This page explains how Cryptobase makes money, and what that does and doesn’t buy.
Where we are today
Some of our guides and review pages carry affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, the maker pays us a commission and it costs you nothing extra. There is no advertising on this site, there are no paid posts, and nothing is behind a login.
They are on eleven pages so far: the self-custody guide, the where-to-buy guide, the Trezor versus Ledger comparison, our Trezor, Ledger, Keystone, Blockstream Jade and Koinly reviews, the UK crypto tax guide, the account security guide and the inheritance guide. Every one is marked Ad at the point you might click it, and links that earn us money are gold while the rest of the site’s links are not, so you can tell them apart without reading anything.
Products we earn nothing from sit in the same comparisons, at the same size, with the same prices and the same links. Coldcard, BitBox and Keystone pay us nothing and are recommended anyway where they are the right answer. A comparison in which only the paying products are clickable is not a comparison.
We are open to advertising and partnerships too, case by case, and the media page explains how to ask. What follows is what we commit to regardless of who is paying.
What an affiliate link is
An affiliate link pays us a commission if you click it and then sign up or buy something. It costs you nothing extra. It does mean we have a financial interest in you clicking, which is precisely why it needs declaring.
The rules we work to
Commercial deals buy placement, never coverage. No advertiser or affiliate partner gets a say in what we write about them, and no commission arrangement will keep a story off this site. If a company we earn money from does something worth reporting, we report it.
Every affiliate link is marked where you might click it, not only here, on a page you’d have to go looking for.
Paid articles are labelled at the top, not the bottom. If somebody paid for a piece to appear here, you will know it before you read the first sentence, and every link inside it is tagged as sponsored.
Paying does not lower the bar. A paid piece is still edited and can still be turned down. It is held to the same rules as everything else: no price predictions, no promised returns, nothing dressed up as investment advice.
A commission is not a reason to recommend something. If we wouldn’t point a friend at it, we won’t point you at it for money.
Advertising will look like advertising. No sponsored posts dressed up as articles.
Why we do not link to exchanges
Promoting cryptoassets to UK consumers is regulated. Under the Financial Conduct Authority’s financial promotions regime, referral and affiliate links to crypto firms count as inducements. A promotion generally has to carry a prescribed risk warning, and has to be made or approved by an FCA-authorised person unless a specific exemption applies. Firms based outside the UK are caught too if they are marketing to people here.
That is why every affiliate link on this site points at a physical product or a piece of software, and not one of them points at an exchange, a staking service or anything you can trade on. Several of the hardware wallet makers we link to sell those things as well; our links go to the hardware and nowhere else. It is a real constraint on how a UK crypto site can make money, and we would rather build to comply with it than around it.
Not financial advice
Nothing on Cryptobase is financial advice, and that does not change if there is a commission attached to a link. Crypto is high risk. Prices can go to zero, and if something goes wrong you are unlikely to be protected.