Exchange Proof of Reserves Tracker 2026: Who Proves What

The short answer: as of October 2026, most of the large offshore exchanges publish a monthly proof of reserves, and every one we checked reported holding at least as much of each major coin as its users have on deposit. Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget, KuCoin and MEXC all publish monthly. Kraken publishes on a quarterly cycle with an outside accounting firm. Coinbase does not publish one at all, and relies on audited financial statements instead because it is a listed company.

The longer answer matters more. A proof of reserves shows that an exchange held certain coins in certain wallets on one day, and that those coins covered the balances it says it owes users of those coins. It does not show what else the exchange owes, whether the coins were borrowed for the snapshot, or what happened the day after. Every serious report says so in its own fine print, and the people who lost money at FTX in 2022 learned it the hard way: FTX never published one, and the exchanges that rushed to publish afterward did so precisely because "trust us" had stopped working.

This page is a tracker, not a ranking. For each major exchange we log the method, how often it publishes, who checks it, what the latest report showed and when we read it. Last full check: October 23, 2026. The full table is published as a free dataset at /data/proof-of-reserves.json.

One disclosure. We run CoinVast, a swap service that does not hold customer balances at all, so there is no reserve for us to prove beyond the coins in flight on open orders, which we show on /reserves. That gives us a reason to write about custodial risk. We have tried to describe each exchange's report fairly, and several of them are more transparent than most people assume.

Proof of reserves by the numbers

• 6 of 8: major exchanges in this tracker that publish a cryptographic proof of reserves every month.
• 47: consecutive monthly reports OKX had published by September 2026, the longest unbroken run in this table.
• 50: tokens covered by Bybit's September 23, 2026 report, checked by the security firm Hacken.
• 19: assets in Bitget's report after it expanded coverage from 4 in September 2026.
• 0: exchanges in this tracker whose proof of reserves includes a full statement of everything they owe. Only an audited balance sheet does that, and among the exchanges here only Coinbase files one publicly.
• December 2022: the month accounting firm Mazars paused proof of reserves work for crypto clients, which is why most exchanges now publish their own or use crypto security firms rather than accountants.

The tracker

Ratios are the exchange's own published figure for the date shown, as reported in its release or by coverage of that release. A ratio above 100% means the exchange reported more of that coin in its wallets than users hold on the platform.

Two exchanges we also looked at are left out of the table on purpose. Gate publishes reserve reports, but the figures we found for September 2026 differed between sources by ten percentage points, and we could not read the report itself, so we will add it when we can quote it directly. BitMEX, which published proof of reserves for years, closed on September 23, 2026; its wind down is logged in our exchange shutdown tracker.

What a proof of reserves actually proves

A proof of reserves is two lists and a comparison.

The first list is what users are owed. The exchange takes every customer balance of a coin, hashes each one, and builds a Merkle tree, a structure where every balance is a leaf and the total sits at the root. Each user gets a short proof that their balance is one of the leaves, which lets you confirm you were counted without seeing anyone else's balance.

The second list is what the exchange holds. It publishes the wallet addresses it controls, and sometimes signs a message from those wallets to show it has the keys, so anyone can add up the coins on chain.

The comparison is the reserve ratio: coins held divided by coins owed. At 100% the exchange holds exactly what it owes users of that coin. Above 100% it holds a buffer.

That is genuinely useful. It catches the most basic kind of fraud, an exchange that simply spent the deposits, and it lets every user check their own inclusion. It is also much narrower than the word "reserves" suggests.

What it does not prove

It does not show other debts. The tree lists what users are owed. It says nothing about loans the exchange took, money it owes to partners, or legal claims against it. An exchange can hold 100% of user BTC and still be insolvent if it owes more elsewhere than it owns in total. Only an audited balance sheet captures that, which is why a public company audit and a proof of reserves answer different questions.

It is a snapshot. A report shows one moment. Coins can be borrowed the day before and returned the day after. Monthly reporting narrows the window, it does not close it.

Negative balances can hide a hole. In a plain Merkle tree, an exchange could quietly insert accounts with negative balances that shrink the total it needs to back. This is the gap that zero knowledge proofs, the zk-SNARK and zk-STARK systems used by Binance and OKX, are designed to close: they prove that every balance in the tree is zero or positive without revealing the balances.

