How this site is funded — the short version

Hodler's Handbook accepts referral commission from one company: Binance. When you sign up through a link on this site, Binance pays me a percentage of your trading fees per their public partner program, and you receive the fee discount Binance assigns to the program. No other affiliate relationships exist on this site. Nothing else is sponsored. No advertiser has ever requested or received editorial input.

The full mechanics

The link path

Every Binance referral on this site routes through a static redirect at /en/go/binance.html. That page declares the relationship in plain HTML, references the disclosure, then forwards you to accounts.binance.com/register?ref=BN16188. The forwarding is a standard meta-refresh; no JavaScript is required.

If you sign up directly at binance.com without using my code, that is also fine. The handbook's editorial position on Binance is the same in either case. The code is a way for the handbook to be paid for your future trades, and a way for you to capture the program's fee discount.

What I get paid

Binance's standard partner program pays a percentage of the trading fees of every user signed up under a referral code. The percentage is fixed by Binance and not negotiated separately. I do not see your account identity, balance, deposit history, withdrawal history, KYC status, or trade detail. Binance reports me an aggregate number once per cycle. Their dashboards do not expose anything else.

What you get

Sign-ups under BN16188 receive the trading-fee discount Binance attaches to the program. Binance publishes the exact percentage; I do not control it and it is identical for everyone using the code. The discount applies to your trades, not to mine.

What this disclosure does not cover

  • Hardware wallet recommendations — Ledger, Trezor, Coldcard, Keystone, OneKey are mentioned by name. No commercial relationship with any of them.
  • Software wallets — Rabby, MetaMask, Frame, Sparrow. No relationship.
  • Exchanges other than Binance — Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Robinhood. No relationship.
  • Block explorers, security tools, password managers — Etherscan, Revoke.cash, 1Password, Bitwarden. No relationship.

When I name any of the above, it is because I use them or have evaluated them. The handbook does not run network-style affiliate aggregations.

What I will not do, regardless of the referral

  1. Push opaque or high-risk products. Yield products, leveraged tokens, copy trading, "early access" promos — all excluded from recommendation, even when Binance offers them.
  2. Soften a custody warning to protect referral flow. If Binance has a security incident, a frozen-funds episode, or a UI change that worsens user safety, it goes in the handbook and the recommendation gets revisited publicly.
  3. Pretend the referral does not exist. Every page on this site that references Binance carries the rel="sponsored" tag, names the code BN16188, and links back to this disclosure.
  4. Accept "guest posts," "expert quotes," or paid placement. No editorial inventory is for sale.

Why Binance and not someone else

This is a one-exchange site by deliberate choice. The reasons:

  • Liquidity. Binance carries the deepest order book for almost every pair an outside-US holder will trade. Slippage on a $50K market order is closer to free than on any competitor.
  • Proof of Reserves. Binance publishes Merkle-tree PoR on a fixed cadence and exposes verification tools for users to check their own balance inclusion.
  • SAFU. The platform maintains a $1B+ self-insurance fund. This has been invoked at least twice in major incidents.
  • The handbook author uses it. Recommending an exchange I do not personally hold an active account at would violate the testing rule.

For US-resident readers, jurisdictional notes apply: Binance.US is the US-licensed entity with a narrower product set; Binance International is not available to US persons. State-by-state availability of Binance.US varies — check the official availability page before signing up. Where Binance.US is not available, Coinbase or Kraken cover the basic spot use cases without a referral relationship to this site.

How to verify any of the above

Email privacy@wechibi.com. I will share the program's published terms in writing, and confirm that no other commercial relationship exists. Corrections to this disclosure are logged on the corrections page.