Proof of Reserves Explained: How to Check an Exchange Attestation Yourself

Between August 17 and August 31, 2026, deadlines expire at several trading venues that force German investors to sell or withdraw their balances. Anyone doing so inevitably faces a question that never comes up in everyday use: is the balance shown in the account overview actually held at the exchange? The industry's answer to that question is called proof of reserves. Until now there has been no German-language guide explaining how an investor recalculates such a reserve attestation and where its evidential value ends.

This article closes that gap using a concrete example and our own measurements. cryptoticker.io collected this analysis itself on August 18, 2026.

Proof of Reserves: what an exchange reserve attestation actually measures

Proof of reserves is an audit procedure carried out at regular intervals by an independent auditor. It is designed to show that a custodian genuinely holds the assets it claims to hold on behalf of its customers. To do so, the auditor takes an anonymised snapshot of all account balances, condenses it into a particular data structure and compares the result with the holdings on the exchange's blockchain addresses.

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