The Rock About Us
TheRockTrading is the first site to compare every way of trading crypto in one place, with reviews of CFD brokers, crypto exchanges and crypto prop firms. Our team opens real accounts, places live trades and verifies every figure against primary sources, so the comparisons you read reflect what you will actually experience.
What We Do
Here at The Rock Trading we review and rank the most popular online trading options for cryptocurrency traders. Most comparison sites cover one slice of the market, exchanges or brokers, and leave you to work out the rest. We compare all three ways to trade crypto side by side, because the right choice depends on whether you want to own coins, trade price movements with leverage, or trade a funded account without risking your savings.
Online CFD Brokers
With brokers, you are not buying or selling actual crypto. You are trading contracts that mirror price movements. This means no ownership of the asset, but you can go long or short and use leverage. It requires your own capital upfront, and you withdraw cash rather than crypto.
Crypto Exchanges
On exchanges, you are actually buying and selling crypto. Spot trading means full asset ownership with no leverage. You can transfer, hold or sell whenever you want. Some exchanges also offer futures, though most beginners start with spot trading because it is more straightforward.
Crypto Prop Firms
With prop firms, you trade a simulated funded account rather than your own capital. You pay a one-off fee for an evaluation or instant funding, follow the firm's trading rules, and keep a share of the profit, usually 80% or more. Your fee is at risk, but your savings never are.
| Feature / Method | Online CFD Brokers | Crypto Exchanges | Crypto Prop Firms |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you trade | Contracts tracking price movements | Real crypto assets (spot and futures) | Simulated CFDs on firm capital |
| Ownership | None, you don't own crypto | Full ownership of crypto | None, positions are simulated |
| Leverage | High (varies by region) | Typically none for spot, optional for futures | Set by firm rules, often 1:1 to 5:1 on crypto |
| Capital required | Your own capital up-front | Your own funds to buy crypto | A one-off challenge fee, the firm supplies the capital |
| Best suited for | Traders focused on price movements | Users looking to own and hold crypto | Traders who want funded size without risking savings |
Our Purpose
We started The Rock Trading because most crypto reviews are either too vague, too biased, or clearly written without ever using the company's platform. Our objective is simple. We give crypto traders one place to compare every trading method on identical standards, so a CFD broker, an exchange and a prop firm can be weighed against each other directly rather than in isolation.
Three commitments sit behind every page. Every provider is assessed first-hand through a real account, never from marketing material. Every figure, from spreads to licence numbers, is verified against a primary source before it is published. Every provider is scored on the same six areas with the same weighting, whatever its business model.
How We Review
The research and writing sit with named authors who have backgrounds in finance and online trading, each with direct experience of the platforms being compared. Pricing claims are never taken at face value, so the spreads, commissions and fees a provider advertises are checked against its live pricing before they appear in a review. The same discipline applies to every material fact, with licence numbers confirmed on regulator registers such as ASIC and the FCA, trading rules and corporate entities drawn from each provider's own legal documents, and coin counts taken from live instrument lists rather than marketing pages.
Publishing is not the end of the process either. Reviews are re-checked when providers change their pricing, rules or entities, and scores move when the facts do, which is why a review you read today can carry a different score to the one it launched with. Independence underpins all of it, since no provider can pay to lift a score or soften a conclusion, and every provider is measured against the same six areas regardless of its business model.
A named author with a public profile stands behind every review, and each page links to our methodology so you can see exactly how its score was produced.
How We Score Crypto Companies
Every provider is scored on the same six areas, whether it is a CFD broker, an exchange or a prop firm. The six are Crypto Trading Fees, Cryptocurrency Markets, Trading Platforms and Tools, Safety and Availability, Funding and Withdrawals, and Risk and Trading Rules. Each area receives a score out of 10, and the six scores are averaged evenly to produce an overall result out of 100, so no single area carries more weight than another. Our methodology explains what we check in each area and how the score bands work.
Editorial Independence
TheRockTrading.com is free to use, and we may earn a commission when you open an account through some links on the site. Commercial partnerships never set our scores. The six-area scoring runs on published criteria before any commercial consideration, several highly ranked providers pay us nothing, and no provider can pay to improve a score or remove a review. Full details are on our Disclaimer and Disclosure page.
Meet the Team
At TheRockTrading.com, our content is written and reviewed by finance experts with academic and professional backgrounds in finance, economics and online trading. Every review carries a named author, and every author has a public profile you can check.
Justin Grossbard
CEO & Co-FounderJustin co-founded TheRockTrading.com and oversees the strategic direction of our site's reviews. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) and a Master's in Marketing from Monash University, and has 20+ years of experience in digital strategy and financial content development.
Noam Korbl
Co-Founder & Head of ResearchNoam is a co-founder of TheRockTrading.com and leads the platform research side of things. He holds the RG146 certification, with a Monash University background in Banking and Finance. Since 2014, he has worked across trading-focused digital ventures.
David Levy
Head of ContentDavid has been reviewing and writing about brokers since 2020. At TheRockTrading.com, he is responsible for researching and writing detailed comparisons of crypto exchanges, CFD brokers and prop firms.
Important Notice, Not the Original The Rock Trading
This website is independent and has no connection with the former Italian cryptocurrency exchange, The Rock Trading S.R.L. That company ceased operations in 2023 after entering judicial liquidation in Milan. We are not affiliated with the liquidator or any part of the original business. Our role is purely as an information and comparison site for crypto trading providers, including CFD brokers, exchanges and prop firms. For full details, please see our Disclaimer and Disclosure page.
Contact Us
We're based in Melbourne, Australia. If you've used a crypto trading company we've reviewed, contact us and send us your feedback. If you spot a figure that has gone out of date, tell us and we will verify it against the source and correct the page.
Explore Our Reviews and Rankings
See how we rank crypto platforms across CFD brokers, exchanges and prop firms, all scored with the same first-hand approach.