Four questions, in order of how cheap they are to answer
Choosing where to hold or trade cryptoassets is mostly a question about the counterparty, not about the market. Who is holding the money, what a licence actually covers, where the cost really sits, and whether the money comes back out. This site explains those four checks and nothing else: it recommends no venue and has no referral arrangement with any.
The four checks
Whether you hold the asset or the venue holds it for you decides what happens if the venue fails. Most disputes are custody questions wearing another name.
A licence is specific: a named entity, a named activity, a named country. The brand on the website is frequently not the entity on the register.
The published fee schedule is rarely the whole cost. Spread markup, conversion and funding are charged without ever being called fees.
The only check that requires committing money, and the most informative one. A venue that takes deposits smoothly and complicates withdrawals has told you what it is.
When someone cannot get their money out of a venue, the useful question is rarely whether the platform was good. It is who was holding the asset, under what legal arrangement, and whether that holding was separated from the operator's own money.
If the venue holds it, you have a claim against the venue rather than the asset itself. If client funds are pooled with company funds, that claim is worth whatever is left. If you hold it yourself, the venue's failure is an inconvenience rather than a loss.
Read the custody guide
Three of the four checks cost nothing and take a few minutes: reading the terms to find the operating entity, searching that entity on the regulator's register, and reading the fee schedule alongside the actual quoted price.
Only the fourth requires money to be at stake. Doing them in that order means most venues are resolved before anything is committed.
The checklist, in order
A licence is narrower than it sounds
| Question | What a licence typically means | What it is often assumed to mean |
|---|---|---|
| Who is authorised | One named legal entity, in one country | The brand, everywhere it operates |
| Which activity | A specific permission, often registration for anti-money-laundering purposes only | Full supervision of everything the firm does |
| If the firm fails | Depends entirely on the regime and the product; cryptoassets are frequently outside deposit protection | Deposits are covered like a bank account |
| If you lose money trading | Not covered — losses from market movement are not a regulatory failure | Compensation is available |
| Where to verify it | The regulator's own public register, searched by entity name or number | The badge on the website footer |
| A missing licence | May be lawful for some activities in some places | Always illegal, therefore always obvious |
In order
1
The terms or the footer name a company, often different from the brand and frequently registered somewhere other than where the site suggests. That name is what everything else is checked against.
2
National regulators publish both: a register of authorised firms and a list of firms they have warned the public about. Both are free, searchable and take a minute.
3
Compare the published schedule with the actual price offered on a small trade. The difference between the two is the spread markup, and it is usually the largest cost.
4
Deposit a small amount, trade nothing, and withdraw it. What happens next is more informative than every review you can read.
The reference
CustodyWho is actually holding the money
RegulationWhat a licence covers, and what it does not
CostWhere the cost actually sits
The testThe withdrawal test
SignalsHow to spot a template wearing a brand
This domainWhat this domain used to hostReferenceThe checklist, in order
ReferenceGlossary of exchange and custody termsNot one, not implicitly, and not by omission. It explains the checks so the decision stays with the person making it. The risk notice sets out the limits of everything published here.