. CEX.IO has no dirham market but a long record and US, UK and Spanish entities, and Moroccans fund it with USDT bought on P2P; the CEX.IO review explains how. Bitget also runs a two-sided MAD market, a smaller one, covered in our Bitget review. The full ranking is on the reviews hub, and our list of the best crypto exchanges in Morocco shows where Bybit sits among the ten.

Our verdict

Bybit earns 4.2. Its dirham P2P market is real and useful, its EU arm holds a MiCA licence, and it showed in February 2025 that it can absorb a catastrophic loss without passing it to customers. The score is held back by the hack itself, by a product that nudges users toward leverage, and by a P2P book that remains much thinner than Binance’s. Use it for P2P and spot, keep balances modest, and leave the futures tab alone unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Sources

Official and press sources cited in this guide. An external link does not imply any partnership.

1. Datawalletdatawallet.com
2. FBI · IC3 alertic3.gov
3. Decryptdecrypt.co
4. Cointelegraphcointelegraph.com

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