TL;DR
- CoinEx is shutting down after nine years, with trading services ending in stages before the exchange closes fully on December 22.
- Customers can withdraw funds until December 22. Remaining USDT will then move to an independent custody arrangement with monthly fees.
- The closure follows years of regulatory and security scrutiny and comes as trading activity increasingly concentrates on larger exchanges.
CoinEx announced on September 15, 2026 that it will shut down after nine years of operation. Founder and CEO Haipo Yang cited mounting security and compliance risks and said he turned down a sale in favor of what he called a clean ending. The Hong Kong-based exchange will wind down in stages through December 22, when withdrawals close for good.
The Shutdown Timeline
CoinEx set four cutoff dates for the wind-down. New account registrations and referral rewards ended immediately on September 15, and futures contracts moved into reduce-only mode, which blocks new or larger positions.
Margin trading, crypto loans, staking, and Earn products close on September 22. Most deposit addresses close the same day, apart from the exchange’s native CET token.
Spot trading stops on September 29 at 02:00 UTC, and CoinEx Smart Chain and OneSwap, the exchange’s blockchain and decentralized exchange, shut down the same day.
Withdrawals remain open until December 22 at 02:00 UTC+8, when CoinEx says the exchange formally closes.
What Happens to Customer Balances
CoinEx says its reserve ratio exceeds 100 percent, meaning it holds more in assets than it owes customers. CoinEx will buy back remaining CET balances at 0.005 USDT each, with no cap on the amount.
USDT left on the platform after December 22 moves into an independent custody arrangement, where a 5 percent monthly fee applies. The claims window on that arrangement closes August 22, 2028. CoinEx has not addressed what happens to balances still unclaimed once that window closes.
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Why CoinEx Says It Is Closing
In his statement, Yang said CoinEx never became one of the industry’s largest exchanges, and pointed to compliance and security costs that have grown harder to manage. He said he considered selling the business, and decided against it. “A clean ending is the right ending,” he wrote.
CoinEx’s public notice pointed to a prolonged market downturn and shrinking industry-wide trading volume, and it said compliance costs had exceeded reasonable boundaries in major jurisdictions.
A Regulatory and Security Record
CoinEx has drawn regulatory and security scrutiny before this closure. In 2023, the New York Attorney General accused CoinEx of running an unregistered securities and commodities business. CoinEx settled for $1.7 million and agreed to leave the state.
The same year, a hot-wallet breach cost CoinEx roughly $54 million. On-chain investigators later tied the breach to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.
In June 2026, blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs published a report on CoinEx’s transaction history. It alleged the exchange processed $3.84 billion in transactions tied to sanctioned Iranian entities since 2019. Of that, $67 million traced to the Central Bank of Iran.
Funds from the Bybit hack, a $1.5 billion theft investigators tied to North Korea, passed through Iranian wallets connected to CoinEx, the Wall Street Journal reported. CoinEx disputed the characterization, saying on-chain transaction flows do not establish a platform’s knowledge of, or participation in, illicit activity.
Yang’s closure notice did not name the TRM Labs report or reference Iran. Three months separate the report from the closure, and the link remains circumstantial.
>>> Read more: Bybit Response to the $1.5 Billion Heist
Part of a Wider Consolidation Among Exchanges
CoinEx’s closure follows two others announced in July 2026. BitMEX will close on September 23, after eleven years in business. The exchange pioneered the perpetual swap, a contract now standard across crypto trading. BitMart stopped trading on August 26, seven years after it launched, and plans to close fully on January 31, 2027.
Analysts tied both closures to a broader decline in retail spot trading volume, and liquidity has concentrated on the largest platforms. CoinEx’s own daily volume sat at roughly $70 million in mid-September, according to CoinGecko data. Competitors like Gate and CoinW each handle more than $1 billion.
Two pieces of the business survive the wind-down. The mining pool ViaBTC, under the same founders, keeps running on its own, and the exchange’s self-custody tools, CoinEx Wallet and Vault, stay active.
