We Checked the Licence Claims of Twelve Platforms
Register lookups on every claim. Four did not resolve, three covered a different activity, and two named an entity that was not the contracting party.
Every platform we looked at claimed regulatory standing. We checked all twelve against the relevant public registers.
The method
Take the authority and reference number from the platform’s own site. Search the authority’s public register. Compare the entity name against the contracting entity in the terms of service. Read the permitted activities. We used an exchange licensed under a published digital asset framework as a control, since its terms are published rather than quoted on request.
Five minutes each.
The results
Three checked out completely. Entity matched, permissions covered what they do, no conditions.
Four did not resolve. Either the number produced no result, or the named authority had no searchable register, or the number belonged to a different company.
Three had a permission covering a different activity. All three held an exchange or payment permission and held client balances, which requires custody.
Two named an entity that was not the contracting party. The licence was genuine and belonged to a group company. The terms of service contracted us to an entity in another jurisdiction.
The most common failure
The permission mismatch. A platform authorised to exchange crypto for funds, holding client balances between transactions, without the custody permission that would make those balances segregated client assets. Property settlement is a separate corridor, and a corporate crypto wallet with segregated accounts operates in it.
This is not obscure. It is the difference between getting your assets back if the platform fails and joining a queue of creditors.
The group structure cases
Both platforms presented European regulation prominently. Both contracted us elsewhere.
The question that resolves it: which legal entity will I contract with, and does that entity hold the authorisation. We asked both. One answered honestly. One did not answer.
The jurisdictions with no register
Two platforms named authorities in jurisdictions where no public register exists, or where the register is not searchable by the public.
A licence you cannot verify is a claim, regardless of whether it is true.
What we would do
The published figures we measured against are at a crypto exchange with published fees.
Check before depositing. Five minutes, on the authority’s own site, not on the platform’s.
Confirm the entity name matches the terms of service, not the brand.
Read the permitted activities and compare against what they will do for you.
If the platform holds a balance for you, custody is the permission that matters, and it is the one most often missing.
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