I'm trying to withdraw eth from hotbit straight to my wallet in binance. Will it work or would my eth be stuck somewhere I can't retrieve?
It is better to withdraw to your wallet address and then send it to binance. It is true that you will pay more money, but you will reduce the amount of loss if anything happens.
As for the fees that will be paid:
- Withdrawal fees from Hotbit.io: read it here
- Transfer fees on the network: its change based on congestion
- Deposit fees to binance: There are no fees and mostly, but check the minimums.
I've read that hotbit is not allowed to use smart contracts for deposits (such as bitstamp and uniswap) and I'm not sure if the eth address provided in binance is a smart contract one.
Yes you are right. You are not making a decentralized exchange, but rather sending ETH native token/ other tokens from Hotbit.io to Binance on chain network address wallet. In Binance they are updating the databases (transfers are not made on Mainnet)