Cost comparison Legal notice

In order to ensure a high level of transparency and compliance with all legal regulations, the following notes provide information on the market coverage, ranking factors and cooperation links of Unicorn Finance's crypto exchange comparison, among other things. Relevant legal principles designed to ensure the integrity and fairness of business activities provide guidance. The main legal bases can be found above all in Section 5 (1) UWG (Act against Unfair Competition) with regard to misleading business actions, Section 5a (2) UWG, which regulates breaches of transparency obligations, and Section 5a (6) UWG, which deals with hidden advertising.

Unicorn Finance is particularly concerned to ensure that all information, offers and business actions on this platform comply with these legal bases and help users transparently and in the best possible way to find the best individual platform. Investing in cryptocurrencies or securities is always associated with risks and can lead to the total loss of the capital invested.

Cooperations and links

Unicorn Finance acts as an independent comparison portal and uses only its own database and programmed rate calculators without reference to other data sources or rate calculators from other comparison platforms. Unicorn Finance has not entered into any other business relationships with other comparison portals. The aim of Unicorn Finance with this measure is to prevent consumers from being deceived within the meaning of Section 5 (1) UWG. 

Such deception could arise if, due to identical search results from cooperating comparison portals, it is wrongly assumed that the same offer is rated equally well by several independent portals. This could potentially deter consumers from conducting a further search on truly independent portals. 

Unicorn Finance receives a fixed commission for a referred user who verifies and trades through participation in partner programs of crypto exchanges and crypto brokers, or receives a percentage of their trading fees. There are no additional costs for the user, and all advertising links to platforms are transparently marked with an asterisk (*).

Market coverage

The Unicorn Finance cost comparison contains 6 relevant providers at the start, which ensures a low market coverage. More providers will be integrated in the near future. To compare costs, 18 markets are provided, consisting of 9 cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, XRP, LINK, MATIC, ARB, OP, SOL, AVAX) as the base currency and the euro and US dollar as the quote currency. Further markets will follow. 

The selection is made by Unicorn Finance and is weighed up according to the perceived relevance for consumers using the following sources (as at: 13.01.2024): [CoinMarketCap](https://coinmarketcap.com/de/), [L2Beat](https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary), [DeFiLlama](https://defillama.com/). The selection expressly does not constitute investment advice, nor an offer or solicitation to buy or sell cryptocurrencies or securities. In addition to the low market coverage, it should be noted that not all potentially relevant features of the providers are listed for the comparison, which may be necessary for a complete individual comparison. 

Due to the low market coverage and potential lack of relevant features for a complete comparison, Unicorn Finance recommends using other sources of information when comparing the platforms in order to achieve a higher market coverage and depth of information.

Selection of platforms

The selection of the providers included is based on commission prospects, perceived consumer interest in a platform, trading volume, location, regulatory environment and the number of functions, assets and markets. Priority is given primarily to platforms from the EU, in particular from the DACH region. 

Unicorn Finance explicitly points out above the comparison table that the market coverage is incomplete and the platform selection is influenced by commission-paying providers, so as not to suggest to users that they are receiving a complete market overview and therefore a comprehensive comparison of the provider market. All platforms included in the comparison are also listed transparently under the "Select platforms" filter and can be filtered.

The categories are also visible and filterable under "Function". Platforms are also not displayed in the comparison table if they do not have the following properties: selected trading market, deposit and withdrawal options and platform type. 

For the best possible transparency, all default settings for the comparison are selected so that all providers are displayed in the comparison table from the start and none are excluded.

The aim of Unicorn Finance is to use this measure to prevent consumers from being misled within the meaning of Section 5a (2) of the German Act Against Unfair Competition (UWG) and thus the risk of a premature and thus possibly suboptimal decision and to comply with transparency obligations.

Actuality, origin, accuracy of the data

All information for the comparison is requested first-hand from the providers and is therefore not transmitted and potentially filtered by a third party. The update interval differs depending on the information. 

