Decentralised News · Agentic Finance · Decision research
By Heath Muchena · Source review 2026-11-14 · Instrument version 1.0.0
What Matters
A working API key establishes a technical route, not the complete contractual scope. Match the legal entity, regional account, interface, beneficiary and exact delegated actions. Keep unresolved clauses visible before connecting an agent.
A trading agent can produce a valid request before its operator has answered a more basic question: does the relevant agreement cover this particular workflow? The word “API” describes an interface. The decision record still needs to explain whose account is being used, what the software may do, which documents govern it and what happens when access ends.
This review follows current public documents for US-oriented individual spot-trading decisions at Coinbase, OKX and Kraken. It does not compare fees, execution quality or returns. DN’s existing Python-bot API guide examines platform capabilities; this article adds a dated clause register and a local instrument for separating a documented restriction from an unanswered question.
The original contribution is the workflow record below: it preserves the relationship between general terms, interface-specific clauses and evidence about the proposed activity. Its synthetic examples are reasoning demonstrations. No exchange account, API key, trading strategy or individual eligibility was tested.
DN Evidence Block
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-14 · Evidence type: Current first-party agreements, trading rules and support documentation; original clause-conflict and workflow-scope instrument.
Scope: US-oriented individual spot-trading access review. Coinbase individual/Advanced documents, OKX US terms and API supplement, and the relevant Kraken global terms are kept distinct. No blanket regional or product availability finding.
- Eight primary pages checked on 13 November 2026; batch editorial date 14 November.
- Observed agreement dates: Coinbase individual 21 October 2026; OKX US 25 October 2026; OKX API 28 July 2026; Kraken global 6 November 2026.
- The instrument separately reports entered restrictions, unresolved document conflicts and missing evidence.
- No contractual conclusion is inferred from a public product menu, successful login, API documentation or affiliate listing.
Not established by this work: Account-specific agreements, state eligibility, acceptance history, written waivers, credential permissions, API calls, model-provider suitability, strategy behavior, termination outcomes or enforceability of contractual terms.
Original DN instrument · version 1.0.0
DN Exchange Access Clause Record
Record one proposed exchange workflow and keep restrictions, document conflicts and missing evidence separate. No connection, permission grant or legal determination.
Enter your assumptions or load a labelled example. Required blank numbers stay missing; unknown evidence remains unknown. Use nonpersonal labels only. This instrument makes no network requests and uses no persistent browser storage.
Use your own inputs
No current result. Complete inputs or load an illustrative example.
All statuses are entered by the reader. Counts identify recorded issues, not a compliance score. The tool does not retrieve agreements, interpret enforceability, authenticate an approval, verify jurisdiction or account eligibility, inspect credentials, test a strategy or contact an exchange. A completed record cannot grant permission.
1. Bind the document to the account, entity and region
Start with the agreement that actually governs the account. The Coinbase US page separates individual and business agreements; the individual agreement dated 21 October 2026 names Coinbase, Inc. The OKX US terms, dated 25 October 2026, name OKX INC. and apply to residents of approved US operating locations. A US-looking page address is therefore insufficient evidence of state or product eligibility.
This matters because the OKX general terms routing section directs relevant users to local terms. The Kraken global agreement, dated 6 November 2026, names Payward Interactive, Inc. for US users subject to specified service exceptions. Record the account type and product beside the entity; do not reuse a custody, derivatives or business-account conclusion for individual spot trading.
The first row of your register should contain a non-sensitive account reference, residence, service, contracting entity, URL, displayed revision date and date checked. If the actual acceptance record points elsewhere, that is a mismatch to resolve. Saving more documents cannot repair a missing connection between a document and the account.
2. Record which clause controls an apparent conflict
The OKX API agreement says its provisions control a conflict only for API services. That is a limited precedence rule, not a replacement for every regional, product or account condition.
A second observation shows why the relationship deserves its own field. Kraken’s bot support page, updated 29 October 2026, welcomes trading bots and points to REST and WebSocket routes. Its global terms also contain broad automation restrictions in section 9, while section 4 expressly discusses API trading. Section 8 defines the content covered by the restrictions broadly enough to include services and platforms.
These documents should be read together. We have not obtained a provider interpretation for a particular third-party application. Record an apparent scope tension, cite both passages and ask a precise question: does this named application, using these endpoints for this account, fit the permitted route? Neither a universal bot ban nor unrestricted bot permission follows from selecting the most convenient sentence.
