How to Check an Exchange Licence Claim

Almost every trading platform states somewhere that it is registered, licensed or authorised. The sentence costs nothing to write. Checking it takes a few minutes, and the result is more informative than almost anything else you can learn about a venue before depositing.

Step one: find the specific claim

A checkable claim names three things — the legal entity, the authority, and a registration or licence number. Anything vaguer, such as regulated in Europe or fully compliant, is not a claim you can verify, and being unverifiable is itself the finding. The entity name matters as much as the number, because the company holding the licence is often not the company whose brand is on the website.

Step two: go to the register, not the link

Supervisors publish their own searchable registers. Navigate to the authority's site yourself rather than following the platform's link, and search for the number and the entity name separately. A fraudulent site can link anywhere; it cannot change what the register says.

Step three: read what the entry actually authorises

This is the step most people skip, and the one that changes conclusions. A register entry has a scope, and it commonly covers less than the platform does. A firm may be registered for anti-money-laundering supervision only, which confirms it filed and is monitored for financial crime and says nothing about how customer funds are held. It may be authorised for payments or for securities business but not for the crypto services you intend to use. The permissions may apply to residents of that country and not to you. Check that the entry is current as well: registers show lapsed, withdrawn and restricted permissions, and a badge on a website does not update itself.

Step four: check the warning lists

Most authorities also publish lists of firms operating without authorisation, and of clone firms — sites that copy an authorised company's name and licence number to borrow its credibility. If a search returns the real firm at a different domain from the one you are on, you have found a clone, and the register is what settles it.