The gate: Florida licensing
Before anything is scored, one question decides whether a platform appears at all: does it hold a verifiable Florida money transmitter licence?
Florida Statutes Chapter 560 requires businesses that receive or transmit virtual currency on behalf of customers to be licensed by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation. Obtaining one means meeting a $100,000 minimum net worth requirement, posting a surety bond scaled to projected volume, holding permissible investments equal to 100% of outstanding transmissions, and having a federally compliant anti-money-laundering programme in place before the licence issues.
We check every platform in NMLS Consumer Access and cross-reference the OFR's records and the FinCEN MSB registrant list. No licence, no entry — regardless of product quality, brand recognition or affiliate payout.
A scoring factor can be outweighed. A gate cannot. If licensing were merely one criterion among several, a sufficiently attractive product could offset its absence — and that is precisely the trade-off that costs people everything when a platform freezes withdrawals. Licensing is binary here on purpose.
The four weighted criteria
1. Real order-book cost (heaviest weight)
Not the headline "0% commission" claim, and not the instant-buy fee. The maker and taker fees you actually pay placing a limit order at the entry volume tier, because that is what a serious buyer will use.
This is weighted most heavily because it is the largest controllable cost most people face, and because it is the number the industry works hardest to obscure. Nearly every major exchange runs an expensive one-tap buy screen alongside a cheap order book: the retail flow costs 1% to 1.49% plus spread, the order book 0.16% to 0.40%. On $1,000 a month over ten years that difference is roughly $1,500.
We also penalise platforms whose recurring-purchase feature routes through the expensive retail flow, because that quietly turns the best habit in investing into a seven-times overcharge.
2. Funding, withdrawal and self-custody
Three sub-questions, each of which can move a ranking:
- Is ACH free? On a monthly buying habit, free ACH versus a 3% card is the difference between a rounding error and a real cost.
- Can you withdraw the actual asset? A platform that will not let you move crypto to a wallet you control is a price-exposure product, not a crypto exchange. We say so where it applies.
- What does stablecoin withdrawal cost by network? Weighted more heavily than most reviewers would, because in Florida a very large share of practical crypto use is cross-border transfers — and on a $200 remittance the network fee matters more than the trading fee.
3. Track record and transparency
Security history, regulatory history, corporate structure and how honestly the platform presents its own costs. We treat published proof-of-reserves attestations, a public listing, or a trust-company charter as positives — not guarantees, but evidence of external scrutiny.
We treat unitemised pricing as a negative. A platform whose cost is a spread you cannot see scores worse than one charging a higher but visible fee, because a fee you cannot measure is a fee you cannot manage.
4. Product fit and honest drawbacks
Whether the platform is actually good for the person likely to use it — a beginner making a first $100 purchase has different needs from someone deploying $200,000 — and what specifically goes wrong with it.
Every entry must have a documented "what doesn't work" section. This is a hard requirement, not a stylistic preference. If we cannot articulate what a platform does badly, we have not researched it properly. Our top pick, CEX.IO, is criticised on the same page where we recommend it — for a 2.99% card fee, limited fiat currency support and an order book with a learning curve.
What we deliberately do not score
- Number of listed assets. A long token list is a marketing metric, not a quality one, and a platform listing three thousand assets is not three hundred times better than one listing ten.
- Sign-up bonuses and promotions. Temporary, conditional, and irrelevant to long-term cost.
- App design. We mention it where it materially helps or harms a beginner, but a beautiful interface that routes you through a 1.49% flow is worse than an ugly one that does not.
- Leverage and derivatives availability. Not a feature we reward. High-leverage venues profit from liquidations.
- Affiliate payout. Obviously.
How to check our work
The method above is published so that you can apply it independently. Concretely:
- Verify the licence gate. Search each platform we list in NMLS Consumer Access. If any of them is not licensed in Florida, we have broken our own rule and you should tell us.
- Check the order-book figures against each operator's own published fee page. We date ours; if a schedule has changed, the figure is stale and we want to know.
- Read the drawbacks. If any entry has a thin or evasive "what doesn't work" section, that is a fair criticism of us.
- Test the recurring-buy claim. Open the fee disclosure for a platform's recurring purchase product and see which flow it uses. This is the check most reviewers never do.
Corrections to contact@crypto-florida.com. We fix errors and note material changes.
Scores, and what they are worth
We publish a numeric score out of five alongside each entry. It is a summary of the criteria above, not a precise instrument — the difference between 4.5 and 4.2 is a judgement, and you should read the text rather than the number.
The rankings are also not a recommendation to you specifically. The best platform for someone buying $50 a week is not the best platform for a Doral business settling supplier invoices in stablecoins, and neither is right for someone deploying $500,000 — which should go to an OTC desk instead. We try to say which is which.
Commercial relationships
Some links are commercial partnerships and we may be paid if you open an account. That does not buy a ranking position, a score, or the removal of criticism, and partners do not review content before publication. Full detail in our editorial policy.
All external links are nofollow. Nothing on this site is financial advice, and Crypto Florida is not a broker, exchange, adviser, law firm or tax firm.