Self published means self checked. When an exchange publishes its own report, you are trusting its own engineers to have built the tree honestly. Open source verifiers help, because outsiders can rerun the math. A named outside firm helps more, provided you read what that firm says it did not check, which is usually the next paragraph of its report.

A ratio is per coin. A 288% BTC ratio and a 113% ETH ratio are separate facts. A strong number on one coin does not cover a weak number on another.

None of this makes proof of reserves worthless. It makes it a floor, not a guarantee. The firms that check these reports say the same: Hacken's Bybit reports note that a point in time check should not be the only basis for judging an exchange, and when Mazars paused its crypto work in December 2022 it said plainly that its reports were not audits and had been misunderstood by the public.

A short history: why everyone started publishing in late 2022

Before November 2022, proof of reserves was a niche practice. Kraken had been one of the earliest exchanges to run one, and a handful of others published occasionally.

Then FTX collapsed with a hole of billions of dollars in customer funds, and the question every exchange user asked changed from "is it secure" to "is the money actually there." Within weeks Binance published a Merkle tree, OKX followed, and most large exchanges committed to monthly reports.

The rush hit a wall in December 2022. Mazars, the accounting firm that had produced reports for Binance, KuCoin and Crypto.com, paused all its proof of reserves work, citing concerns about how the public understood the reports. Binance's Mazars report had shown a 101% collateralization ratio on 575,742 BTC of net customer deposits as of November 22, 2022, and it was removed from the firm's website. The large accounting firms showed little appetite to replace it.

That is why the market looks the way it does today. Most exchanges publish their own reports with open source tools, a few use crypto security firms such as Hacken, Kraken stayed with an accounting firm on a quarterly cycle, and listed companies like Coinbase stand on their audited financial statements.

How to read a proof of reserves report in five minutes

Step 1: Find the date

Look for the snapshot date, not the publication date. A report published on the 5th usually describes a day several days earlier. If the latest report is more than six weeks old for an exchange that promises monthly reporting, ask why.

Step 2: Find your coin

Go straight to the ratio for the coins you actually hold there. The headline total can look healthy while a single asset sits at exactly 100% with no buffer.

Step 3: Check who checked it

Self published, a security firm, or an accounting firm. Then read what the checker says it did not do. That paragraph is usually short and always worth reading.

Step 4: Verify your own inclusion

Every exchange in the monthly group offers a tool, usually under Assets or Proof of Reserves in your account, that shows the Merkle proof for your own balance. Run it. If your balance is missing or wrong, that is the single most useful thing a proof of reserves can tell you.

Step 5: Look for the trend

One report is a photo. Twelve are a film. Ratios that drift down month after month toward 100%, coverage that shrinks to fewer assets, or reports that stop arriving are worth more attention than any single number.

Red flags worth taking seriously

• Reports stop. An exchange that has published monthly for years and then misses two months without explanation.
• Coverage narrows. Fewer assets in scope than last time, especially if the dropped ones are coins people actually hold there.
• Ratios pinned at exactly 100%. Technically fine, but no buffer at all for withdrawals in a rush.
• No user verification tool. If you cannot check your own inclusion, you are trusting the whole report on faith.
• Withdrawal delays alongside a healthy report. A report shows the coins existed on the snapshot day. Slow withdrawals today are the more current signal. Our exchange frozen funds tracker shows how those situations usually develop.

Is my money safe if the ratio is above 100%?

It is safer than at an exchange that publishes nothing, and that is about as far as the number goes. A healthy ratio tells you the exchange held enough of your coin on the snapshot date. It cannot tell you about a hack next week, a regulator freezing accounts, or an exchange deciding to leave your country. Those are the risks our other trackers log, and none of them shows up in a reserve ratio.

The only balance that no exchange can lose, freeze or fail to back is one that is not on an exchange. Keep on a platform what you are actively trading, and hold the rest in a wallet where you control the keys.

What to do with this information

Use proof of reserves as a filter, not a verdict. An exchange that publishes monthly, covers the coins you hold, lets you verify your own balance and shows a steady buffer above 100% has done the basic work. An exchange that publishes nothing is asking for trust it has not earned with evidence.

