https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ Changes to the independent crypto-exchange regulatory register. en https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-09-02-Exchanges can now claim their own listing Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Every tracked exchange's page now carries a quiet "Is this your listing? Claim it" prompt. Anyone at the company can verify a work email at their exchange's own registered domain to request a "claimed" badge -- we check the domain match by hand before it's added, the same verification bar already used for Technology Provider profiles. Claiming is strictly additive: it never grants any ability to edit or submit changes to the regulator-sourced facts on a brand's page -- licensing, entities, and countries stay sourced from official registers regardless of claim status, exactly as before. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-31-Blockchain.com's UK entity renamed; a real $75M exploit and two more common-word false positives caught Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Routine review of the week's backlog turned up a genuine, notable change: Blockchain.com's UK FCA-registered entity renamed from "BC Operations Limited" to "Blockchain.com Operations (UK) Limited" -- confirmed directly against Companies House's own primary record before merging, same FRN throughout, so this reads as a real corporate rename rather than a new entity. Also picked up a real, serious news item for Crypto.com: its linked Cronos network briefly halted after a Tectonic protocol exploit estimated at $75 million. On the automated side, two more brand names collided with ordinary English phrases in unrelated headlines -- "Push" matched headlines ending in the generic phrase "...crypto push" (marketing-push sense, not the company), and "Bridge" matched a story about a blockchain bridge exploit, not the company of the same name -- both added to the same skip-list as Strike, Block, and Bullish before them. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-22-Fixed three silent data-loss bugs in the sync pipeline, caught during routine PR review Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Every open sync PR gets read line-by-line before merging, not just skimmed for file count -- that review caught three real bugs this round, all the same shape: a regeneration script rebuilding a brand's file from a fixed set of known fields, with no way to know about something added by hand or by a newer script. GFO-X's hand-written caveat (explaining its FCA authorisation is its entire UK regulatory basis) would have been silently deleted by the FCA sync; CoinJar's risk_summary_url (added four days ago) would have been silently deleted by the ESMA sync; and most seriously, NYDFS quietly renamed Circle's trust-charter entity from "Circle Internet Trust Company, LLC" to "Circle Internet Trust Company, LLC. d/b/a Circle New York Trust" -- confirmed directly against the live register that the licence is still fully active, but the exact-string match in our own sync silently dropped the entry, which would have shown Circle as no longer holding a trust charter it actually still holds. All three are fixed at the source (the sync scripts now preserve what they don't own), not just patched in the data -- and the NY DFS sync now surfaces a dropped or renamed entity directly in its PR body instead of only in a log file nobody reads. Also fixed: AUSTRAC syncs were never wired into the auto-merge system that handles routine date-bump PRs automatically, so every Australia sync since launch sat waiting on a manual merge for no reason. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-18-Added Australia (AUSTRAC VASPR) — a fourteenth jurisdiction Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT AUSTRAC published a genuinely public, searchable Virtual Asset Service Provider Register (VASPR) in mid-2026, with a clean unauthenticated JSON API behind it -- no bot wall, unlike Gibraltar, ADGM, New Zealand, or the BVI. Registration under the AML/CTF Act is anti-money-laundering supervision only, not a business licence -- the same tier as UK/Canada/US/Korea/New Zealand. Australia's actual first crypto-specific regime (ASIC AFSL cover for "Digital Asset Platform" and "Tokenised Custody Platform", under legislation that received Royal Assent in April 2026) is still phasing in through mid-to-late 2026 and isn't tracked yet -- flagged directly on the Australia page, same discipline as the UK's own pre-licensing-regime gap. 16 brands verified individually by ABN against the live register: 13 already tracked, plus three added as brands in their own right (CoinSpot, BTC Markets, Digital Surge). Curation caught a real false-positive risk: Binance's AU entity, "InvestByBit Pty Ltd", also matches a plain name search for "Bybit" by pure substring coincidence -- confirmed it's genuinely Binance's Australian arm (formerly linked to TravelbyBit) before adding anything, and left Bybit itself off the Australia page since it has no registration under its own name. That same research surfaced a real, well-documented finding: AUSTRAC directed Binance Australia to appoint an independent auditor in August 2025 over AML/CTF governance concerns, now recorded as a caveat on that record. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-17-New: "Is X the best crypto exchange for you?" on every exchange page Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Same philosophy as the country-page guidance below, scoped to the individual brand: there's no best exchange in absolute terms, only the best fit for a given person's situation, and we don't recommend one -- we hand over what's independently verifiable and let you decide. Each exchange page now lists real facts specific to that brand -- licensing tier, jurisdiction and entity footprint, audit status, notable incidents, scam-clone warnings, third-party ratings where tracked -- every one linking back to the section on the same page where it's actually sourced, so an unlicensed, unaudited brand reads very differently from a fully-licensed, currently-audited one instead of both getting the same boilerplate. