Before you send coins: a 10-minute check of a no-KYC exchange
published 2026-10-13
«No KYC» on a landing page is a claim; the terms of service are what apply to your swap. Before you send coins, check five things: whether the service reserves the right to ask for identity, who holds your coins during the swap, whether its terms changed recently, whether it is reachable, and what went wrong there before. Below is what each check found across the 41 exchanges, aggregators and peer-to-peer markets we track, as of 13 October 2026.
Can it ask for identity after you deposit?
This is the check that matters most, because a request for documents usually arrives after your coins are already with the service. Of the 41 exchanges we track:
| What the terms say | Services |
|---|---|
| No identity checks by design | 14 |
| May ask for identity at their discretion | 14 |
| Depends on the partner exchange (aggregators) | 5 |
| Light checks | 1 |
| Not stated | 7 |
Look for phrases such as «at our sole discretion», «we reserve the right to request» or «suspicious activity». Each review on this site quotes the clause word for word, with the date we read it.
Who holds your coins during the swap?
At a custodial service your deposit sits with the service until it pays out, and a frozen order is a frozen balance. At a non-custodial one the swap runs through a contract or an escrow that the service cannot simply stop. 15 of the 41 exchanges state that they are non-custodial; for 26 we could not find a statement either way. A missing statement is worth a question to support before a large swap.
Have the terms changed recently?
Terms change without notice. We re-read 71 terms documents of 37 services every week: in the last 30 days the check found 5 changes in the wording about identity checks or money-laundering rules, at 4 services. When a review shows a recent terms change, read the new clause before you swap; older copies are kept in our archive.
Is it reachable — and over Tor?
We check every service every 5 minutes, directly and through Tor. A service that is often unreachable is a risk for a swap in progress: your deposit may arrive while its system is down. The status page shows each service’s record for the last 30 days.
What went wrong there before?
We record incidents only with a dated source. Among the 11 on record: an exploit that drained about $3.8 million from NEAR Intents’ hot wallet (1 October 2026), a memo exploit that took 736,442 USDT from a Chainflip vault (12 September), about $450,000 taken from Garden’s solvers (26 July) and Wagyu pausing swaps into Monero (7 July). See incidents for the sources and what each service did afterwards.
Quick answers
Is a large swap safer split into smaller ones? It limits what is at stake in one order; it does not change the terms that apply.
Should I trust a service listed in a directory? Use the listing as a starting point and read the evidence: the clause, the uptime record, the incidents.
What do I do if my swap is frozen? Keep the order ID, the deposit transaction and every support message, and read what the terms allow — see funds frozen mid-swap.
Figures: nokycswap.me catalog, terms archive, monitoring and incident records, 13 October 2026. Method: methodology.