CoinEx to Shut Down Exchange After Nine Years

CoinEx, the Hong Kong-founded cryptocurrency exchange, said this week it will cease operations and wind down in stages. The shutdown ends on Dec. 22, 2026, nine years to the day after the exchange went live in December 2017, and users have until that date to withdraw their funds, Decrypt reported.

The wind-down follows a fixed schedule. New account registrations and referral rewards stopped immediately, and futures trading moved into reduce-only mode, so traders can only close existing positions. Non-spot services shut down on Sept. 22, spot trading ends on Sept. 29, and withdrawals close for good on Dec. 22, according to the same report.

Bitcoin.com News, reporting on the Sept. 14 wind-down notice, laid out the same four dates and added detail on what stops first. Fiat purchases, margin trading, loans, Earn products, and staking stopped taking new orders on Sept. 15, while spot markets stay open until Sept. 29, when unfilled spot orders will be canceled.

Founder and CEO Haipo Yang tied the decision to a mix of prolonged market weakness and mounting compliance demands. "The security and compliance risks of running a crypto exchange have become increasingly difficult to contain," Yang wrote in a post on X, framing the closure as a deliberate exit rather than a forced one, Decrypt reported.

Yang expanded on that reasoning in the official notice. "After careful consideration, I have accepted a harsh reality. Coinex has failed to become one of the leading exchanges in the industry, and the security and compliance risks of operating a crypto exchange have become increasingly difficult to control," he said, adding that revenue may decline but responsibility cannot, and that taking on unlimited risks for limited revenue is no longer a rational choice, according to Bitcoin.com News.

The official notice cited a prolonged downturn in the crypto market, a sharp contraction in industry trading volume and liquidity, and steadily rising regulatory requirements across major jurisdictions, the outlet reported. CoinEx said those pressures had pushed operating conditions past reasonable boundaries.

Yang said he seriously considered selling CoinEx but decided against it. He wanted what he called a "clean ending" for the platform's staff, users, and holders of the CoinEx token, rather than handing the exchange to a new owner, Decrypt reported. His reasoning, as Bitcoin.com News put it, was that users had entrusted their assets to the platform and to him personally, and passing that trust to a new owner was not the right way to end things.

Holders of CoinEx's native token, which trades as CET, get a built-in exit. From Sept. 15 through Sept. 29, CoinEx will buy back the token at 0.005 USDT, its original listing price, with no cap on volume, then automatically convert any remaining balances at the same rate, Decrypt reported.

CoinEx said its reserve ratio sits above 100%, meaning user assets remain fully backed throughout the process, Decrypt reported. Bitcoin.com News reported the same assurance, saying the exchange told users their balances can be withdrawn in full during the wind-down period.

The exchange was not a volume leader heading into the shutdown. Its reported 24-hour trading volume was in the tens of millions of dollars around the time of the announcement, far below the largest global exchanges, according to Decrypt. CoinGecko showed roughly 752 BTC, or about $58 million, in reported 24-hour volume, with a trust score of 7 out of 10, Bitcoin.com News reported.

The market backdrop matches the weakness Yang described. Bitcoin sat near $77,650 on Tuesday, about 38 percent below its all-time high of $126,080 from October last year, while ether traded about 49 percent under its August 2025 peak of $4,946, according to Bitcoin.com News.

Yang is an early bitcoin investor who also founded the mining pool ViaBTC, and he launched CoinEx in December 2017, Bitcoin.com News reported. The Dec. 22 closing date lands exactly nine years after that launch, Decrypt noted.

Regulators had already narrowed the exchange's reach before this week. In June 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James recovered $1.7 million from the exchange, including $1,172,971.50 in restitution, and required it to geoblock New York and stop opening accounts for users in the United States, Bitcoin.com News reported. Later that year, the outlet covered a suspected $28 million hot wallet hack at the platform.

The closure also follows separate scrutiny over the exchange's ties to Iran. TRM Labs alleged in June that more than $3.8 billion had flowed between CoinEx and dozens of sanctioned Iranian platforms over seven years, a claim the exchange denied at the time, Decrypt reported.

CoinEx joins a growing list of exchanges folding this year. BitMEX announced it would shut down after 11 years, and BitMart followed days later, winding down its own nine-year run, according to Decrypt.

The final weeks carry specific mechanics for users still holding assets on the platform. When spot trading stops on Sept. 29, CoinEx will begin processing non-USDT balances, and assets with outside market liquidity may be sold in batches and converted to USDT at the net sale proceeds, Bitcoin.com News reported. Users holding assets without outside liquidity are being told to withdraw them before the cutoff if they want to keep the tokens in their original form.

USDT left on the platform after the Dec. 22 deadline moves into independent custody and carries a monthly fee equal to 5 percent of the original balance, with claims accepted until Aug. 22, 2028, according to the same report. CoinEx Wallet and CoinEx Vault are separate services and will keep running, and ViaBTC said the shutdown will not affect its normal operations.