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-17-Filtering /exchanges/ by country now links straight to that country's page Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Pick a single country in the filter and a link appears next to it pointing to that country's own dedicated page -- its regulator detail and the which/best-crypto-exchange guidance section below -- rather than making you navigate there separately. Updates live as you change the selection, and disappears again on "All countries" or Reset. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-17-Fixed: long regulator-name badges were breaking table layout Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A status badge carrying a full regime name -- "Licensed · Japan FSA Crypto-asset Exchange Service Provider registration" was the worst offender -- forced its whole table column, and the table itself, wider than the page. A previous patch only fixed this below 560px; it now wraps within a fixed width at every screen size, so the common case (short badges like "Licensed" or "UK · Registered") is unaffected and the long ones no longer break layout on desktop or tablet. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-17-New: "which/best crypto exchange" guidance section on every country page Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Added a section under each country's exchange table addressing the two searches people actually type -- "which crypto exchange X" and "best crypto exchange X" -- and explaining directly why we never call anything "the best": fit depends on the reader's own situation, not a superlative. Each page also states the practical case for starting with a regulated, KYC exchange, pulled from that country's own real regulator requirements rather than generic filler, and the concrete risks of an unregulated or DeFi alternative -- citing a real, already-sourced incident when a brand tracked on that page has one, general industry history otherwise, never an invented local claim. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-17-Affiliate button moved above the fold, replacing the old inline link Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT The "Visit X" button now sits directly under the licence badges at the top of each exchange page instead of near the bottom -- and it replaces the plain text link that used to sit there, rather than duplicating it. Most brands don't have an affiliate deal set up; those still get a plain link to their own site in the same spot, just unstyled, so nobody loses a way to reach the exchange depending on whether we have a commercial relationship with it. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-17-New: filter /exchanges/ by regulator, not just by country Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Regulator is a finer axis than country -- Dubai's VARA and Abu Dhabi's ADGM are two independent regulators that happen to share a country page, and so are US FinCEN and NY DFS. The new filter isolates any one of the 15 regulators we track directly, alongside the existing country, status, and audit filters. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-17-Added GFO-X, and a new scam-clone warning system Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A GFO-X co-founder emailed to flag we were missing them -- verified directly against the FCA register (FRN 945035, authorised since Feb 2022 to operate a Multilateral Trading Facility for Bitcoin derivatives) before adding anything. That surfaced a real gap in how we described UK authorisations: the copy previously assumed a UK-only "authorised" status was always a footnote about some unrelated part of a group -- true for, say, a banking licence sitting alongside an otherwise separate crypto business, not true for GFO-X, where it's the entire regulatory basis for the venue. Fixed. Also built a new scam-clone warning system: the FCA register sometimes flags scammers impersonating a genuine, authorised firm ("clone firms") -- now shown as a banner on the affected brand's own page plus a combined list on /regulators/. Found real ones for GFO-X, Coinbase (three), CoinJar, and Crypto.com while checking a subset of tracked UK entities; not yet exhaustive across every brand or regulator we track. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-14-New: "Audits & Reserves" — full audits vs. proof-of-reserves, clearly distinguished Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A new section on exchange pages, and it draws a distinction the crypto industry itself has spent years blurring: a full independent financial audit (the kind SEC-reporting public companies file) is not the same rigor as a proof-of-reserves attestation (a snapshot showing assets cover liabilities at one moment, via a named third party), which is not the same as a figure an exchange just publishes itself with no independent check. Each entry states plainly which of the three applies, and whether it's current or lapsed. Seeded with six verified cases showing the real range: Coinbase's SEC-audited financials (Deloitte & Touche), recurring named-auditor proof-of-reserves at Kraken, OKX, and KuCoin, Binance's self-published-only reports (no independent auditor currently named), and Crypto.com's one-off Mazars attestation from December 2022 that's now years stale despite a stated intent to keep going. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-14-Homepage now suggests your country automatically — never redirects Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A banner above the country picker links straight to your detected country's page in one click. Deliberately not a redirect: geo-IP detection is wrong often enough (VPNs, corporate proxies, mobile carriers) that silently navigating on a guess would read as a bug, and every visitor and every search crawler still sees the same page at the same URL either way. If your country isn't tracked yet, the banner says so directly and links to get in touch, rather than staying silent about the gap. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-14-News page: added SEC and DOJ directly, tagged Regulatory vs. General, new tools Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Renamed from "News mentions" to "Crypto Exchange News and Regulation Updates" — and rather than just relabel an unfiltered keyword feed, built the substance behind it. The SEC's and DOJ's own press-release feeds are now sources in their own right, tagged Regulatory automatically; headlines from the four general-news sources (The Guardian, BBC, Cointelegraph, The Block) earn the same tag when the headline itself uses recognisably regulatory language. Regulatory mentions now sort first. The page also has an RSS feed, plain share links, and the same weekly-digest email signup used elsewhere on the site. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-13-New: "Notable incidents" — hand-verified hacks, settlements, and insolvency events Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A new section on exchange pages for the events that actually drive whether people trust an exchange with their money: hacks, insolvency, extended withdrawal freezes, and major regulatory or criminal settlements. There's no live regulator feed for this the way there is for a licence register, so each entry is researched and cross-checked against multiple independent sources by hand before publishing. Seeded with five cases: Bybit's $1.5B cold-wallet hack (FBI-attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group), Coincheck's $530M NEM hack, KuCoin's $280M hack, Upbit's $50M hack, and Binance's $4.3B DOJ settlement. Deliberately not exhaustive -- a brand with nothing here is not a claim its history is clean, only that nothing has been added yet. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-13-Exchange pages reordered: market footprint leads, "Check your country" widget removed Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Each exchange page's summary now opens with which jurisdictions the brand actually holds a licence or registration in, rather than the administrative "first appears in our register on X" framing that used to lead -- a licence a firm applied for and was granted is a real signal of which markets it deliberately entered. The "Check your country" dropdown has been removed (it just restated the summary and country list in a different form) and the Countries Covered list moved up to take its place, right after the summary. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-12-New: verified company facts (registered office, entity status) via GLEIF's LEI registry Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Exchange pages with an EEA entity now show a "Registered office" and "Entity registered" date, sourced from the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation's free public LEI registry -- not a licensing body, just the authoritative record of the legal entity itself. Labelled carefully: the registration date is when that specific legal entity was created at its national registrar, which can be years after the brand itself started trading, so it's never called "founded". Building this surfaced a real finding along the way: Bitpanda GmbH's LEI record shows as retired, with a successor LEI on file -- now shown as a caveat on its record card instead of quietly going stale. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-11-New homepage and About messaging: why licensed vs. registered actually matters Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A registered exchange has filed AML paperwork; a licensed one met the standards a regulator actually sets for running an exchange -- that gap is what separated the exchanges that survived 2022 from the ones that didn't. The homepage and About page now say so plainly, including a direct warning: some exchanges dress up a real but unrelated licence (a money-lending licence, a trust registration) to look like the genuine article on their own "Security" pages. We only trust the regulator's own register -- never a company's page. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-10-British Virgin Islands now tracked (FSC VASP registration) Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT The BVI has a dedicated crypto-specific regime -- the Virtual Assets Service Providers Act, 2022 -- so a BVI VASP registration gets the same "genuine licence" tier as VARA, MAS, SFC, Gibraltar, and ADGM, not the AML-only tier. The FSC's register sits behind bot protection our scripts can't get through, so this is manually verified rather than synced -- same discipline as Gibraltar and ADGM. 18 brands hold a current BVI VASP registration, three already tracked here (Bitstamp, Hidden Road, and Kraken, whose four separate BVI entities all trade as Kraken) and fifteen newly added: Bumba, Coinhako, Crossover, G-20 Group, JST Digital, Keyex, Solidus Capital, LiquidityTech, Nonco, Oneio, RYKI, Satstreet, Sentora, SpectroCoin, and Top Value. Deliberately excludes the register's "Authorised Representatives" entries, which are local registered agents required by law for any VASP operating from the BVI, not VASPs themselves. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-10-New: news mentions on exchange pages (unfiltered, headline-only) Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Exchange pages now show an "In the news" section when a brand's name appears in a recent Guardian or BBC headline -- checked daily. This is explicitly not a claim that a match is relevant to a brand's regulatory status, or even about that brand specifically -- it's a keyword match against general news, reviewed by us before publishing (same as every other automated data source on this site), not a verified fact. Treat it as a pointer to go read the original story yourself, not a conclusion. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-10-We're now on Trustpilot too Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Added a Trustpilot review widget to the site footer. We show third-party ratings for the exchanges we track, so it seemed right to be independently reviewable ourselves rather than just asking for trust -- a new profile starts with zero reviews, but it's live now rather than later. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-10-New: third-party ratings, cited and dated (not a score we compute) Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A new "What others report" section on every exchange page, plus a standalone /reviews/ page, showing third-party ratings from sources like the App Store -- each figure attributed, dated, and linked back to its original source, kept structurally separate from both the regulator-sourced facts and the first-party user reports elsewhere on this site. This is deliberately not a blended "sentiment score": no weighting, no synthesis, just what the named source reports. Starting with 11 major brands on the App Store; Trustpilot and broader coverage to follow. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-09-New Zealand now tracked (FSPR registration) Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT New Zealand has no dedicated cryptoasset licensing regime -- virtual asset service providers register on the Financial Service Providers Register (FSPR) under general AML/CFT law, now solely supervised by the Department of Internal Affairs as of 1 July 2026. Same AML-only tier as UK/Canada/US/South Korea, not a genuine licence. The FSPR's public search tool has no fetchable API or bulk export available to us, so this is manually verified rather than synced on a schedule -- same discipline as Gibraltar and ADGM. Four brands added: Easy Crypto, Swyftx, Independent Reserve (already tracked for Singapore), and Sharesies -- each checked individually against the live register. Binance, by contrast, has no New Zealand registration at all. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-07-New: RSS feed, and a coverage/freshness line in the footer Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Two small additions, both site-wide: every page's footer now shows a one-line coverage and freshness summary (brand count, jurisdiction count, and the most recent "retrieved" date across every source we sync), so it's visible from anywhere on the site rather than only derivable by checking individual source dates. There's also now an RSS feed of this changelog at /changelog.xml, for anyone who'd rather watch for regulatory changes in a reader than check back manually. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-07-New: check your own country's status on every exchange page Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Every exchange page now has a "Check your country" widget: pick your country and see, in one line, whether that specific exchange holds a genuine licence, an AML-only registration, or nothing verified at all there -- plus any user-submitted reports from people in your country. This replaces making visitors read a full jurisdiction summary and scan a country list to work out what applies to them. We deliberately did not build a single overall "trust score" across all jurisdictions: a composite number would flatten a licence in your own country and a licence somewhere irrelevant to you into one figure, and would risk implying a safety judgement the data can't support -- a genuinely licensed exchange can still fail. What's actually decision-relevant is narrower than that, and this widget answers it directly. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-07-Dubai VARA register reconciled: 3 tracked brands to 50 Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Our Dubai VARA coverage had only ever been curated for the first 3 brands added to this site (Backpack, Bitpanda, Crypto.com), even though VARA's own public register has grown to 52 active VASP licences across 50 companies. Reconciled the full live register against our data: 40 new brands added (among them Deribit, HashKey, Komainu, Hex Trust, and Fasset), plus new Dubai entries on already-tracked brands including OKX, Binance, BitGo, and Gate.io (via its Dubai entity, Gate Technology FZE), each checked against the live register entry-by-entry rather than trusting a summary. Also caught and fixed two bugs this surfaced: a sync script that could silently wipe a brand's Abu Dhabi ADGM entry whenever Dubai VARA data refreshed, and a regulator-count table that was merging VARA and ADGM brands into one inflated figure. "Dubai VARA" on /regulators/ and /stats/ now correctly reads 50, not 3. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-07-Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) now tracked alongside Dubai VARA Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT The Dubai/UAE page previously covered VARA only, with a standing caveat that Abu Dhabi Global Market's own free-zone regulator, the FSRA, wasn't covered. ADGM's register sits behind a bot wall our scripts can't get through (the same problem as Gibraltar), so this is manually verified rather than synced: 6 Financial Services Permission grants, each checked individually against its own regulatory announcement, not a register export -- likely not exhaustive, since ADGM has reportedly authorised 30+ virtual asset firms in total. New brands added for this: Bitexen, M2, Klickl, and Laser Digital, alongside new Abu Dhabi entries on the already-tracked Kraken and Zodia. Genuine crypto-specific licence, not an AML-only registration, same tier as VARA. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-06-New York DFS BitLicense now tracked alongside federal FinCEN registration Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT The US page previously only covered federal FinCEN MSB registration -- an AML-only registration, not a licence. New York State Department of Financial Services Virtual Currency Licenses ("BitLicense") and Limited Purpose Trust Charters are genuine, state-chartered licences, and NYDFS is the one US state regulator that publishes a public, checkable list of who holds one. 32 brands now show a NY DFS status alongside or instead of their federal FinCEN entry, including several newly added to the register entirely for this: Cash App (the licence is held by Block, Inc., not by the separate Cash App Investing LLC broker-dealer), Bakkt, PayPal, NYDIG, Fireblocks, and others. The other 49 states' money transmitter regimes still aren't covered -- none of them publish a comparable single register. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-06-A submission form for Technology Provider Profiles Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Companies that aren't independently licensed but rely on a licensed custodian or execution partner (the editorial /providers/ section -- CryptoUnity, Nexo) can now submit their own details rather than us having to notice or be approached directly. Same review-queue principle as the exchange submission form: nothing publishes automatically, the claimed partner relationship is independently verified first, and every fact that can't be confirmed stays tagged as a company disclosure rather than a verified claim. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-06-A submission form for regulated exchanges not yet on the register Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT If you hold a genuine licence or registration in one of the 11 jurisdictions we track and aren't listed yet, you can now submit your details directly. This is a verification queue, not an automatic listing -- every submission is checked against the primary regulator record (using the licence/registration reference number you provide) before anything is manually added, the same sourcing standard as every other entry on this site. Jurisdictions we don't track aren't accepted here; use Contact instead for those. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-06-Refreshed capital figures for Dubai, Singapore, and Malaysia Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A new periodic fact-check pass against each regulator's live primary source (not just the brand-list syncs, but the researched figures on the Regulators page) found three outdated capital requirements. Dubai VARA's exchange-licence capital cap was quoting a pre-2023-revision figure (AED 5,000,000) no longer in the current rulebook -- the real current range is AED 800,000-1,500,000 depending on custody status. Singapore MAS's stated SGD 250,000 was the generic Major Payment Institution figure, not the SGD 500,000 that Digital Payment Token service (what crypto exchanges actually hold) requires. Malaysia's Guidelines on Recognized Markets were revised effective 20 May 2026, raising the minimum from RM5,000,000 to RM15,000,000. All three are corrected on the Regulators page. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-06-Correction: removed an unverified claim about four Korean brands Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT The South Korea entry below originally stated that Wavebridge Prime, Bauman, Robit, and ABC Cloud Wallet had been named in a Korean FIU press release on illegal virtual-asset handlers. On checking the actual press release directly, that was wrong: the release in question (2 Dec 2025, not 25 Jun 2026 as first stated) is a consumer notice publishing the list of legitimately registered VASPs -- three of the four brands appear inside that legitimate list, not as examples of illegal operators, and the fourth (ABC Cloud Wallet) registered after that release was published. The claim traced back to an AI web-search summary we did not verify against the primary source before publishing. Removed from all four brands' pages, the Korea country page, the Regulators page, and the About page. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-05-Added South Korea (FIU VASP registration) — an eleventh jurisdiction Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) VASP registration under the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information is anti-money-laundering reporting only, not a business licence -- the same tier as UK/Canada/US, not the genuine-licence tier of MiCA/VARA/ MAS/SFC/GFSC/FSA/SC. All 28 currently registered entities are tracked: 26 as new brands including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax (Crypto.com's Korean entity was folded into the existing brand). https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-05-Added Malaysia (SC Registered Digital Asset Exchanges) — a tenth jurisdiction Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A Malaysia Securities Commission Recognized Market Operator - Digital Asset Exchange (RMO-DAX) registration is a genuine crypto-specific licence, requiring a minimum RM5,000,000 paid-up capital and a fit-and-proper assessment of directors and senior management -- the same tier as VARA/MAS/SFC/GFSC/FSA, not an AML-only registration. All 5 currently registered operators are tracked as new brands: HATA, Luno, MX Global, Sinegy, and KDX (formerly Tokenize Malaysia, rebranded in 2025). The SC's page also separately lists historical operators no longer permitted to continue -- only the current list is used here. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-03-Added Japan (FSA Registered Crypto-asset Exchange Service Providers) — a ninth jurisdiction Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A Japan FSA registration under the Payment Services Act is a genuine crypto-specific licence -- in force since 2017, one of the earliest dedicated crypto-exchange regimes anywhere, requiring segregated offline custody of at least 95% of customer assets, annual audits, and JVCEA self-regulatory membership. All 26 currently-registered providers are tracked, including 21 newly added as brands in their own right (among them GMO Coin, Rakuten Wallet, SBI VC Trade, bitbank, and Binance's Japanese entity) alongside five brands we already tracked (bitFlyer, Coinbase, Gate.io, HashKey, and OSL). The FSA publishes this register as a structured English-language spreadsheet directly -- no scraping, no bot protection. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-03-What does each regulator actually check? A side-by-side comparison Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT "Licensed" means something different in every jurisdiction, so the Regulators page now explains what each of the 8 regimes we track actually assesses before granting status -- typical capital requirements, fit-and-proper tests, AML programme expectations, and jurisdictional scope -- researched against each regulator's own published requirements, with a source link and review date on every entry. Sits next to a live count of how many tracked brands currently hold each status, so the write-up never goes stale even if the underlying figures do. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-01-A weekly email digest of every regulatory change, register-wide Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT A new opt-in weekly email summarising every status change across the whole register, for anyone who would rather get one email a week than check back here. Double opt-in like the per-exchange alerts below -- nothing is sent until the address itself confirms -- and every email carries a one-click unsubscribe. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-01-Watch a specific exchange, and get an email if its status changes Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Every exchange page now has a "get an email if this changes" option. Double opt-in (nothing is created until you click the confirmation link sent to your inbox), no login needed to unsubscribe, and we never share the address with the exchange itself or any third party -- full detail on the About page. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-08-01-Expanded /stats/ with more breakdowns, and per-record structured data Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT The stats page now breaks figures down by licence type and by MiCA service code, lists all EU/EEA home states rather than just the top 10, and adds sortable tables. Separately, every verified licence record on an exchange page now carries schema.org Certification markup, so search engines and other machine readers can parse exactly what was verified, by whom, and since when -- not just read it as plain text. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-31-New /regulators/ page: browse by regulatory body, not by country Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT The country pages let you browse by where you live; this flips it around -- which regulator granted which status, and how many tracked brands sit under each one, including a full breakdown of the 26+ different national authorities that each grant the same MiCA licence across the EU/EEA. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-31-Technology Provider Profiles: a new, clearly separate editorial section Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Some crypto apps aren't licensed themselves -- they sit on top of a licensed custodian or execution partner who is. The new /providers/ section profiles two of these (CryptoUnity, relying on BitGo; Nexo, relying on Tangany and DLT Securities GmbH), naming the real partner and linking through to their verified status. Deliberately kept visually and structurally separate from the register itself, with every fact tagged as independently verified or company-disclosed. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-31-A plain-English summary on every exchange page Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Above the record-by-record detail, each exchange page now opens with a short summary sentence -- when we first saw the brand, how many jurisdictions and legal entities it holds, and whether its status anywhere is a genuine licence or AML-only registration -- before you get into the underlying records yourself. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-31-New top nav bar, and an Exchanges index listing every tracked brand Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Added a persistent top navigation bar (Exchanges, Regulators, Providers, Stats) across the whole site, and a new /exchanges/ page: every brand we track, in one sortable table, each linking through to its full regulatory record. Previously the only ways to reach an exchange page were a specific country's table or the search box -- this is the first single page that links to all of them, and it also closes a real internal-linking gap for search engines crawling the site. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-31-Added Gibraltar (GFSC DLT Licence) — our first manually-verified jurisdiction Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT A Gibraltar DLT Licence is a genuine crypto-specific licence, the same tier as Dubai VARA, Singapore MAS, and Hong Kong SFC. All 11 currently licensed DLT providers are tracked, including Bullish (two Gibraltar entities) and eToro. This is the first source on the site that is not automatically synced: the GFSC's own register sits behind bot protection that blocks scripted requests outright, so this list is refreshed only when someone manually re-checks the live page in a browser -- flagged clearly on the Gibraltar page and everywhere else it's mentioned, since it can lag more than every other source here. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-30-Added Hong Kong (SFC Virtual Asset Trading Platform licence) — all 13 licensees Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission licence for virtual asset trading platforms, mandatory since 2023, is a genuine crypto-specific licence -- the same tier as Dubai's VARA licence and Singapore's MAS licence, not an AML-only registration. All 13 currently-licensed platforms are now tracked, including 10 newly added as brands in their own right (Accumulus, BGE, Bixin.com, DFX Labs, EX.IO, HKbitEX, HKVAX, PantherTrade, VDX, YAX) alongside three brands we already tracked (Bullish, HashKey, and OSL). OSL's Hong Kong entity, OSL Digital Securities Limited, is a different legal entity from its EU arm -- curating this also fixed a naming quirk where that brand had been auto-labelled "OSL EU" everywhere on the site, including for its non-EU activity. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-30-New /stats/ page, structured data, and a public X account Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Added a stats page with live, build-time-computed numbers straight from the register (genuine-licence vs AML-only split, jurisdiction leaderboard, top EU/EEA home states, and the FinCEN fraud-cluster finding). Also added schema.org structured data (Organization, Dataset, BreadcrumbList) so search engines can parse the register as what it actually is, and a public X account, @whichcex, for source updates. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-28-Site-wide search, covering both exchanges and countries Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Added a header search box across the whole site so you can jump straight to any tracked exchange or country page, rather than only browsing via the homepage picker. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-27-Added the US as a fifth tracked jurisdiction (FinCEN MSB Registrant Search) Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT 29 brands now show a US entry, sourced from FinCEN's MSB Registrant Search. Curation surfaced a real fraud pattern in that register: dozens of shell-company filings impersonating well-known exchange brand names (a fake "Gate.io Binance Crypto BlackRock Ai decentralized" registration, a Denver, CO shell claiming to be "Interactive Brokers Inc.", and more), concentrated around a handful of Colorado addresses. Those are excluded on purpose -- see the About page and the US country page for the full explanation. As with Canada, MSB registration is anti-money-laundering supervision only, not a licence. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-27-Sort and tier-filter controls on every country page Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Country tables can now be sorted by newest/oldest registration, by number of jurisdictions held, or by services offered, and filtered by regulatory tier (e.g. UK Registered vs Authorised) where a page mixes more than one. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-26-Added Singapore (MAS Financial Institutions Directory) Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Singapore MAS Major Payment Institution licences for Digital Payment Token services are now tracked -- a genuine crypto-specific licence, like Dubai's VARA licence and unlike the UK/Canada/US AML-only registrations. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-26-Added Dubai (VARA Public Register) Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority licence is genuinely crypto-specific, but covers Dubai only -- not Abu Dhabi, not Dubai's own DIFC free zone, not the rest of the UAE. There is no single UAE-wide crypto regulator, and the /ae/ page says so explicitly. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-26-Added Canada (FINTRAC MSB Registry) Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Canada's Money Services Business registration is anti-money-laundering supervision only, not a licence -- Canada has no dedicated cryptoasset licensing regime at all. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-24-Added the UK (FCA Register) Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Most UK crypto entities hold only an anti-money-laundering MLR registration, not a licence -- the UK's own cryptoasset licensing regime doesn't open for applications until 30 Sep 2026. A smaller number of brands also have a UK entity that's separately, fully FCA-authorised, usually for a different (non-crypto) activity. Both tiers are shown, clearly labelled. https://whichcryptoexchange.com/changelog/ 2026-07-24-Launch: ESMA-fed MiCA register, 13 seeded brands, 30 EU/EEA country pages Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT The initial release, drawing directly from ESMA's interim MiCA register (CASPS.csv) with automated scheduled re-syncs and a reviewed pull-request workflow for every data update.