Daily update of fees: Fee structures for trading and payments are updated daily. 

Minutely updated ticker prices and spread costs: To compare the total costs and the spread costs contained therein, this is queried approximately every minute and an average of the current month is calculated on this basis. The average of the previous month is included as one day in the new month. The exception to this is Bitpanda, where the spread is entered manually on a random basis. If the average spread is deactivated, it is therefore still an average. 

The unit price can be a current price stamp with a query age of up to a maximum of one minute from Kraken, Bitvavo, Coingecko. 

Unicorn Finance does not guarantee the accuracy of the information requested from the platforms for the comparison. Thus, all content is for general information purposes only, and no representation or warranty, express or implied, is made as to the fairness, accuracy, timeliness, completeness or correctness of the content or the opinions contained therein. No reliance should be placed on the fairness, accuracy, timeliness, completeness or correctness of such content or the opinions contained therein. No liability for financial loss resulting from incomplete, incorrect, erroneous, inaccurate or out-of-date content, information or opinions is accepted in any individual case.

Ranking & test result

The providers presented in the comparison are ranked in ascending order according to the underlying total cost criterion in accordance with the preset filter settings (platform selection, selected trading market, deposit and withdrawal option and platform type). Providers that provide incomplete publicly available cost information are listed last. 

Incomplete public cost information exists if this information is not provided on the provider's website or via a public API. The current ranking order can be viewed transparently under "Select sorting" and changed using the selection function.

Position 0

Unicorn Finance does not present individual offers as "Position 0", which are highlighted and additionally emphasized before the initial ranking. Unicorn Finance thus protects consumers preventively against concealed advertising and misleading advertising within the meaning of Section 5a (6) UWG, which can occur if the consumer mistakenly believes that the offers are particularly recommendable in terms of quality due to a lack of sufficient labeling.

Cashback and sign-up bonuses

Transparent comparability is a core concern of Unicorn Finance, which is why cashback promotions, sign-up bonuses or other discounts for products purchased via a bonus link or other promotional framework are not included in the cost comparison. This prevents a supposedly better ranking, which could deceive the consumer about a worse basic cost structure within the meaning of Section 5a (6) UWG.

Pre-selection and determination of the test winner

The pre-selection of all parameters of the comparator corresponds to the underlying test parameters for evaluating the test winner at the beginning of each month based on any changes to the conditions of the platforms. The test parameters are determined by Unicorn Finance and correspond to the average range of trading and payment volumes as well as the number of transactions that Unicorn Finance realistically estimates from partner programs. 

The selected trading market ETH/EUR is the most suitable among the most relevant markets from Unicorn Finance's point of view. One disadvantage of Bitcoin markets is that some platforms only offer special conditions for this market, which can distort a representative cost structure across all markets. For this reason, Unicorn Finance has decided against BTC/EUR as a pre-selection. 

The spread is calculated as a pre-selection as the average spread of the current month in order to prevent an outlier measurement, which does not represent a realistic picture. The average spread can be deactivated at any time and the current spread can be used.

Depending on the calculation setting of the transaction behavior, another provider may be cheaper and therefore the self-generated result may not be congruent with the test result of Unicorn Finance. The determined test winner is therefore not always the best choice for the individual requirements of a platform and is only the result of the average comparison by Unicorn Finance. 

Unicorn Finance aims to offer comparisons that are as individual as possible so that every user can find the best platform for them personally. It is therefore strongly recommended that you use the comparison options to reproduce your individual transaction behavior as accurately as possible in order to determine the most suitable provider for you. This procedure serves to minimize the risk of a possibly suboptimal decision.

Data protection

All selected comparison options are sent to the website's backend server to calculate the comparison table. Only the results table is calculated, and no data on the comparison options entered is stored or collected in any other way. No cookies are set or information stored in these or in the browser storage in this context either.