How OBOL rates crypto exchanges
A centralised exchange is a custodian wearing a trading interface. Most users never move their coins off it, so the venue's internal custody practice becomes, in effect, their custody practice. That is why security carries the heaviest weight in this rubric, ahead of fees, and why a clean seven-year record beats a slick app that got drained and quietly rewrote its risk disclosures afterwards.
Regulatory standing sits second, not because paperwork makes an exchange safe, but because licences determine whether you can get your money out when a jurisdiction turns hostile. We mark down venues that serve users through geo-fence workarounds while telling regulators the opposite.
What the scores do not tell you
Every mark here is desk research: public filings, enforcement documents, proof-of-reserves pages, fee schedules, exchange status pages and incident post-mortems. We do not audit anyone's books, and a proof-of-reserves snapshot tells you what an exchange held on one day, not what it owed. Treat these scores as a starting point for your own checks, not a substitute for them.
Fees are the part you can actually control
Headline maker/taker rates are the smallest part of what most people pay. Convert-button spreads, wide stablecoin conversion rates and withdrawal fees usually cost more than the trading fee itself. Where a venue has a cheap professional interface and an expensive simple one, we score the cost you get by default, then note the cheaper path in the review.