CoinEx plans December closure after nine-year run

CoinEx has begun an orderly shutdown of its cryptocurrency exchange after nearly nine years, giving customers until December 22 to withdraw assets.

The platform said new registrations and referral rewards would stop from September 15, while futures markets moved into reduce-only mode as the first stage of a phased wind-down. CoinEx attributed the decision to a prolonged downturn in digital-asset markets, contracting trading volumes and liquidity, and mounting regulatory and compliance costs across major jurisdictions.

Founder Haipo Yang said the exchange had endured several market cycles but had failed to become the industry leader he had once hoped to build. He said security and compliance risks had become increasingly difficult to manage relative to revenue, and that closing the platform was preferable to transferring control to a buyer while users still had assets entrusted to CoinEx.

The shutdown schedule will remove most non-spot services on September 22. Margin trading, crypto loans, staking, Earn products, futures, strategic trading, fiat channels and CoinEx’s OnChain service are due to end that day. Remaining futures positions are scheduled for settlement using index prices if customers have not closed them.

Spot trading will continue until September 29, when all spot pairs are due to close and outstanding orders will be cancelled. CoinEx said most deposits will already have been disabled by then, with CET deposits receiving separate treatment during the platform token’s repurchase process.

Withdrawals will remain available until 02:00 UTC on December 22. CoinEx urged customers not to wait until the deadline, warning that network congestion, fees or processing delays could complicate transfers. The company said its reserve ratio exceeds 100 per cent and that user assets remain fully backed, a claim based on its own proof-of-reserves disclosures.

Assets left on the platform after spot trading ends will be handled according to their liquidity. CoinEx said tokens with sufficient external market liquidity may be sold in batches and converted into USDT using net sale proceeds. Customers who want to retain less liquid tokens in their original form have been told to withdraw them before processing begins.

CoinEx Token, or CET, will be dealt with separately. The exchange plans to maintain a buy order at 0.005 USDT per CET through September 29, with trading fees waived on the CET/USDT pair during the repurchase period. CET still held in customer accounts after the deadline is scheduled to be automatically repurchased at the same fixed price.

USDT balances that remain unclaimed after December 22 will be moved into independent custody. CoinEx said those balances will incur a monthly custody charge equal to 5 per cent of the amount recorded at the withdrawal deadline. Customers will still be able to submit claims for remaining assets until August 22, 2028.

The closure applies to the centralised CoinEx exchange, but the company said CoinEx Wallet and CoinEx Vault will continue separately under their own service terms. ViaBTC, the mining pool founded by Yang before CoinEx, also said its operations were unaffected, although it will discontinue its “Withdrawal to CoinEx” feature on September 22 and has told users with automatic transfers to change their destination addresses.

Regulatory pressures had previously forced CoinEx to narrow its reach. A 2023 settlement with New York authorities required refunds to thousands of investors and barred the exchange from serving New York customers or opening new US accounts. The company later strengthened sanctions screening, know-your-customer checks and transaction monitoring while continuing to operate in other markets during that period.

CoinEx launched in December 2017 and developed into a mid-sized global trading platform offering spot, futures, margin, lending and staking products. Its native CET token, introduced in 2018, was tied to trading-fee discounts and a repurchase-and-burn programme funded from a portion of platform fee income.