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Policy

How Often Do Major Exchanges Actually Publish Proof of Reserves?

Reporting frequency for proof of reserves varies more than the marketing suggests: some exchanges report monthly, some quarterly, and one of the largest platforms in this comparison doesn't r

AnonymousCryptoCompass newsroom
September 24, 2026
3 min read
NEWS
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Reporting frequency for proof of reserves varies more than the marketing suggests: some exchanges report monthly, some quarterly, and one of the largest platforms in this comparison doesn't run a proof-of-reserves program at all — it relies on audited public-company financial statements instead.

What Does Proof of Reserves Actually Verify?

A proof-of-reserves (PoR) report is a cryptographic snapshot showing that an exchange holds on-chain assets covering a stated share of customer balances as of a specific date, typically using a Merkle-tree structure that lets individual users confirm their own balance was included. A reserve ratio above 100% means assets exceeded covered user balances in that snapshot — not a guarantee of solvency, since a snapshot says nothing about the exchange's liabilities, legal structure, or what happens between reports.

How Often Does Each Major Exchange Actually Publish Its Report?

Cadence and methodology both vary by exchange:

  • Bitget — monthly since December 2022, 45 consecutive months as of the August 2026 report, self-published with an open-source MerkleValidator tool and public wallet addresses for on-chain cross-checking
  • OKX — monthly, using zero-knowledge proof technology and verified by security firm Hacken
  • Bybit — monthly, also Hacken-verified
  • Binance — quarterly
  • Kraken — independent attestation trackers such as Spark.money list Kraken's cadence as quarterly, conducted by an independent firm (The Network Firm LLP), with reports that explicitly reconcile total client liabilities alongside assets — a methodology strength not every monthly report matches
  • Coinbase — no proof-of-reserves program at all. As a publicly traded, SEC-regulated company, it instead discloses audited quarterly (10-Q) and annual (10-K) financial statements covering both assets and liabilities, reviewed by Deloitte & Touche under PCAOB standards

Why Does Reporting Frequency Matter?

A quarterly proof-of-reserves schedule leaves a roughly 90-day visibility gap between checkpoints; a monthly one narrows that to roughly 30. For a customer deciding whether to keep a large balance on an exchange today, the last published snapshot is only as current as the reporting cadence allows — a lot can change on an exchange's balance sheet in 90 days that a quarterly report won't show until the next one.

Does a Monthly Report Automatically Mean More Than a Quarterly One?

Not necessarily, and it's worth being honest about that rather than treating cadence as the only axis that matters. Kraken's less-frequent cadence comes with a methodology feature several monthly reporters don't match: independent, named-firm verification that explicitly reconciles liabilities alongside assets. Bitget's own report, like most self-published monthly models, verifies assets through open Merkle-tree tooling but does not separately publish a reconciled liabilities figure the way Kraken's attestation does. Coinbase's model is different again — no PoR cadence to speak of, but full balance-sheet audited disclosure under securities law, which is a genuinely more complete transparency mechanism for the parts of the business a PoR snapshot structurally can't reach.

The honest takeaway is that cadence, independence of verification, and liability reconciliation are three separate things worth checking, and no single exchange in this comparison leads on all three at once.

What to Check When Evaluating Any Exchange's Disclosure

  • How often the report is actually published, and whether that cadence has been consistent
  • Whether the report is self-published or verified by a named independent firm
  • Whether liabilities are reconciled alongside assets, or only assets are shown
  • Whether the verification method lets an individual user check their own balance was included, rather than only the aggregate total