Written and maintained by the CryptoNorth Team. Here's who we are, how we decide what to list, and how we make money.
Everything below is how this site actually works. Each part has its own link, so any of it can be quoted or checked on its own.
CryptoNorth is an independent project built for one reason: most crypto content aimed at Canadians is either written for a U.S. audience and bolted on afterward, or produced by the exchanges themselves. We wanted a resource that starts from Canadian rules, Canadian dollars, and Canadian regulators, and says so plainly when something is a downside.
We are a small, independent team. We are not a registered investment advisor, a licensed financial planner, or a law firm, and nothing on this site is personalized financial, legal, or tax advice - see the disclaimer on every guide. We're not owned by, or affiliated with, any exchange or wallet manufacturer we cover.
We only list exchanges registered with FINTRAC — the federal agency platforms must register with to handle Canadians’ money — and, where applicable, with a provincial securities regulator. We verify this against the FINTRAC MSB registry rather than taking a company's own claim at face value.
What that does not mean. FINTRAC states plainly that registration is not an endorsement, a licence, or approval of a business. It means the platform has registered as a money services business and is subject to anti-money-laundering obligations. Provincial securities registration is a separate matter, and its terms differ by platform and by province — Kraken, for example, is a FINTRAC-registered Money Services Business and a Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) restricted dealer authorized in all 13 provinces and territories, including Ontario and Québec, with a rolling 12-month net-acquisition cap of $30,000 ($100,000 for Eligible Crypto Investors; none for Accredited Crypto Investors) on crypto other than Specified Crypto Assets (Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Solana, and compliant VRCAs) that applies to clients outside Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Québec and Saskatchewan. We say “FINTRAC-registered” rather than “approved” or “compliant” because those words would claim more than the registry supports.
We only recommend buying hardware wallets directly from the manufacturer, and we disclose known security incidents affecting listed devices - patched or not - rather than removing the history.
Every claim in our Tax Guide links directly to the relevant Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) page. We are not accountants; when a situation is genuinely complex, we say so and point you to a CPA instead of guessing.
Every guide shows the month it was last substantively updated. When something material happens - a security incident, a fee change, a regulatory update - we update the relevant page and note the date, rather than waiting for a scheduled refresh.
Every exchange carries a score out of five. It is our editorial assessment, not an average of user reviews, and it is worked out the same way for every platform. Five things are scored from 0 to 10 and weighted:
What a Canadian actually pays per trade, including spreads baked into the price rather than shown as a fee.
Registration with CIRO (the national investment-dealer regulator) or the provincial CSA, custody arrangements, insurance, and breach history.
Range of assets, judged against what the platform sets out to offer rather than raw count alone.
How straightforward it is for somebody buying crypto for the first time.
Whether the real cost is easy to find before you trade, or only afterwards.
Two choices in there are deliberate. Cost is scored on what you really pay, so a platform advertising a low headline fee while embedding a larger spread scores badly rather than well. And selection is judged against purpose — a platform that lists three coins on purpose is not marked down for failing to list three hundred.
In August 2026 we re-scored every platform against this rubric, after checking our own fee figures against source and finding several were badly out of date. Every rating moved. Newton, which pays us a commission, landed in the bottom half at 3.4. NDAX, which also pays us, is tied for first at 4.5. We have left both scores where the rubric put them.
Wallets do not carry a score out of five, and that is deliberate. A Bitcoin-only device you keep permanently offline and a multi-asset device that works with an iPhone are not doing the same job, so putting them on one scale would hide the trade-off rather than explain it. Instead we give a small number of awards, and this is what decides them, in the order the criteria actually weigh:
Whether there is a secure element — the tamper-resistant chip that guards your keys — what tier it is certified to, and just as importantly what that certification does not defend against.
Whether the code running the device can be independently audited, and how much of it. Partial is stated as partial.
How the backup works: seed standards, whether split backups are supported, and what options exist if you are forced to unlock the device.
Desktop, Android and iOS — and specifically whether the mobile app can actually send, rather than only display balances.
Judged against what Canadians actually hold, not raw headline coin counts.
What it really costs to get one here, taken from the manufacturer’s own Canadian pricing.
Breaches, disclosed vulnerabilities, and how the manufacturer handled them.
Three of those need spelling out, because they are where our conclusions differ from the marketing. Certification alone does not decide it — the Trezor Safe 3 and the cheaper Ledger Nano S Plus both use EAL6+ chips, so the tier cannot separate them and the other criteria have to. A published vulnerability counts differently from a concealed one: a manufacturer that discloses a flaw in its own device is behaving the way we want manufacturers to behave, and we weigh it accordingly. And a mobile app that cannot send is not mobile support, which is the whole reason a Ledger holds the iPhone award rather than our overall pick.
Trezor pays us a higher commission than Ledger, and a Trezor holds our best-overall award. We think the reasoning above stands on its own, and we have set it out precisely so you can decide that for yourself rather than take our word for it.
Every claim on this site sits at one of three levels, and we try never to let the third dress up as the first.
The organisation that decides the fact. The CRA for tax rules, FINTRAC and provincial regulators for registration, the exchange or manufacturer for its own fees and specifications, the certifying body for a security certification. Where a primary source exists, we cite it.
Established publications and independent testing, used for context, hands-on experience, and where no primary source publishes the detail. Named in our sources list so you can weigh it yourself.
Ratings, rankings, and every sentence beginning "we think". These are opinions formed from levels one and two, scored against the published methodology above. They are labelled as ours and are never presented as fact.
Where sources disagree, we say so on the page rather than quietly picking one. Several reviews here note exactly that — a coin count published three different ways in one year, or a chip certification a review site reported differently from the manufacturer.
Some links on CryptoNorth are affiliate links - we may earn a commission if you sign up through one, at no extra cost to you. Every affiliate link is labelled "Affiliate link" directly next to the button, not buried in a footer.
Affiliate relationships do not influence our rankings or ratings. An exchange or wallet has to meet our regulation and sourcing criteria above to be listed at all, regardless of whether we have a commercial relationship with it - Coldcard is an example: we kept it listed and disclosed its 2026 security incident in full rather than quietly dropping it.
Spot something out of date, wrong, or missing context? We'd genuinely like to know - email team@cryptonorth.ca and we'll look into it.
CryptoNorth is an independent publisher, not a registered investment advisor, financial planner, or law firm. Nothing on this site is personalized financial, legal, or tax advice. Crypto is not covered by CDIC deposit insurance. Always do your own research and consult a licensed professional for your specific situation.