CoinEx Shuts Down After Nine Years, Giving Users Until December 22 to Withdraw

Crypto exchange CoinEx said it will cease operations and begin an orderly wind-down, telling users in a Sept. 15 announcement that the platform will close for good on Dec. 22, 2026, nine years to the day after it went live.

The exchange blamed a “prolonged downturn in the cryptocurrency market,” a contraction in industry-wide trading volume and liquidity, and compliance costs it said “have exceeded reasonable boundaries.” CoinEx said its asset reserve ratio is over 100%, that all user assets are fully backed, and that withdrawal channels will stay open through the December deadline.

Services Stop in Stages

New registrations and reward payouts ended Sept. 15, futures moved into reduce-only mode, and the exchange stopped accepting new fiat, margin, loan, Earn, staking and strategy orders. Non-spot services end Sept. 22. Spot trading stops Sept. 29, along with CoinEx Smart Chain and the OneSwap decentralized exchange. CoinEx Wallet and CoinEx Vault operate independently and are unaffected.

CoinEx will repurchase all CET left in user accounts at the token’s initial listing price of 0.005 USDT, with no quantity limit. Users who leave USDT on the platform past Dec. 22 will have it moved into independent custody and charged a monthly fee equal to 5% of the original balance recorded at the end of the withdrawal period, with claims accepted by email until Aug. 22, 2028.

A Founder Who Refused to Sell

Founder and CEO Haipo Yang said in a letter that he seriously considered selling CoinEx and decided against it. “Users entrusted their assets to CoinEx because they trusted the platform and, in many cases, trusted me personally,” he wrote. “A clean ending is the right ending.”

“CoinEx did not become one of the industry’s leading exchanges, and the security and compliance risks of running a crypto exchange have become increasingly difficult to contain,” Yang wrote. He added: “Carrying unlimited risk for limited revenue is no longer a rational choice.”

CoinEx pulled out of the U.S. market in 2023, announcing the withdrawal in response to a New York attorney general lawsuit it went on to settle for more than $1.7 million.

The exchange was most recently clearing $72.2 million in 24-hour volume which both announced closures in July. BitMart’s has been contentious: customers reported withdrawals still pending despite assurances, and distressed-asset firm Echo Base has formed a claimholder committee and weighed forcing the exchange into bankruptcy

“At least, the few recent wind-downs during this winter have allowed users to withdraw their assets,” Binance founder Changpeng Zhao wrote in a post, calling it “a sharp contrast” to the “QuadrigaCx styles” of previous cycles.

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Source: unchainedcrypto.com