Binance vs OKX.

Which is safer? — the sourced record

On proof of reserves, OKX publishes a monthly Merkle-tree proof with published on-chain wallets, Hacken engaged for verification and open-source tooling. Binance self-publishes a regular Merkle-tree proof with zk-SNARKs and on-chain wallet disclosure (January 2026 snapshot: BTC ratio 100.06%) — without an independent auditor’s sign-off. Monthly-and-verified versus regular-and-self-published is the attestation gap to understand here.

Both venues carry major resolved US enforcement, one year apart. Binance: guilty plea and $4.3B DOJ/FinCEN/OFAC/CFTC resolution (November 2023); SEC civil suit dismissed with prejudice May 2025; no MiCAR licence verified as of the 2026-06-10 research pass, with a Greek application pending. OKX: guilty plea to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business with over $504M in forfeiture and fines (February 2025) and a compliance consultant retained through February 2027 — but on the EU side it was among the first with a MiCAR CASP licence (Malta MFSA, announced 2025-01-27), later adding MiFID II; Malta’s FIAU fined its European subsidiary ~€1.05M in April 2025 for historic AML failings, with remediation noted by the regulator.

Operationally, OKX (roots in OKCoin, 2013) has no platform outages documented in the last 24 months of the research pass; a June 2024 incident drained a small number of individual accounts via SIM/identity-theft attacks and was compensated, with no platform-level compromise. Binance paused withdrawals for ~23 minutes during the 2025-04-15 AWS outage and paid $283M in compensation within days of the 2025-10-10 crash-day depegs. The live scores above fold all of this into one sourced number per venue — the component table shows where they differ.

Which is cheaper? — what stays true between snapshots

Published base-tier fees and the measured all-in cost of the same $1,000 BTC buy are in the live cards above — the spread portion is a property of each orderbook at measurement time, not a constant. Structurally, both venues publish a fixed BTC withdrawal fee (shown live above from their published schedules), so the withdrawal leg enters both totals on equal terms. The ranking is by what you actually receive — never by affiliate relationship — and your own order size may rank them differently on the live tool.