Independent Reserve: crypto exchanges rating breakdown

Custody of funds: 6/10

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 6 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 10th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 40% weight that is 0.40 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

No proof of reserves, and no pretence of one. Instead: an annual audit of its financial statements under Australian accounting standards, said to include verification of client balances — but the auditor is not named and the report is not published for users. It self-attests to full 1:1 reserves and says it never lends out client assets. Thirteen years, no breach. That is a record, not a proof — but it is more than several venues above it can say. No user protection fund. Client crypto sits in cold storage with an “insured, enterprise-grade qualified custodian” — unnamed, with no published coverage limit.

True cost of trading: 1/10

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 1 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 28th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 16% weight that is 0.80 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: 1/10

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 1 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 28th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 9% weight that is 0.49 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

42 coins against 4 fiat currencies — no crypto-to-crypto pairs at all. A fiat exchange, not a trading venue.

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 fiat story in the whole table for its region: AUD, NZD, SGD and USD, direct in and out, with a fully published fee schedule (PayID and bank transfer free; SGD PayNow free; USD SWIFT $25 out).

KYC and access: 4/10

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 4 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 21st of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is 0.16 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

No public tier table; deposit limits are shown only after you log in. United States: The US is not on its supported-country list; the platform is available only to residents of the countries it names. European Union: None found in the ESMA register. Its own supported-country list still names EU states, but no CASP authorisation could be verified. Genuinely unclear.

Product, API and docs: 4/10

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 4 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 27th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 5% weight that is 0.07 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 4.

A public API, but rate limits are not documented and there is no status page.