Cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx said on Tuesday that it will cease operations and begin an orderly wind-down, with the platform set to permanently close on Dec. 22, 2026—nine years to the day after it went live in 2017. Users will have until that deadline to withdraw their funds.

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

Yang said he seriously considered selling CoinEx but ultimately decided against the deal. He said he wanted what he called a "clean ending" for the platform's staff, users, and CoinEx token holders, rather than handing the exchange over to a new owner.

The wind-down follows a fixed schedule. New account registrations and referral rewards stopped immediately upon the announcement, and futures trading moved into reduce-only mode, a setting that permits only the closing of existing positions. Non-spot services shut down on Sept. 22, spot trading ends on Sept. 29, and withdrawals close for good on Dec. 22. That leaves withdrawals as the exchange's only remaining service for the final stretch of the wind-down.

Holders of CoinEx's native token, which trades as CET, also receive a built-in off-ramp. From Sept. 15 through Sept. 29, CoinEx will repurchase the token at 0.005 USDT—its original listing price—with no cap on volume, after which any remaining balances will be automatically converted at the same rate. Because the rate is fixed rather than market-determined, CET holders know their exit value in advance for the duration of the wind-down.

The exchange said its reserve ratio sits above 100%, meaning user assets remain fully backed throughout the wind-down process. CoinEx's reported 24-hour trading volume stood in the tens of millions of dollars around the time of the announcement, far below the largest global exchanges.

The closure adds CoinEx to a growing list of crypto exchanges folding in 2026. BitMEX announced it would shut down its operations after 11 years, and BitMart followed days later, winding down its own nine-year run. All three exchanges trace their roots to the mid-2010s, meaning the 2026 closures are clustered among platforms that each operated for roughly a decade.

CoinEx's exit also comes months after separate scrutiny over alleged Iran-linked crypto flows. Blockchain analytics firm 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.

Withdrawals remain open until Dec. 22, 2026, when CoinEx formally shuts its doors for good.

Source: Decrypt