Exchange

Exchanges are where most crypto price discovery happens and where most retail funds sit. This desk covers the centralised venues — Coinbase, Binance, Kraken and their competitors — alongside the on-chain venues that compete with them, plus the listings, outages, licensing and security incidents that move markets faster than any of them.

What we track on this desk

• Listings and delistings. A major listing is a liquidity event for a token; a delisting is usually the more informative story and gets less coverage.
• Security incidents. Exploits, withdrawal halts and proof-of-reserve disclosures. Handled by our investigative desk and reported against on-chain evidence where it exists.
• Volume and market share. Treated carefully — reported volume has a long history of overstatement and the methodology behind any figure matters more than the figure.
• Licensing and jurisdiction. Which venue may serve which market, tracked alongside the Regulation desk.
• Corporate activity. Funding rounds, acquisitions and executive changes.

How to read an exchange story here

Withdrawal issues are the highest-stakes category and the easiest to get wrong in both directions. Paused withdrawals are sometimes an upgrade and sometimes insolvency, and the difference is rarely visible in the first hour. We report what the venue has said, what on-chain data shows, and which independent publishers have confirmed each — and we do not infer the second from the first.

Volume claims deserve open scepticism. Self-reported figures, wash trading and inconsistent counting of derivatives against spot mean two credible trackers can differ by multiples for the same venue and week. Where they do, the story is Disputed and both are shown with their methodology named.

Where to go next

See the Verification Center for how publishers are counted, or the Custody hub for where assets sit once they leave a trading venue.