Trust & Transparency Center

Version 2.0Updated June 19, 2026Scope Site-wideMaintained by TBN Express Editorial Team

Transparency scorecard

Editorial Independence

Affiliate Supported

No Paid Rankings

Fact Checked

Human Reviewed

AI Usage Disclosed

Corrections Policy

Public Contact

The short version. TBN Express is free to read and funded mainly by affiliate links and clearly labelled advertising. When you follow certain links and sign up for a third-party product, we may earn a referral fee at no extra cost to you. That money keeps our journalism and live market data free — but it never buys a recommendation, changes a ranking, or softens a review. Editorial decisions are made on merit by people, with software and AI used only as assistants under human oversight. This page explains, in plain language, exactly how we make money, how we keep it separate from what we write, how we evaluate products, where AI fits in, and how to hold us to account.

How we make money

TBN Express does not charge readers and does not sit behind a paywall. Running independent crypto coverage, live market data and free tools costs money, so we fund the work through a small number of clearly defined revenue streams. None of them gives a commercial partner any say over our editorial judgement.

Primary

Affiliate partnerships

We may earn a referral fee when a reader follows certain links and signs up for a relevant third-party product. It never costs you more.

Display

Advertising

Clearly labelled ad placements, kept visually and editorially separate from our reporting and our data.

Labelled

Sponsorships

Occasional sponsored placements that are always disclosed as such and never presented as independent editorial.

Optional

Premium & tools

Where we offer optional premium features, the revenue funds the newsroom on the same independence terms as everything else.

Limited

Business partnerships

Data, syndication or technology arrangements that support the site without touching what our writers conclude.

Revenue does not equal influence. No advertiser, affiliate or sponsor can pay to be ranked higher, reviewed more kindly, or shielded from criticism. The commercial side of the business and the newsroom operate to separate rules.

What affiliate relationships mean

An affiliate link is a tracked link to a third-party product or service. If you follow one and complete a qualifying action — typically creating an account or subscribing — the provider pays us a referral fee. Crucially, only some actions generate a commission, and the price you pay is never higher for using our link.

Not every external link earns us anything. Many links simply point to a source, an official document, a regulator or further reading, and those are not affiliate links at all. Where a commercial relationship is material to a specific article, we disclose it within that article as well as here.

What usually earns a commission: opening an account, subscribing to a paid plan, or completing a verified sign-up through our link.
What earns us nothing: reading the article, clicking a citation, visiting a regulator or whitepaper, or navigating to a provider directly.

How we evaluate products

When we assess a product, we judge it against a consistent set of criteria for its category, written down before any commercial relationship is considered. The criteria below are what we look at; the weighting shifts depending on what the product is for and who it serves.

Exchanges & brokers — security & custody, fees & spreads, liquidity & market depth, asset and feature range, regulatory standing & compliance, usability, and the quality of customer support.

Wallets — security model, whether the code is open source and audited, backup & recovery options, the range of assets supported, and day-to-day usability.

Software & services — functionality against its promise, reliability and uptime, pricing transparency, support responsiveness, and overall reputation in the market.

We then translate those findings onto a simple, repeatable scale so that scores mean the same thing from one review to the next:

Score	Rating	What it means
5	Excellent	Best-in-class on the criteria that matter for this category, with no significant drawbacks.
4	Strong	A very good option with minor trade-offs that most readers can live with.
3	Average	Competent but unremarkable; better choices usually exist for specific needs.
2	Weak	Notable shortcomings on security, cost or reliability that we would flag clearly.
1	Avoid	Serious problems that, in our view, outweigh any benefit.

Security and compliance carry the most weight in every category, because a product that fails on those points cannot be redeemed by good pricing or features. A commission has no place in this process: a product that pays us scores exactly as it would if it paid us nothing.

Editorial independence

Our editorial team is not compensated by the companies it covers. Rankings and reviews are not for sale, advertisers cannot review or approve coverage before it runs, and the commercial team has no authority over editorial conclusions. If a product we earn nothing from is the better choice, we say so; if a product that pays us is weak, we say that too. Every published piece moves through the same workflow before it reaches you.

Research

Claims and data are gathered from primary, verifiable sources.

Writer

A human writer drafts the piece and reaches a conclusion on merit.

Fact check

Figures, quotes and claims are checked against the record.

Editor

An editor reviews for accuracy, fairness and independence.

Publication

Only then is it published — and corrected openly if needed.

Affiliate links vs sponsored content

Affiliate links, sponsored content and independent editorial are three different things, and we keep them clearly distinct. The table below sets out how each one works.

