Exchange Reviews

Exchange reviews are where crypto media is least trustworthy, because affiliate commissions flow from exactly the recommendation readers came looking for. We handle that by publishing the rubric and the relationship rather than asking you to trust our tone.

Every review assesses the same fixed criteria so that two of them can actually be compared: trading fees including the parts not in the headline rate, available pairs and real depth, KYC requirements, jurisdictions served, the custody model, and security history. That last one is weighted heavily. An exchange that has been breached, halted withdrawals or operated without a licence carries that in its record permanently, and a slick interface does not offset it.

The rubric is published with the review, so you can see why a venue scored as it did rather than taking a number on faith. As of now we have no affiliate partnerships at all — stated plainly on our affiliate disclosure page. If that changes, each partner will be named there, disclosure will appear above the article body, and a commercial relationship will never move a score. If the rubric produces a poor result for a partner, that is what we publish.

We also cover the question most beginners skip: whether to leave funds on an exchange at all. Read self-custody and cold storage — neither choice is safe, they fail differently, and several large custodians have taken customer balances with them.

Related: fee comparisons and derivatives. Nothing here is a recommendation to trade.

We also look at what happens when things go wrong, because that is when a venue's real character shows. Published incident histories, how withdrawals behaved under stress, whether proof-of-reserves attestations exist and what they actually attest to, and how disputes have been resolved tell you more than any feature list. A venue that has never been tested is not the same as one that has passed.