INDEPENDENT CRYPTO RESEARCH · NO DEPOSITS · NO GUARANTEED RETURNS

Research desk / Due diligence

Field guide / 01

Verify the platform, not the promise.

A professional interface can be built in days. Legal identity, authorised scope, clear custody, and reliable withdrawals are harder to fake. Check those first.

1. Can you name the legal entity?

Short answer: a brand name is not enough. Find the company name, registration number, jurisdiction, address, and contractual counterparty in the legal terms.

Search each item independently. The company named in the footer should match the entity in the terms of service and the payment or custody agreement. A vague phrase such as “operated by our global group” leaves you unable to identify who owes you money or holds your assets.

Domain privacy is not automatically suspicious, but a new domain combined with claims of a long operating history is a reason to slow down. Compare the domain timeline with archived pages, company filings, app-store history, and regulator records.

2. Does the authorisation cover the actual service?

Short answer: appearing in a register is not enough. The exact entity, status, jurisdiction, and permitted activity must match what the site offers you.

A payments registration does not automatically authorise investment advice. A money-services registration is not the same as prudential supervision. A licence belonging to another company with a similar name is not evidence at all.

  1. Copy the legal entity and registration number from the platform’s own legal terms.
  2. Open the regulator’s register directly; do not follow a screenshot or badge supplied by the platform.
  3. Match the website domain, address, contact details, status, and authorised activities.
  4. Search the same regulator’s warning list for clones, unauthorised firms, and name conflicts.

3. Who controls the assets and keys?

Short answer: understand whether the product is custodial, non-custodial, or an interface connected to another exchange.

Write down where fiat money goes, where cryptoassets sit, who can authorise transfers, and which entity handles insolvency claims. Read the fee schedule for trading, deposits, withdrawals, conversion, inactivity, and network costs. “Zero fee” usually refers to one narrow step, not the entire lifecycle.

Never share a seed phrase or private key with support. A legitimate support agent does not need either one to diagnose an account issue.

4. Test the exit before increasing exposure.

Short answer: if you proceed after research, keep the first amount small and test a withdrawal through the documented process.

Stop if a withdrawal triggers a new “tax,” “unlock,” “insurance,” or “verification deposit” that was not disclosed beforehand. Sending more money to release existing funds is a common extraction tactic. Preserve account screens, messages, wallet addresses, transaction hashes, and email headers before the platform can remove them.

5. Check for clone signals.

  • Compare the exact domain character by character with the domain listed by the regulator or official app store.
  • Open social profiles from the official website, not from a direct message.
  • Reverse-search team photos and verify employment history through established profiles.
  • Be suspicious of guaranteed returns, urgency, private messaging, recruitment rewards, and unsolicited recovery offers.

Official starting points

Rules change. Use the register and consumer-alert system for your own jurisdiction. These primary sources provide broadly useful starting points:

Limit: This checklist is general education, not a finding that any named platform is safe, authorised, or suitable.