The right crypto exchange is one that is registered where you live, keeps customer coins separate and accounted for, and shows its full cost before you click buy. CoinChoose helps you check those three things for yourself, then explains the coins and wallets you will meet along the way. We never print live prices and we do not tell you what to buy.
Crypto platforms come and go faster than most financial firms. Of the exchanges this site listed a few years ago, several were seized, went bankrupt or quietly shut. That history shapes everything below: we start with whether a platform is allowed to serve you and whether you can get your money out, and only then look at features.
What you will find on CoinChoose
The site is deliberately small. Each section answers one practical question a new or returning crypto user tends to ask:
- Exchanges. Our crypto exchange comparison lines up the large platforms by regulatory status, funding options and track record, and names the exchanges that no longer exist. Individual reviews cover Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, KuCoin and HTX (formerly Huobi).
- Coins. The coin directory explains Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin and Dogecoin in plain language: how each network works, who runs it and what is fixed about its supply.
- Wallets. Our guide to crypto wallets covers software, mobile and hardware options and how to back them up.
- Free bitcoin. The free bitcoin page separates the small, real rewards from the faucets, cloud-mining schemes and giveaways that cost people money.
Four kinds of platform, four sets of risks
“Exchange” covers several different businesses. Knowing which one you are using tells you who holds your money and who you can complain to.
- Centralised exchanges run an order book, hold customer coins and match buyers with sellers. Coinbase, Kraken and OKX are examples. They offer the deepest markets and bank connections, and they carry the custody risk described above.
- Broker apps sell you crypto from their own inventory or route your order elsewhere. Some general investing apps work this way. They are simple, but the spread is often the main charge, and some do not let you withdraw coins to your own wallet at all.
- Peer-to-peer marketplaces connect individual buyers and sellers, with the platform holding coins in escrow during the trade. The best-known early one, LocalBitcoins, stopped trading on 16 February 2023. Fraud risk sits with the counterparty, so payment disputes are common.
- Decentralised exchanges are smart contracts that swap tokens directly from your own wallet. Nobody holds your coins between trades, but nobody can reverse a mistake either, and fake tokens with familiar names are listed freely.
Most newcomers start with a registered centralised exchange because it connects to a bank account. That is a reasonable choice as long as the registration and custody checks come first.
What opening an account involves
Registered platforms must identify their customers. Expect to provide a government photo ID, a selfie or short video, your address and sometimes the source of your funds. Approval can take minutes or days. A platform that skips identity checks entirely is either unregistered or breaking its own rules, which is a warning in itself.
Transfers carry identity data too. In the EU, the transfer-of-funds rules (Regulation (EU) 2023/1113) have applied to crypto since 30 December 2024, and for transfers above €1,000 to or from a self-hosted wallet the provider must assess whether the wallet belongs to you. Do not be surprised if a withdrawal screen asks you to confirm who owns the destination address. Keep records of every deposit, trade and withdrawal from day one, because tax authorities in most countries treat a sale or swap of crypto as a taxable event, and exchanges increasingly report customer data to them.
Seven questions to ask before you open an account
Marketing pages lead with low fees and long coin lists. Those matter, but they come last on our checklist. Work through the questions in this order and most bad choices fall away early.
1. Is the platform allowed to serve you?
Crypto exchanges need permission country by country, and sometimes state by state or province by province. A platform that is fully licensed in one place can be unregistered, restricted or banned in another. In Canada, for example, the Canadian Securities Administrators publish a list of crypto platforms authorised to do business with Canadians and a separate list of banned platforms; KuCoin, Poloniex and LATOKEN operators appear on the banned list. In the European Union, a provider has needed a licence under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) since the transitional periods ran out by 1 July 2026. Binance had no MiCA authorisation by then and told users that it would suspend most services for EU residents from 1 July 2026.
Using an unregistered platform is not always illegal for you as a customer, but it strips away protections. If the firm fails, there is no local regulator holding its records, no complaint route and often no clear insolvency process in your country.
2. Who controls the coins?
When you buy on an exchange, the platform normally holds the private keys and you hold a claim against it. That claim is only as good as the firm’s books. FTX showed the worst case: at least $8 billion of customer money went missing, and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024. Smaller failures follow the same pattern. Withdrawals slow, then stop, then a court appoints a trustee. The Polish-founded exchange zondacrypto (formerly BitBay) froze withdrawals in April 2026, lost its Estonian operating licence on 29 June 2026, and its operating company was declared insolvent by an Estonian court on 27 August 2026.
Look for three things: a regulator that requires client assets to be segregated, published proof-of-reserves or audited accounts, and a clear statement of what happens to your coins if the company goes bust. Then decide how much you are willing to leave on the platform at all.
