CoinEx, a centralized cryptocurrency exchange, is shutting down after nearly nine years of operation and moving into an orderly wind-down. Users have until December 22, 2026 to withdraw their balances from the platform.

Founded by Haipo Yang in Hong Kong, the exchange launched in December 2017 and is now operationally headquartered in the Seychelles, where Yang continues to serve as CEO. CoinEx held its customers' deposits and matched their buy and sell orders on its own platform. Beyond spot trading, it offered futures, margin trading, loans and staking, and it also operated its own blockchain network, CoinEx Smart Chain. According to the company, Coin served tens of millions of users. CoinMarketCap data shows the platform most recently recorded a daily trading volume of around USD 58 million, placing it 33rd in the data provider's exchange rankings. The closure was confirmed in a press release.

Withdrawals remain open until December 22, 2026

The wind-down affects only the exchange itself; CoinEx Wallet and CoinEx Vault continue to operate as independent services. Since the announcement, CoinEx has stopped accepting new registrations and paying referral rewards. Futures trading is now limited to reduce-only mode, meaning users can only close existing positions, while fiat services, margin, loans, Earn, Staking and Strategic Trading no longer accept new orders.

From September 22, 2026, the exchange will shut down all non-spot services. At that point, open futures positions will be force-closed at the index price, all Earn and Staking products will be redeemed, and unpaid loans will be processed under the applicable liquidation rules. On-chain deposits will also end, with only CET deposits accepted until September 29.

Spot trading ends on September 29, 2026, at which point the platform will cancel all open spot orders. Holders of the exchange token CET already have access to a buyback that has been running since the announcement: in the CET/USDT pair, CoinEx continuously places buy orders at USDT 0.005 per token, with no volume limit and no fees. On September 29, the exchange will automatically buy back any remaining CET holdings at the same price, and there will be no later redemption of the token. CoinEx Smart Chain (CSC) and the in-house decentralized exchange OneSwap will also cease operations that day, and the redemption window for the related cross-chain bridge closes on the same date.

Two deadlines matter most for existing customers. Starting at 02:00 UTC on September 29, CoinEx will liquidate all assets other than USDT still held in accounts. Tokens with liquidity will be sold on external markets and the net proceeds credited in USDT, while illiquid tokens will be gradually delisted and their wallets no longer maintained. Users who want to withdraw assets in their original form therefore need to act beforehand. Withdrawals themselves remain open until 02:00 UTC on December 22, 2026, which is exactly nine years to the day after the exchange launched. Unwithdrawn USDT will then move to independent custody, where a monthly fee of 5% of the deadline balance applies, meaning that missing the deadline costs part of the holdings every month. Users can file claims with support until August 22, 2028, after which CoinEx will dispose of unclaimed balances in accordance with applicable law.

Market downturn and rising compliance costs

In its official announcement (), CoinEx cites several reasons for the closure. First among them is the prolonged downturn in the crypto market, during which trading volumes have fallen and liquidity has shrunk across the industry. The exchange also points to steadily rising regulatory requirements in key jurisdictions, saying that compliance costs and operational uncertainty had exceeded acceptable limits. After careful review, it opted for an orderly wind-down. There will be no further notices, and CoinEx said it will treat any later "new announcement" published in its name as fraud.

Founder and CEO Haipo Yang placed the risks of running an exchange front and center: "The security and compliance risks of operating a crypto exchange have become increasingly difficult to contain."

At the same time, CoinEx is seeking to dispel doubts about its solvency. According to the company, its reserve ratio is above 100%, and it cites a proof of reserves as evidence. CoinEx says its reserves fully cover all user balances, which remain available for withdrawal. The entire wind-down timeline rests on this backing, which the company itself reports, since withdrawals running through December require the reserves to actually exist. CoinEx intends to keep withdrawals open until the deadline regardless of the shutdown of its other services, though it advises users to withdraw balances early in case networks become congested shortly before the deadline. The next checkpoints fall on September 22 and September 29, 2026, when non-spot and then spot services go offline; how smoothly withdrawal processing runs through those dates and on to December 22 will show how orderly the wind-down is in practice.

A wave of consolidation among mid-sized exchanges

CoinEx is not the first exchange to give up in 2026. AscendEX shut down operations in early July 2026 after a strategic liquidity agreement fell through and the exchange failed to obtain a license under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. Unlike the announced wind-down at CoinEx, however, the exit there was disorderly: users reported blocked withdrawals, and on-chain analyst ZachXBT assessed the reserves as nearly empty.

A few weeks later, in July 2026, BitMEX announced its own closure. After more than eleven years, the exchange will cease operations at 04:00 UTC on September 23, 2026, following a strategic review that included a sale process with several interested parties. Notably, BitMEX never lost customer funds to a security incident in its history, yet the exchange did not find a buyer. Its end falls right between two stages of the CoinEx wind-down.

Across the industry, falling trading volumes and stricter regulation are cited as the drivers of this consolidation. In the EU in particular, full enforcement of MiCA tightens the requirements for exchanges, and rising compliance costs weigh especially on mid-tier providers. CoinEx cites largely the same factors in its own reasoning, from shrinking liquidity to the cost of compliance. For account holders, the three exits underline a practical point: the terms of a shutdown — published deadlines, open withdrawal windows and how assets are converted — decide what users can actually recover, with CoinEx's scheduled wind-down and AscendEX's blocked withdrawals marking opposite ends of the spectrum.