3. Keep the permitted interface separate from browser scraping
A connector can switch methods without making the change obvious to its user. Write down whether it calls an official authenticated API, uses public market-data endpoints, operates a browser session or extracts page content. “Connect to the exchange” is too broad for a useful record.
Kraken’s section 9 restrictions address scraping, extraction and third-party applications as well as automation. The official bot guidance describes API implementations. Our reading is therefore deliberately narrow: API support is evidence about that interface; it does not settle an alternative scraping workflow.
Require a route diagram or a short provider explanation identifying the exchange interface, credential holder and downstream service. If a tool falls back from an API to a browser after an error, treat that as a new workflow for review. The local instrument rejects an entry that tries to use an API-specific permission as the covering evidence for browser scraping. It does not decide whether a different, independently authorized browser workflow exists.
4. Distinguish your own account from a service for other people
Under Coinbase’s US individual registration provision, use on behalf of third parties requires prior written approval. Its Advanced Trading section separately discusses employees or agents and assigns responsibility for their use. Those are different questions: delegating a task on your own account is not the same business arrangement as operating accounts for clients. The contractual word “agent” does not by itself classify every autonomous AI product.
The OKX API agreement, sections 9.2–9.3 distinguishes own-account use from providing services or operating accounts for others, for which written approval is required. A profitable personal trade and a commercial service are not interchangeable categories in that wording.
Record both operator and beneficiary. Include who owns the account, who supplies the strategy, who receives the service and whether another party is paid. A software vendor’s ability to generate a key is not evidence of an exchange’s approval of its customer-service model. A separate business or broker arrangement needs its own document trail rather than a copied personal-account conclusion.
5. List actions that remain outside the delegation
Divide the workflow into verbs: read balances, submit an order, cancel an order, change a security setting, add another delegate, accept terms or withdraw assets. A general label such as “trading access” can hide several distinct decisions.
The OKX API agreement, section 3.5 excludes specified actions from AI delegation, including security-setting changes, accepting new terms and further delegation without prior consent. Section 8.3 also requires compliance with the selected AI provider’s terms. Exchange-side permission alone does not answer that second contract.
Use an action register with a clause reference for each step. Put excluded or unreviewed actions outside the automated sequence and identify who handles them through an authorized route. If the exchange treats authenticated instructions as attributable to the account holder, that allocation belongs beside the action description; it is not proof that a model understood the task or that a disputed loss will be reimbursed. Preserve separate references for exchange, connector and model agreements.
6. Check order behavior as well as request counts
A permitted interface still has operating rules. Kraken’s trading-rate documentation explains that spot order limits depend on order events, lifetimes and account level, with separate currency-pair limits. A single universal “requests per minute” figure does not describe that system.
The Coinbase trading rules apply to orders in the central markets accessed through Advanced Trade and Exchange. They distinguish order types and time-in-force instructions. That makes the intended order sequence part of the review: a system that submits, replaces and cancels orders needs a more specific description than “automated trading.”
Ask the implementer for an expected event sequence, retry policy and behavior after rate-limit or account errors. Review this against the exact product documentation and conduct rules. Do not turn a rate limit into a target or assume that splitting work among keys or accounts resolves the underlying obligation. The DN instrument records whether a documented conflict exists; it does not simulate a matching engine, calculate an allowed trading rate or certify a strategy.
7. Separate access termination from outstanding obligations
Under the OKX API agreement, section 14, terminating API access can leave earlier open orders live unless canceled. The Coinbase Advanced Trading suspension provision describes cancellation of open orders and blocking withdrawals and new orders on account suspension or termination. Those are different documented events; neither can be generalized into a universal “disconnect cancels everything” rule.
Prepare three independent exit records: credential authority, exchange-side order state and obligations already created. Include who can inspect the account through an authorized fallback, how cancellation results will be confirmed and where unresolved execution outcomes are recorded. A button labeled disconnect should not be your entire explanation of the resulting exposure.
Finally, assign a review trigger. Revisit the record when a regional agreement, account type, model provider, interface or delegated action changes. Preserve the previous conclusion with its date rather than silently replacing it. The useful output is a traceable explanation of the narrow workflow, including what remains unknown, that a decision maker can review before the next connection.