Proof of reserves deserves a closer look than most users give it. A snapshot that shows the exchange’s wallets on a single day proves the coins existed then, not that they were not borrowed for the occasion, and it says nothing about liabilities unless the report also covers what the platform owes customers. Reports checked by an independent accountant, published regularly and covering both sides of the balance sheet carry far more weight than a dashboard of wallet addresses.
3. What will a trade really cost?
Exchanges earn money in several places at once, and the headline trading fee is often the smallest of them. The full bill usually includes:
- Spread. The gap between the buy and sell price on a simple “buy” button. It is rarely shown as a fee but can be larger than one.
- Maker and taker fees. Order-book trading charges a percentage per trade, lower for orders that add liquidity (maker) than for orders that fill immediately (taker). Rates usually fall as your 30-day volume rises.
- Funding fees. Card purchases cost more than bank transfers almost everywhere.
- Withdrawal fees. Sending coins to your own wallet costs a fixed amount per withdrawal, which differs by coin and by network.
The worked example further down shows how quickly these add up on a modest purchase.
4. Can you get money in and out cheaply?
Check the local rails before you sign up. Canadians generally look for Interac e-Transfer, European users for SEPA transfers, and US users for ACH or wire transfers. A platform that only takes cards or only accepts crypto deposits will cost more, and a platform that cannot pay out to your own bank account forces you through a second service to cash out. Read the withdrawal limits too: daily caps and extra checks on first withdrawals are normal, but caps that are far below deposit limits are a warning sign.
5. Does it list the coins and networks you need?
A coin can be listed while the network you want is not. USDT, for instance, runs on several blockchains, and sending it on a network the receiving platform does not support can lose the funds. Before you move anything, confirm both the coin and the network on the withdrawal screen and on the receiving deposit screen. Also check whether the platform restricts some coins in your country; privacy coins and some stablecoins are unavailable on many regulated platforms.
6. How does it protect accounts?
Most stolen exchange balances are taken through the customer’s own login, not a hack of the platform. The minimum set of protections to switch on:
- An authenticator app or hardware security key for two-factor authentication, not SMS codes.
- A withdrawal address allowlist, so new addresses need a waiting period or extra confirmation.
- Anti-phishing codes in emails, where offered.
- Separate email addresses or aliases for exchange accounts.
Platform-side incidents still happen. Bitget paused withdrawals on 24 September 2026 after unauthorised transfers that it first put at about $351 million. A platform’s response to an incident, and whether customers were made whole, tells you as much as its marketing.
7. What is its track record with regulators?
Settlements and guilty pleas are public. Binance agreed in November 2023 to pay about $4.3 billion to US authorities over anti-money laundering and sanctions failures; its founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty, served a four-month sentence and was pardoned by President Trump on 23 October 2025. OKX pleaded guilty in February 2025 to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and agreed to pay more than $504 million. KuCoin’s operator Peken Global pleaded guilty in January 2025, agreed to penalties of more than $297 million and to leave the US market for at least two years. A past penalty does not mean a platform is unsafe today, but it tells you how the firm treated the rules when it thought nobody was checking.
Where to check a platform’s registration
Every major market now has a public register. Search for the legal entity named in the platform’s terms of service, not the brand, because one brand often runs several companies in different countries.
| Where you live | Rule that applies | Where to look it up | What a match means |
|---|---|---|---|
| European Union / EEA | MiCA, Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, fully applicable since 30 December 2024; transitional periods ended by 1 July 2026 | ESMA’s interim MiCA register (CASP file) and the national regulator | Authorised crypto-asset service provider that can passport across the EEA |
| Canada | Provincial securities law plus federal anti-money laundering rules | CSA list of authorised crypto platforms; FINTRAC money services business registry | Registered platform with custody, disclosure and asset-segregation terms |
| United States | Federal money services business rules plus state money transmitter licences | FinCEN MSB search; state regulator; NYDFS list of regulated virtual currency businesses for New York | Registered or licensed in your state, which is narrower than federal registration |
| United Kingdom | Money laundering registration today; full authorisation regime from 25 October 2027 | FCA Financial Services Register | Registered for anti-money laundering purposes only until the new regime starts |
| Australia | AUSTRAC registration for digital currency exchanges | AUSTRAC digital currency exchange register | Registered for AML/CTF supervision; not a guarantee of solvency |
A registration check takes five minutes and is the single most useful step on this page. Canada shows why it matters: in July 2025 FINTRAC imposed a penalty of C$19,552,000 on KuCoin’s operator, citing among other things a failure to register as a foreign money services business. Peken Global has appealed that penalty to the Federal Court.
The UK is in transition. The FCA’s application window for the new regime runs from 30 September 2026 to 28 February 2027, so a firm saying it is “applying” is not yet authorised under the new rules.
