Editorial Policy

How we assess an exchange

Every review starts with documents, not the homepage. We read the venue's published fee schedule and note the tier where a normal account actually lands; we identify the legal entity a customer contracts with and where it is regulated; we work through the order types and margin mechanics from the venue's own documentation; and we look at the failure-mode record — outage history, withdrawal freezes, enforcement actions, and what the venue's own disclosures say would happen to customer assets in an insolvency. Where a venue publishes proof-of-reserves, we report what the attestation demonstrates and what it omits — an attestation is not an audit, and we say so.

We use the platforms hands-on where jurisdiction and access allow. Where we can't, we work from documented sources and say which is which. Claims we can't verify are attributed ("the company says", "per the regulator") rather than repeated as fact, and we never invent quotes, statistics, test results, or dates. We do not give financial advice, publish price predictions, or recommend buying any asset — we review venues, not coins.

What our scores mean

Scores run 0–10 and are judgments, not averages of sub-scores. A 7 is a solid venue with real trade-offs. An 8 is an easy recommendation for the right trader. A 9 is rare and means we struggled to find a meaningful fault in the fees, the custody story, and the failure record all at once. Every review lists genuine cons — if we can't find any, we haven't read enough of the filings.

Disclosure

Swap Desk is a commercially supported publication. Posts that contain affiliate links, and posts that are sponsored, carry a disclosure at the top of the post, and sponsored links are marked as sponsored in the page's code. Sponsors never see, edit, or approve editorial copy, and no score or conclusion can be bought — see the advertise page for what is and isn't for sale.

Bylines

Swap Desk publishes under house bylines maintained by the editorial team — the same model long used by publications that write with one voice. Reviews run under the editor's byline, Anton Reyes, which is a disclosed house pen name and the accountable editorial identity for everything it signs; news runs under "Staff, Swap Desk." We do not publish fabricated author biographies or invented credentials.

Corrections

If we've published an error — a fee tier, a licence status, a date, anything — we want to know. Reach the editorial desk via the contact page. We correct promptly and note material corrections in the post.