	Affiliate link	Sponsored content	Editorial
Payment	Referral fee only if you act	Paid for in advance by a third party	No payment involved
Editorial control	Ours — sits inside independent writing	Agreed scope, clearly marked	Entirely ours
Disclosure	Disclosed on the page and here	Always labelled “sponsored”	No commercial tie to disclose
Review process	Full editorial workflow	Checked for accuracy & legality	Full editorial workflow
Placement	Within relevant coverage	Separated from the newsroom	Anywhere on merit

More detail on labelled commercial content is set out in our Advertising & Sponsorship policy.

AI transparency policy

We use software, including AI tools, the way any modern newsroom uses a research assistant: to work faster, never to replace editorial judgement. Every published page is the responsibility of a human editor, and AI is never the final word on accuracy.

AI may help with

Research and background gathering
Aggregating and organising public data
Drafting and structuring early text
Summarising long or technical sources

AI is never used to

Publish anything without human review
Perform final fact verification on its own
Make independent editorial judgements
Invent data, quotes, prices or sources

Our full position is set out in the AI Content Policy, and all market figures shown on the site come from real data feeds, not generated text.

How to identify affiliate links

We would rather disclose affiliate relationships plainly than expect you to guess. Where a page contains affiliate links, you will find a clear note to that effect, and this disclosure sets out the policy in full. Using an affiliate link is always optional — you can navigate to any provider directly and nothing about the content or the price changes.

Affiliate linktbnexpress.com/go/exchange?ref=tbnAffiliate

Standard linkcoinmarketcap.com/… (source)

When a relationship is material to a particular article, you will also see an in-context disclosure near the relevant link, so the arrangement is visible exactly where it applies.

Ownership & funding transparency

TBN Express is an independent digital publication, owned and operated by its publishing team rather than by any exchange, token project or trading firm. We are funded by the revenue streams described above — primarily affiliate links and advertising — and we take no investment that would give an outside party editorial control. Where a potential conflict of interest arises, our policy is to disclose it and, where necessary, recuse the people affected; the detail of how we manage conflicts is set out in our Ethics Policy. Our published work carries the byline of the TBN Express Editorial Team.

Why affiliate revenue matters

Affiliate revenue is what lets us keep the site free, ad-light and out from behind a paywall. It funds the journalism, the fact-checking and the live market data that readers rely on, and it does so without asking you to pay a subscription. We see it as a fair trade: when a product we already rate happens to fit your needs, using our link supports the work at no cost to you. There is never any obligation, and the independence described on this page is exactly what makes that support worth having.

Corrections & accountability

We get things wrong sometimes, and when we do we fix them openly rather than quietly. If you spot an error — a wrong figure, an outdated claim, or a disclosure we have missed — tell us through our Contact page and it will reach the editorial team. We review every substantiated report, correct the page where the report is upheld, and note material changes. How we handle and log fixes is described in our Corrections Policy, and the standards behind the whole process are in our Editorial Policy.

Privacy & data practices

Some affiliate partners set a cookie when you follow a link, so the provider can attribute a sign-up to us. That tracking is about the referral, not about building a profile of you, and you can decline non-essential cookies. What we collect, why we collect it, and the choices you have are all set out plainly in our Privacy Policy, and your use of the site is governed by our Terms of Use. Nothing on this site, including any page containing affiliate links, is personalised financial advice — see our Disclaimer for the full statement.

Frequently asked questions

Do affiliate links affect your rankings or reviews?

No. We decide what to feature and what to say on editorial merit alone. A commission never makes us rank or recommend a product more highly, and a product that pays us is scored exactly as it would be if it paid us nothing.

Can companies pay for a good review?

No. Rankings and reviews are not for sale. Advertisers and affiliates cannot buy coverage, approve it before it runs, or have criticism removed. Paid placements only ever appear as clearly labelled sponsored content, separate from the newsroom.

How do you test or evaluate products?

We judge each product against a consistent set of category criteria — security, fees, reliability, features, compliance and support — and translate the findings onto a fixed 1–5 scale. Security and compliance carry the most weight. The methodology is the same whether or not a product pays us.

How can I tell an affiliate link from a normal link?

Where a page contains affiliate links, we add a plain-language note, and material relationships are disclosed in context next to the link. Many links — to sources, documents and further reading — are not affiliate links at all. Using our links is always optional.

Do you use AI to write content?

AI may assist with research, data aggregation and early drafting, but it never publishes on its own, never performs final fact-checking unsupervised, and never makes editorial judgements. Every page is reviewed and owned by a human editor.

How often is this page updated?

We review it whenever our practices or partnerships change, and at least periodically as part of our standards review. The current version number and last-updated date are shown at the top of the page, and material changes are recorded in the change log below.

How do I report an error?

Use our Contact page and your message reaches the editorial team. We review every substantiated report, correct upheld issues, and log material changes under our Corrections Policy.

Who owns TBN Express?

TBN Express is an independent publication owned and run by its publishing team, not by any exchange, token project or trading firm. We accept no investment that would hand editorial control to an outside party. Conflicts, where they arise, are managed under our Ethics Policy.