CRYPTORESTRICTIONS

Methodology

Every status on this site is a claim about the real world. We read the platform’s and the regulator’s own documents, test access from inside the country ourselves, and a person checks every change against its source before it is published.

Three layers behind every status

  1. Primary documents. Platform terms, restricted-country lists and regulator records. Our source register holds 2,078 documents behind 2,693 data rows.
  2. Our own testing. 2,191 geo-access checks of 22 platforms from 134 countries and territories so far.
  3. Human review. Every row and every change is checked by a person against the source it cites. Nothing reaches the site automatically.

Each row records its sources, the date it was last verified and a confidence level, and all of it is shown next to the status on platform and country pages.

How a status is decided

Each platform and country pair is decided by the first step that gives an answer, covering 22 platforms across 209 countries and territories:

  1. 01
    The platform’s own documents

    Terms of service, restricted-country lists, help-centre pages and official announcements. If the platform says it does not serve a country, the status is restricted.

  2. 02
    Regulator and government records

    Licence registers, enforcement orders, blocking orders and formal warnings from financial authorities.

  3. 03
    Our geo-access test

    Where the documents are silent, we open the platform from inside the country ourselves. A block we can confirm as the platform’s own makes the status restricted.

  4. 04
    Default, at medium confidence

    Not restricted by any document and not blocked in our test: available, with a reason naming what was checked. A pair nobody has researched yet stays unknown.

Our geo-access test

Documents do not always say everything, so we check for ourselves. Our test browser opens each platform’s home page and sign-up page through a connection located in the country, and records what a visitor there actually sees. So far that is 2,191 checks from 134 countries and territories, which found 159 blocks, most recently on 16 Oct 2026. Screenshots from the test appear on platform and country pages.

Blocked
The page refused the visitor because of their IP address.
Notice shown
The page loaded but showed a regional notice or redirect.
No barrier
The page loaded with no restriction message.

A block is strong evidence, once we confirm it comes from the platform and not a local internet provider. No barrier is weaker evidence, because most platforms check residence at identity verification rather than at the front door. Some locations are virtual (an address registered to the country but hosted elsewhere): they test the platform’s own geo-blocking but cannot see a national block by local providers. The test informs a status; it never changes the data by itself.

Status definitions

Available
No known restrictions for this combination.
Limited
Some platforms or services are restricted or limited.
Restricted
Access is blocked or prohibited for most users.
Unknown
Access status has not been verified against primary sources.

Human review

Software helps us find documents, notice when they change and run the access tests. It never publishes. Every change to the data follows the same path:

  1. A change is spotted: a platform edits its terms, a regulator acts, or our test sees something new.
  2. A researcher reads the platform’s or regulator’s own document and drafts the data change, with its sources.
  3. A second check compares the change line by line with those sources before it is accepted.
  4. Only then is it merged, and every page that shows the status rebuilds from the data.

Every row carries the date it was last verified. Rows and sources older than 120 days are flagged for a fresh read, and so is every reviewed pair in a sanctioned country.

Confidence shown next to each data point: high (a primary source names the country or the platform’s licence there), medium (inferred from a published list, or the default after documents and our test), low (not yet confirmed, treat with caution).

Access score

Country guides rank the platforms that serve a country by an access score out of 10. It rates how fully a resident can use the platform, not its fees, safety or quality, and it is computed from the dataset, so it changes when a row changes. Platforms that are restricted in the country are not scored.

  1. Access, 4 points. Available scores 4; limited scores 3.5 when spot trading itself is available, otherwise 3, since limited usually means a few states or products are carved out.
  2. Products, 3 points. The share of the platform's products (spot, derivatives, staking, lending, prediction markets) open in the country, counting available as 1 and limited as 0.75.
  3. Licences, 2 points. Licence rows we hold for the country: none 0, one or two 1, three or more 2.
  4. Our test, 1 point. Our geo-access test from the country: no barrier 1, a notice or redirect, or no test, 0.5, blocked 0.

Picks are ranked within their category (exchanges, prediction markets, DeFi), since a single-product platform is only compared with its peers.

Corrections

If a status is wrong or out of date, write to contact@cryptorestrictions.com with the page and, if you have one, the document that shows it. We check it against the source like any other change and update the page, with the new verification date, once it is confirmed.