Methodology, limitations and corrections
We reviewed eight first-party pages on 13 November 2026 and retained their precise product and regional scope. The editorial date is 14 November. This is a documentary comparison, not a hands-on API trial or a qualified legal opinion. Provider wording is summarized briefly; the linked originals remain necessary for the full agreement.
The instrument applies a transparent priority order: a recorded exclusion or scope mismatch comes first, an unresolved conflict between clauses comes next, and missing evidence remains a separate incomplete state. Only an entry with none of those conditions reaches “narrow workflow record assembled.” That label describes the entered record and deliberately confers no permission. Counts are simple issue counts, with no weights, risk percentages or provider rankings.
Synthetic examples test a conflicting-document case, a complete narrow record and a third-party service missing approval. Explicit checks also cover jurisdiction mismatch, unknown evidence, incompatible interfaces, excluded functions and order-rule conflicts. These tests validate local branching, not the truth of a reader’s evidence. Corrections should identify the changed clause, actual date and affected workflow so earlier conclusions can be revisited.
For corrections, identify the claim, source and date when contacting Decentralised News. A new record-creation timestamp does not refresh its underlying evidence.
Change log: version 1.0.0, 2026-11-14. Initial documentation review, original instrument and labelled examples.
Frequently asked questions
Does having an API key mean my AI workflow is allowed?
It shows that credentials exist for some technical access. Your record still needs to connect the actual account and interface to the relevant terms, delegated actions, beneficiary and operating conditions. The instrument does not treat a key as contractual evidence.
Do all exchanges prohibit trading bots?
No. Kraken publicly supports API trading bots. That example still needs to be read with the applicable account, interface and conduct rules. It cannot establish that every bot, access method or business arrangement is permitted.
Can I use a personal-account conclusion for a paid service?
Create a separate record. Operating for other people changes the beneficiary and may require another account arrangement or approval. Identify the actual documents governing that activity rather than carrying over an own-account result.
What should I do when a tutorial and the terms seem inconsistent?
Preserve both references, identify their scope and dates, and ask the provider to clarify the exact proposed workflow. An apparent contradiction should remain visible until the relationship is resolved. The tool has a separate document-conflict result for this case.
Does deleting credentials cancel orders already submitted?
Do not infer order state from credential state. Record the applicable termination provision and obtain the actual exchange-side order outcome through an authorized route. The exit plan should distinguish access removal, cancellation and existing obligations.
What does a completed DN record prove?
Only that the entered fields do not report an unresolved gap, conflict or restriction under this instrument’s rules. It does not establish legal permission, a profitable strategy, security approval, compensation rights or eligibility for any particular platform.
Primary sources
- Coinbase US User Agreement. Individual/business scope, account use, Advanced Trading delegation and suspension provisions; displayed individual revision 21 October 2026. Reviewed 2026-11-13.
- OKX U.S. Terms of Service. OKX INC. and approved-US-location scope; displayed revision 25 October 2026. Reviewed 2026-11-13.
- OKX Terms of Service jurisdiction routing. Pointer from the general page to applicable US local terms; local scope is not inferred from a locale path. Reviewed 2026-11-13.
- OKX API Agreement. API-specific hierarchy, delegated-action limits, own-account/third-party boundary, external-provider terms and termination; revision 28 July 2026. Reviewed 2026-11-13.
- Kraken Global Terms of Service. US entity, API execution, content definition and automation restrictions; revision 6 November 2026. Reviewed 2026-11-13.
- Kraken: Does Kraken allow trading bots?. Official support for API bot routes; updated 29 October 2026. Not a workflow-specific waiver. Reviewed 2026-11-13.
- Kraken trading rate limits. Spot order-event and account-level rate-limit method; updated 29 October 2026. No measured throughput claim. Reviewed 2026-11-13.
- Coinbase Markets Trading Rules. Scope for central order books accessed through Advanced Trade/Exchange, order types and time-in-force distinctions. Reviewed 2026-11-13.
Turn the finding into a decision
Practical next step: complete one record for the workflow you already intend to assess, then send the unresolved clause question to the relevant provider with the entity, account type, region and interface attached. Keep the answer and its scope beside your implementation notes. Platform selection, account opening and live trading are separate decisions.
Related DN research
Disclosure: Analysis and instrument results are editorial. Where labelled affiliate links appear, DN may receive compensation when you sign up or buy through them. Commercial relationships do not determine findings. No tested integration or guaranteed outcome is implied.