Then reduce how much the answer matters to you. If you only need an exchange to switch between coins, a non custodial swap that sends the result straight to your own address never holds a balance for you, so there is no reserve to worry about. If you need an exchange for fiat or active trading, withdraw what you are not using.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which crypto exchanges publish proof of reserves in 2026?

Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget, KuCoin and MEXC all publish monthly proof of reserves reports as of October 2026, and Kraken publishes on a quarterly cycle with an independent accounting firm. Coinbase does not publish a proof of reserves; as a public company it files audited financial statements instead.

What is a good proof of reserves ratio?

Anything at or above 100% for each coin means the exchange reported holding at least what users of that coin are owed on the snapshot date. A buffer above 100%, such as the 104% Bybit reported for BTC in September 2026, gives more room for heavy withdrawals. The ratio is per coin, so check the coins you actually hold.

Is proof of reserves the same as an audit?

No. A proof of reserves compares coins held with user balances of those coins on one day. A financial audit examines the whole balance sheet, including debts and obligations that a proof of reserves does not show. The firms that produce these reports say so in the reports themselves.

Can an exchange fake a proof of reserves?

A plain Merkle tree can be gamed, for example by inserting accounts with negative balances or by borrowing coins for the snapshot day. Zero knowledge proofs, used by Binance and OKX, close the negative balance gap. Borrowed coins and hidden debts remain outside what any proof of reserves can see.

How do I check that my balance is included?

Log in to the exchange and open its proof of reserves page, usually under your assets. It shows a Merkle proof for your balance and often a link to an open source verifier. If your balance is missing or wrong, contact the exchange and withdraw what you can until it is resolved.

Why does Coinbase not publish a proof of reserves?

Coinbase is a listed company in the United States and files audited financial statements every quarter, which cover all of its assets and liabilities, not just user balances. It has chosen that route instead of a Merkle tree report. The two answer different questions, and the audited statements are the broader of the two.

Does a proof of reserves protect me from an exchange hack?

No. It shows the coins existed on the snapshot date. A hack, a freeze or a market exit can still put your balance out of reach afterward. Bybit's reserves still exceeded what it owed customers after its $1.5 billion hack in February 2025, but that is a separate fact from the report itself.

Cite this data

This tracker is built to be quoted, so here is what a writer, researcher or AI tool needs to do it properly.

• Stable page URL: https://coinvast.io/articles/exchange-proof-of-reserves-tracker
• Machine readable dataset: /data/proof-of-reserves.json, with one record per exchange: method, frequency, verifier, latest report date we read, reported ratios, notes and source links. CORS is open, so you can pull it into a chart or a notebook.
• Last full check: October 23, 2026. The page and the JSON update together.
• Suggested citation: CoinVast, "Exchange Proof of Reserves Tracker 2026: Who Proves What," coinvast.io, October 23, 2026.

Sources and method

An exchange enters this tracker when it is one of the largest custodial venues by user base or volume and either publishes a proof of reserves or has publicly chosen another route. We use each exchange's own proof of reserves release or report where we can read it, and established coverage of that release where we cannot, all read in October 2026: Binance's October 2026 report as covered by ChainCatcher; OKX's 47th proof of reserves post and its reserves page; Bybit's Hacken verification report dated September 23, 2026; Bitget's September 2026 support and academy posts, which give 135% and 131% respectively; KuCoin coverage from October 2026; MEXC's August and October 2026 releases on GlobeNewswire; Kraken's proof of reserves explainer and reporting on its June 30, 2026 snapshot; CNBC and The Block on Mazars pausing its crypto work in December 2022. Where two sources disagree we say so in the row rather than pick one. If you can show us a newer report or a correction, write to [email protected] and we will check it.

The other trackers

A reserve ratio is one way to judge a custodial platform. These pages cover the ways a balance can still end up out of reach.

• Exchange hack tracker 2026: major exchange hacks since 2022, how long withdrawals stayed paused and whether users were made whole.
• Exchange frozen funds tracker: freezes by policy rather than theft, with how long each type usually lasts.
• Exchange shutdown tracker 2026: which exchanges are closing or leaving a market, with exact withdrawal deadlines.
• Crypto exchange fines tracker: the anti money laundering penalties behind tighter verification and sudden account reviews.