Editorial policy

Independence

CryptoMarket Wales is editorially independent. No third party — including any platform we cover and any advertiser — has approval rights over our content, sees it before publication, or can request changes to an assessment.

Rankings and verdicts are decided by the people who write them, using the criteria set out below. If a platform objects to something we have written, the remedy available to them is to point out a factual error, which we will correct.

How this site is funded

We have no commercial arrangement with any platform listed on this site. We are not paid for listings, for placement, or for anyone who follows a link from here and opens an account. The links exist so you can check each platform yourself rather than take our word for it.

If that ever changes, it will be stated here and disclosed in the footer of every page before any such link goes live. That footer text is generated from the same data that drives the comparison, so it cannot quietly fall out of date — and it appears only when there is something to disclose.

Two things follow, and we want them stated explicitly.

Nothing affects rankings. Position in our comparison is determined by the criteria below and nothing else. There is no commercial term that could affect it, because there are no commercial terms.

It does not affect what we write. A substantial proportion of this site actively discourages transactions — the pages explaining why home mining loses money in Wales, why crypto cards create a significant tax burden, why stablecoins are not savings accounts, and why anyone in financial difficulty should contact Citizens Advice rather than open an exchange account. None of that is commercially optimal, and all of it is accurate.

Links cost you nothing. Following a link from this site does not change the price or the terms any platform offers you, and we receive nothing either way.

How we rank platforms

Our exchange comparison assesses platforms against four criteria, weighted roughly in this order.

Registration status. The firm's UK legal entity must appear on the FCA Register with a cryptoasset registration under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, or hold full FCA authorisation for a related investment business. We check the legal entity named in the platform's terms, not the trading brand, because the two are frequently different.

Sterling rails. Whether GBP moves in and out over Faster Payments, in the customer's own name, without an intermediary. This matters more than most comparisons acknowledge, because a platform that only takes card payments has already cost the user several percent.

Real cost. We assess the spread on the simplified purchase flow alongside the published maker and taker schedule, because the majority of retail volume goes through the simplified flow. A platform advertising low trading fees while charging a wide spread on its front screen is not a cheap platform for most of its users.

Usability and conduct. How clearly the platform documents the steps you have to complete, clarity of deposit instructions, whether the interface steers users toward the expensive route, published status pages, and how the platform behaves when something goes wrong.

What the score out of five means

The number shown on each platform card is an editorial judgement applying the four criteria above, in that order of weight. It is not derived from a formula, it says nothing about how any asset will perform, and it says nothing about whether any cryptoasset is a suitable holding for you. A platform can score well here and still lose you money, because the score describes the platform, not the asset.

Fee figures quoted alongside the scores are indicative headline rates taken from each platform's published schedule at the date of the last review shown on the comparison page. Every platform in the table has changed its schedule at least once in the past two years, so check the live schedule before you commit money.

Sources and evidence

We prioritise primary sources. In practice that means FCA publications, policy statements and enforcement notices; HMRC guidance and the Cryptoassets Manual; legislation; Office for National Statistics and local authority data; evidence submitted to the Welsh Affairs Committee and the Senedd; Welsh Government statements; and published police force figures.

Where we rely on secondary reporting — industry publications, news coverage — we say so and we prefer outlets with an editorial track record. Where a figure comes from a firm about itself, we treat it as a claim rather than a fact.

Where a reliable figure does not exist, we say that instead of estimating. The clearest example is Wales-specific crypto ownership: the FCA's consumer research is conducted at UK level and is not broken down to a granularity that supports a defensible Welsh number. Multiplying a UK percentage by the Welsh population would produce a figure and it would be misleading, so we leave the gap visible and explain why on our data page.

Our own research

Some material here is original work rather than compilation, and it is labelled as such.

The principal example is our crypto ATM audit. We selected 26 Welsh towns and cities spanning every region and a range of population sizes, checked public machine trackers for current listings, searched for historic listings and local reporting, and recorded whether any machine could be verified as operating. We found none. The full methodology, including its limitations, is published on the data page and summarised on the ATM audit itself.

We publish methodology because a claim without a method is not research. If you can improve on ours, tell us.

Use of AI tools

We use AI tools in the production of this site, in the same way most publishers now do — for drafting assistance, structuring and editing support. Every factual claim is checked against a source by a person, and every page is reviewed before publication.

We say this because the alternative is pretending otherwise, and because the failure mode of these tools is confident fabrication. Our defence against that is the sourcing discipline described above: if a figure appears on this site, there is a source behind it, and where the source is our own audit we say so and publish the method.

Updates and review

Pages are reviewed when a source publishes new material or when something material changes, rather than on a fixed schedule. Each page carries the date of its last substantive review.

This area is moving quickly. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2026 were made in February 2026, the FCA published core policy statements on 30 June 2026, the authorisation gateway opened on 30 September 2026, and the full regime takes effect on 25 October 2027. Bank policies, exchange fees and asset listings all change without announcement. Treat any specific figure here as a starting point and verify anything you are relying on.

Corrections

We correct errors. If you find a factual mistake, an out-of-date figure, a broken link or a place where we have used a weaker source than one available, email contact@cryptomarket.wales.

Material corrections are made to the page and the review date is updated. We do not quietly remove content that turned out to be wrong; we fix it.

What we will never do

Accept payment for a ranking position, a score, or favourable coverage. Publish content written or approved by a firm we cover without labelling it. Operate promo codes or exclusive discount offers. Give personal financial, investment, legal or tax advice — we are not authorised to and we are not qualified to. Present a commercial link as an editorial recommendation without disclosure. Or omit a material risk because mentioning it would reduce conversions.

If you believe we have done any of those things, tell us and we will either explain or fix it.