Frequently asked questions

A custodial exchange asks you to create an account, pass identity checks and deposit your coins into its own wallets; you then trade balances on its order book and withdraw later. An instant swap service like SwapRocket never holds your funds: you send coins from your own wallet, a liquidity provider converts them, and the result is sent straight to the wallet address you gave. There is no balance to withdraw and no account to keep funded.

For crypto-to-crypto swaps on SwapRocket, no. You choose the pair, paste a receiving address and send your coins. Identity checks only apply to fiat rails — buying or selling with a bank card or bank transfer — because the banks and payment processors behind them require it by law. Providers may still ask for verification in the rare case a transfer is flagged by their compliance screening.

A floating rate settles at whatever the market gives when your coins arrive, so the final amount can be a little higher or lower than the quote. A fixed rate locks the number you saw for a short window, and providers price that certainty into a slightly worse rate. Floating usually delivers more on a calm market; fixed is worth it when the pair is volatile or you are sending a large amount.

Each provider has its own liquidity, spread and network-fee policy, and each quotes from a different order book. On thin pairs the gap between the best and worst quote can be several percent. SwapRocket asks its connected providers at the same moment and shows the results side by side, so you pick rather than guess.

The amount quoted is what the receiving wallet is expected to get — the provider's spread and the network fee are already inside it. SwapRocket adds no separate account, deposit, withdrawal or markup fee; it may earn a commission from the provider on a completed swap. Because spreads differ by provider, pair and size, compare the quoted amount rather than a headline percentage.

They fail in different ways. A centralised venue concentrates custody risk — if it is hacked, frozen or insolvent, your coins are caught up in it. A decentralised exchange leaves custody with you but exposes you to smart-contract bugs, bad routing and approval scams. A non-custodial swap avoids the custody risk entirely, since your coins only pass through the provider on their way to your own wallet.

Any wallet where you control the keys and can both send and receive the coins in question. A mobile or browser wallet is fine for everyday amounts; a hardware wallet is worth it once the balance would hurt to lose. What you must not do is send to an address you cannot withdraw from, such as a staking contract or a closed platform account.

A hot wallet stays connected to the internet, which makes it convenient and permanently exposed to whatever runs on your device. A hardware wallet keeps the keys on a separate signing device, so malware on your computer cannot move funds without physical confirmation. A common split is a small hot wallet for spending and swapping and a hardware wallet for long-term holdings.

The recovery phrase is the wallet. Anyone who reads it can rebuild your wallet and empty it, and nobody — not the wallet maker, not SwapRocket — can restore it if you lose it. Write it down offline, keep it away from photos and cloud notes, and treat every request for it, however official-sounding, as a theft attempt.

Some networks — XRP, Toncoin, Cosmos chains and others — use one shared address per platform and route your deposit by an extra number or short text called a memo, tag or comment. If the receiving platform gives you one, it must be entered with the address, or the funds land in the platform's pooled wallet with no way to tell they were yours. Your own self-custody wallet usually does not need one.

Most tokens exist on several chains — USDT on Ethereum, Tron, Solana and more — and the same symbol on the wrong chain will not arrive. Pick the network in the wallet and in the quote before you send, check the address format matches that chain, and send a small test amount first when you are moving to a new address.

No. SwapRocket compares quotes and passes your order to the provider you choose; the coins go from your wallet to that provider and on to the receiving address you entered. There is no SwapRocket balance, so there is nothing for us to freeze, lend or lose.

In most countries, yes. Tax authorities generally treat a crypto-to-crypto swap as disposing of the coin you sent, so any gain or loss since you acquired it is realised at that moment — even though no fiat was involved. Rules differ by country, so check your own before assuming otherwise. This is general information, not tax advice.

For each swap: the date and time, what you sent and received, the amounts, the value in your local currency at that moment, the fees and the transaction IDs on both sides. Export or save this as you go — reconstructing it a year later from a block explorer is painful, and your wallet will not do it for you.

No. Tax liability follows the transaction, not the paperwork behind the platform. Not being asked for ID does not remove a reporting obligation, and on-chain activity is permanently public. Treat privacy and tax compliance as separate questions.

HMRC treats disposals — including crypto-to-crypto swaps — as capital gains, with pooled cost bases and specific same-day and 30-day matching rules. Our UK crypto tax page walks through the rates, the pooling mechanics and the reporting changes arriving in 2026.

Germany taxes private disposals under §23 EStG, with a one-year holding period and an annual exemption threshold that can leave long-held coins untaxed. Our German crypto tax page explains the holding period, the threshold and the FIFO accounting that comes with it.

No. SwapRocket is non-custodial and holds no account history to export, so the record is whatever you and your wallet keep. Most people feed their wallet addresses into a crypto tax tool, which reads the chain and builds the report. Nothing here is tax advice — for your own situation, talk to a qualified adviser.