A worked cost example
Here is an illustrative C$800 bitcoin purchase on two hypothetical platforms. The numbers are round figures chosen to show the mechanics, not quotes from any exchange.
| Cost item | Platform A: instant buy with card | Platform B: order book with bank transfer |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit | Card fee 3% = C$24 | Bank transfer, free |
| Spread or trading fee | Spread about 1.5% = C$12 | Taker fee 0.4% = C$3.20 |
| Withdrawal to own wallet | Flat fee equal to about C$6 | Flat fee equal to about C$3 |
| Total cost | about C$42, or 5.3% | about C$6.20, or 0.8% |
The gap is not about one platform being honest and the other not. It comes from the funding method and the order type. Most large exchanges offer both a simple buy screen and an advanced order book; using the second with a bank deposit is usually the cheapest route on the same platform. Check the live fee schedule of any exchange you consider, because rates change and depend on your volume tier.
Exchange account or your own wallet?
Holding coins on an exchange is convenient for trading and for people who would rather not manage keys. It also concentrates risk in one company. A self-custody wallet removes the exchange from the picture but moves all responsibility to you: lose the recovery phrase and nobody can restore access.
A common middle path is to keep a small trading balance on a registered exchange and move longer-term holdings to a wallet you control. Practise with a tiny amount first: send it out, restore the wallet from its recovery phrase on a second device, and send a little back. Our wallet explainer walks through the options and backup methods.
The coins this site covers
We focus on a handful of established networks rather than chasing new tokens. The table below sets out the fixed facts about each; the coin pages go deeper.
| Coin | Network launched | How blocks are produced | Supply rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin (BTC) | January 2009 | Proof of work (SHA-256) | Capped at 21 million; new issuance halves about every four years, currently 3.125 BTC per block since April 2024 |
| Ethereum (ETH) | July 2015 | Proof of stake since the Merge on 15 September 2022 | No fixed cap; part of each transaction fee is burned |
| XRP | 2012 | XRP Ledger consensus protocol, no mining | 100 billion XRP created at launch; small amounts destroyed as transaction fees |
| Litecoin (LTC) | October 2011 | Proof of work (Scrypt) | Capped at 84 million |
| Dogecoin (DOGE) | December 2013 | Proof of work (Scrypt, merge-mined with Litecoin) | No cap; a fixed 10,000 DOGE per block |
None of these facts tells you whether a coin is a good purchase, and we will not try to. They do tell you what to expect: a capped supply behaves differently from an open-ended one, and a proof-of-stake network has different risks from a mined one.
Free bitcoin: set expectations low
Search results for “free bitcoin” are full of faucets, apps and mining dashboards. Real options exist but pay small amounts: learn-and-earn quizzes from exchanges, card or shopping rewards paid in bitcoin, and faucets that pay a few satoshis for attention. Mining bitcoin on a home computer is not one of them; the network is far too large for a laptop or gaming PC to earn anything measurable. Cloud-mining “contracts” have been a favourite fraud for years: the founders of HashFlare pleaded guilty in February 2025 in a case the US Justice Department valued at $577 million. The free bitcoin guide explains which options pay and how much.
Warning signs of a fake or failing platform
Scams that pose as exchanges or investment platforms cost Americans more than any other online fraud. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 149,686 cryptocurrency-related complaints and about $9.3 billion in losses in 2024, up 66% on 2023. Watch for:
- Guaranteed or fixed daily returns, especially on “trading bots” or “arbitrage” products.
- An app or website that a new online contact recommended, rather than one you found yourself.
- A request to pay a “tax”, “unlock fee” or “verification deposit” before a withdrawal is released. Real platforms deduct fees from the balance.
- Domains that imitate a known exchange with an extra word or a different ending.
- “Recovery” services that promise to get back lost crypto for an upfront fee. These target people who have already been defrauded.
- On a real platform: slower withdrawals, new limits, missing reserve reports and executives leaving at the same time. BitMEX, by contrast, announced its closure on 23 July 2026, gave users two months and kept withdrawals open after trading stopped on 23 September 2026; an orderly exit looks like that.
If something feels off, stop sending money and check the firm against the register for your country. Legitimate platforms do not mind waiting while you look.
How CoinChoose works
Every page is written and checked by the CoinChoose Editorial Team against primary sources: regulator registers and enforcement notices, court filings, and each exchange’s own terms and fee pages. We date time-sensitive facts so you can see how fresh they are, and we update pages when a platform’s status changes. Some links to platforms may earn us a commission; that never decides whether a platform appears or how we describe its record. More on our methods is on the About CoinChoose page, and corrections are welcome through the contact page.
Nothing on this site is investment, tax or legal advice. Crypto prices can fall sharply, and money held on an exchange is generally not covered by deposit insurance. Only use money you can afford to lose.