Our Testing Method, Published
What we do before writing about any wallet or venue, so readers can judge whether the review means anything.
A review is only as good as the process behind it. This is ours, published so it can be checked against any individual piece.
For a venue
Register and verify, recording how long verification takes and what documents are required.
Deposit by bank transfer, recording the fee and the settlement time.
Buy a small amount, comparing the executed price against the order book mid price at that moment. The difference is the spread, which is not published anywhere.
Examine the withdrawal screen before withdrawing: whether the network is an explicit choice, whether the fee is split from the platform charge, whether an allowlist exists.
Withdraw a small test amount to a wallet we control, recording the charged fee, the actual network fee from the explorer, and the elapsed time.
Withdraw a larger amount, recording whether additional review triggers.
Withdraw to a new address, recording whether an allowlist delay applies.
Contact support with a specific technical question, recording the response time and whether the answer addresses it.
For a wallet
Set it up and record the backup flow, including whether funding is possible before the phrase is backed up.
Wipe and restore, confirming the first address matches.
Test the confirmation screen against a request that is not what it appears, checking whether simulation or clear labelling catches it.
Check the network selector prominence on the send screen.
Check whether a custom endpoint can be configured.
Check hardware wallet pairing.
What we buy
Everything at full retail price. No review units, no affiliate links, no sponsored reviews, no arrangements with any venue.
Where we name a platform, including a platform we ran a full withdrawal through, it is because we ran the procedure above on it.
If that ever changes it will be disclosed at the top of the article, not in a footer.
What we cannot test
Behaviour under stress. A venue processing withdrawals reliably in a calm week tells you little about a crisis. We state this rather than implying otherwise.
Solvency. Not observable from outside. Reserve attestations help and are not a substitute for supervision.
Long-term reliability of anything we have used for months rather than years.
Why we publish this
Because a reader has no way to evaluate our judgement without knowing what we applied.
Most review sites do not publish a method, which makes the question unanswerable. Ours is above, it is short, and it can be checked against any piece on this site.
Products covered here are bought at full retail price and used for real transactions before anything is written. There are no affiliate links on this site, no sponsored placements and no review units. If that ever changes, it will be disclosed at the top of the article.