The rules decide where you trade. Most of them are badly explained.
Plain explanations of the regulation, restrictions and mechanics that decide which venues can take you — written for traders rather than compliance departments, and updated as the rules move.
By country
What is legal, licensed and practical where you actually live.
Why you can't trade crypto perpetuals in the UK — and what you can do instead
Every few weeks someone discovers their exchange won't let them open a perpetual position from a UK address, and assumes it's a platform problem. It isn't. The restriction comes from the FCA, it has been in place since January 2021, and the much-publicised 2025 reopening was about a different product entirely.
Read →Canada and crypto perpetuals: why the registered platforms won't offer them
Canadian traders keep finding that the platforms allowed to operate at home are missing exactly the products they came for. The cause isn't caution or a small market — it's that Canadian securities law treats leveraged crypto products as securities or derivatives, which changes what a platform must do before it can offer them.
Read →US traders can finally access perpetual futures — through a route that didn't exist before 2026
For years the answer for American traders was simply no: offshore venues couldn't serve them and nothing domestic offered the product. That changed in 2026 through two separate regulatory moves, and the result is a genuinely legal onshore route to a product that used to require breaking terms of service to reach.
Read →Which crypto exchanges can legally serve you in Germany
Germany combines the biggest retail crypto market in the EU with a supervisory culture that predates MiCA by years. That produces a shorter list of usable venues than the population would suggest, and a tax treatment that is unlike anywhere else in Europe.
Read →Crypto exchanges in the Netherlands: who is licensed, and the Box 3 problem
The Netherlands had one of Europe's most developed crypto markets before MiCA, largely because a domestic platform got the funding rails right. What is unusual here is not the licensing — it is that Dutch tax charges you on what you hold rather than what you gain.
Read →Crypto exchanges in Poland: licensed venues, złoty funding and the 19% rule
Poland punches well above its weight in European crypto adoption, and Polish traders face a specific friction the bigger markets don't: most venues quote in euros while their bank account holds złoty, which puts a conversion in the path of every deposit.
Read →Crypto exchanges in France: from PSAN registration to MiCA, and what it means for you
France was unusual in having built a national crypto regime years before Brussels did. That head start shaped the market, and the transition from PSAN registration to MiCA authorisation left some familiar names behind.
Read →Crypto exchanges in Spain: licensed venues and the declaration most people miss
Spain layered a reporting obligation on top of ordinary taxation that has no equivalent in most of Europe: if your crypto sits on a platform outside Spain, there is a separate declaration to file, and it applies whether or not you sold anything.
Read →Crypto exchanges in Italy: licensed venues and the substitute tax option
Italy ran its own registration list before MiCA and taxes crypto in a way that combines a gains charge with an annual levy on the holding itself. Both matter for how you choose a venue, because record-keeping requirements differ between them.
Read →Choosing a venue
Straight comparisons, with the trade-offs stated rather than buried.
Bybit EU and Bybit global are two different exchanges. Here's what separates them
Same brand, same interface, different legal entity — and a materially different product list. European users arriving from the global platform routinely discover the difference at the worst moment, which is after they have moved their funds across.
Read →Binance alternatives for EU residents: what actually replaces it
If you were a Binance user in the EU you now need a new venue, and the obvious substitutes are not equivalent. The honest comparison depends almost entirely on whether you traded spot or derivatives, because the derivatives list is far shorter than the spot one.
Read →Bybit vs OKX for European traders: the licence is the difference
On the global platforms these two are close competitors with similar depth and similar fees. Inside the EU they are not comparable at all, because one holds a second licence the other is still waiting for — and that single fact decides the choice for most traders.
Read →Kraken vs Bybit: reach against price
These two are rarely on the same shortlist by accident. Kraken's advantage is regulatory reach — it is licensed in more places than almost anyone. Bybit's is price and depth. Which matters more depends almost entirely on your passport.
Read →Regulation
What the rules changed, and what that means for your account.
Binance walked away from Europe. Here's what happened and where its users went
The largest exchange in the world by volume decided the European licence wasn't worth the terms attached to it. For millions of EU users that turned a routine Tuesday into an account migration, and it reshaped which venues EU traders can realistically use.
Read →MiCA, one month on: what actually changed for European traders
Most explanations of MiCA are written for compliance departments. This one is written for someone who just wants to know whether their exchange is still allowed to take them, whether they are breaking any rule themselves, and what protection they actually gained.
Read →USDT came off Europe's compliant venues. What to hold instead
For most traders this was more disruptive than any exchange leaving, because USDT was not just an asset — it was the unit almost everything was priced in. Losing it changes pairs, spreads and the mechanics of moving between positions.
Read →Trading mechanics
How the instruments and the costs actually work.
The funding rate, and why the APR you're shown is usually a fiction
Every funding rate dashboard prints an annualised percentage and stops there. The number is real but the impression it creates is not, because it ignores the cost of opening and closing both legs. Once you put those back in, most of the opportunities on those tables are losses.
Read →What crypto trading actually costs: the fees that matter and the ones that don't
Most fee comparisons stop at the maker-taker table, which is the one cost every exchange competes on and therefore the one where they are all nearly identical. The differences that actually move your annual bill are somewhere else entirely.
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