Every comparison site in this industry is paid by the things it compares. That is not an accusation — it is the business model, and it is why we chose a different one.

Search for the best crypto exchange and you will find hundreds of ranked lists. Almost all of them are funded the same way: the platforms pay a commission for every reader who signs up, and the ranking is the mechanism for producing sign-ups.

This is not fraud and it is usually disclosed somewhere. It is simply how comparison publishing works, in this industry and in most others.

What it does to the ranking

The problem is not that reviewers lie. It is that the incentive quietly shapes what gets measured.

Platforms that pay more get considered more seriously. Platforms with no affiliate programme — which includes some of the most conservative, and every piece of open-source software — tend not to appear at all. And the criteria drift toward things that correlate with sign-ups rather than with whether you will still be glad in two years.

A reader cannot tell the difference between a list ordered by quality and a list ordered by commission. They look identical. That is precisely the problem.

What we do instead

We name platforms. Refusing to name anything would make the site useless — somebody asking where to buy in their country needs actual names, not principles.

But we describe rather than rank. What a platform is, how long it has existed, what it requires, what it does not protect you from. The reader does the comparing, because the reader is the one who knows what matters to them.

The bar for being named at all is verifiable history: years of operation and a public record, rather than our opinion of the product. That is a criterion you can check, which "our top pick" is not.

What this costs

Worth being honest about. Affiliate revenue is the standard way sites like this pay for themselves, and turning it down means the site is slower to build and harder to sustain.

It also means we sometimes cannot answer the question people most want answered. "Which exchange should I use" has no honest general answer — it depends on your country, your bank, your amounts and your tolerance for verification. A ranking pretends otherwise, and the pretence is the product.

Where money can come from

Sponsored articles, clearly labelled and confined to the blog. They will look different, say what they are, and never touch a guide, a country page or the risk checklist.

If we ever take one, you will not have to wonder. That is the whole difference between a labelled advertisement and a ranking that happens to be paid for.