Bitso: crypto exchanges rating breakdown

Custody of funds: 7/10

Proof-of-reserves: does it exist, who attests it, does it include liabilities (a PoR without liabilities is close to meaningless), how often. Insurance fund: size, is the address public, and has it ever actually paid out. Hack history — and above all whether users were made whole. Licences by jurisdiction, and the enforcement record behind them. Every claim here is sourced to a primary document: a regulator’s register, a court filing, or the venue’s own published proof.

Scored 7 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 6th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 40% weight that is 0.80 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

Technically among the most advanced here: a zero-knowledge proof of solvency that covers liabilities and is published to an Ethereum smart contract, so the proof itself is public and immutable. Two honest deductions. The individual reports sit behind a login, so an outsider cannot see a dated snapshot. And while the page claims “third-party audits”, the third party is the cryptography firm that built the system, not a named accounting firm. Real theft cover, and structured better than most: an insurance-backed guarantee via Coincover, underwritten at Lloyd’s of London, against compromise of Bitso’s own wallets. Not a self-funded pot of its own token. The policy limit is never disclosed, which is the standard flaw across this whole sector.

True cost of trading: 3/10

Measured by us, not read off a fee page. We walk the live order book and fill $1,000 / $10,000 / $100,000 of BTC/USDT, then add the venue’s published taker fee. That sum — fee + spread + realised slippage — is the effective cost. Separately: the markup on network withdrawal fees, and the hidden spread inside “convert” / “buy in one click” flows.

Scored 3 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 25th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 16% weight that is 0.48 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Liquidity and execution: 1/10

Order-book depth within ±0.1% and ±0.5% of mid, measured from the live book. Uptime over 12 months from the status page. Behaviour under stress: were there outages on days the market moved more than 5%.

Scored 1 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 27th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.55 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Assets and networks: 2/10

Number of pairs, adjusted for quality: the share of listings delisted within a year. Which networks are actually supported for deposit and withdrawal — not merely “supports USDT”.

Scored 2 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 27th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 9% weight that is 0.41 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

98 spot books, fetched live from its own API — small, and mostly quoted in USD and local currencies

Fiat on/off ramp: 9/10

Which methods are actually available per country, their fees, and their limits per verification tier — read from the venue’s published terms and cited. Where a venue does not publish this, that opacity is itself the finding, and it scores accordingly.

Scored 9 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 2nd of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.39 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

The best regional fiat rails in the table. Mexican pesos over SPEI, Argentine pesos, Brazilian reais over Pix and Colombian pesos — all free, both ways — plus US dollars by ACH and wire. If you live in Latin America, this is what a working exchange looks like.

KYC and access: 5/10

Verification tiers and their limits, what is genuinely usable without verification, and the country deny-list — from the venue’s published policy, cited. A venue that will not tell you your withdrawal ceiling before you sign up is marked down for it.

Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 17th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is 0.08 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

No public tier table. Limits exist but are visible only inside the app, and increases are granted at Bitso’s discretion. United States: We could not verify this. Bitso’s terms and prohibited-jurisdictions schedule are JavaScript-rendered and returned nothing to any fetch we tried. Review sites all say US retail is excluded — which is not a source, so we publish “unknown” rather than a confident guess. European Union: None — its Gibraltar DLT licence is outside the EU and outside MiCA. No CASP authorisation identified.

Product, API and docs: 8/10

API documentation quality, whether rate limits are documented, whether a public status page with uptime history exists, and the API response latency we measured ourselves while pulling the order book.

Scored 8 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 3rd of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 5% weight that is 0.13 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 4.

Documented API and rate limits, and a real status page.