After nearly nine years in the cryptocurrency industry, CoinEx is shutting down its exchange business.
The global crypto exchange has begun an orderly wind-down of its platform, citing a prolonged downturn in the cryptocurrency market, declining trading volumes and liquidity, and rising regulatory and compliance costs.
CoinEx announced the decision on September 15, 2026, and has already started removing some of its services. However, users still have time to withdraw their funds, with the final withdrawal deadline set for December 22, 2026.
The company says customer assets remain fully backed and that its asset reserve ratio is above 100 per cent.
For anyone who still has cryptocurrency, USDT or CET on CoinEx, the shutdown comes with several important dates and changes to understand.
Why is CoinEx shutting down?
According to CoinEx, the decision followed an assessment of the increasingly difficult conditions surrounding the cryptocurrency exchange business.
The company pointed to three major factors: the prolonged weakness in the crypto market, a significant reduction in trading volume and liquidity across the industry, and increasingly demanding regulatory requirements.
CoinEx also said its compliance costs and operational uncertainties had gone beyond what it considered reasonable.
Unlike a sudden collapse, CoinEx is describing the move as an orderly closure. The company has published a timetable for gradually stopping its services while keeping withdrawals available for several months.
Founder and ViaBTC Group CEO Haipo Yang also addressed the decision separately, saying CoinEx had never become one of the industry’s leading exchanges and that the risks associated with operating a centralised exchange had become increasingly difficult to justify.
Yang said he had considered selling the business but ultimately decided against it. He argued that users had placed their assets and trust in CoinEx and that transferring that responsibility to another owner was not the way he wanted the platform to end.
Instead, the company chose what Yang described as a clean ending.
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When will CoinEx completely shut down?
CoinEx’s closure is happening in stages rather than all at once.
The first phase began on September 15, when the exchange stopped accepting new registrations and ended referral commissions and other rewards.
Several services have also been restricted or stopped from accepting new activity.
Here are the major dates users need to know:
September 15, 2026
CoinEx stopped new user registrations and ended referral rewards.
Futures trading moved into reduce-only mode, meaning users can reduce existing positions but cannot open new ones.
The exchange also stopped accepting new subscriptions or orders for several services, including fiat services, margin trading, loans, Earn products, staking and strategic trading.
September 22, 2026
All non-spot services will cease.
CoinEx will also stop accepting regular on-chain deposits from this date, although CET deposits will remain available until September 29.
The company has advised users not to send additional assets to the platform unless they are required for the shutdown process.
September 29, 2026
This is another major deadline.
Spot trading will end completely on September 29.
Any unfilled spot orders will be cancelled, while remaining non-USDT assets will be processed according to CoinEx’s shutdown arrangements.
The company also plans to stop operating CoinEx Smart Chain and OneSwap on this date.
December 22, 2026
This is the final withdrawal deadline.
CoinEx says users must withdraw their assets before December 22, after which the exchange will cease operations and the normal withdrawal period will end.
The exchange’s announcement states that withdrawals will remain available throughout the wind-down period.
What happens to crypto assets left on CoinEx?
CoinEx has laid out different arrangements depending on the asset.
For spot assets, trading will continue until September 29. After trading stops, the exchange says liquid non-USDT assets will be sold on external markets and converted into USDT.
Illiquid tokens will instead be delisted. Users holding those assets will need to withdraw them on-chain.
This makes September 29 particularly important for users who want to decide themselves what to do with their holdings rather than leave the conversion process to the platform.
CoinEx is also continuing its CET buyback programme.
Between September 15 and September 29, the exchange will repurchase CET at a fixed price of 0.005 USDT per token, with no stated quantity limit or additional conditions.
After the initial period, CoinEx says remaining CET in user accounts will automatically be bought back at the same price.
The 0.005 USDT figure corresponds to CET’s original listing price.
What happens to futures, loans, Earn and staking products?
Users with active futures positions also need to pay attention to the September 22 deadline.
CoinEx says remaining futures positions will be forcibly settled at the applicable index price.
Outstanding loans will be handled under the platform’s existing liquidation rules. Any remaining collateral after the process will be credited to the user’s account.
Earn and staking products will also be redeemed in bulk, with applicable yields calculated according to the individual product rules.
In other words, users should not assume that these products will simply continue until December. Most of the exchange’s trading and investment services are being shut down considerably earlier.
CoinEx says user funds are fully backed
One of the biggest questions surrounding any cryptocurrency exchange shutdown is whether customers will actually be able to recover their assets.
CoinEx says its asset reserve ratio is above 100 per cent and that all user assets are fully backed and available for withdrawal.
The company also points users to its proof-of-reserves information.
That statement is important because CoinEx’s shutdown is not being presented as an insolvency event. The exchange says the decision is driven by the economics and regulatory burden of operating the business rather than an inability to meet customer withdrawals.
Users should nevertheless avoid waiting until the final deadline. CoinEx itself warns that blockchain congestion, network fees and confirmation delays could make last-minute withdrawals more complicated.
What happens if you miss the December 22 deadline?
Users who fail to withdraw their USDT before December 22 will not simply lose access to their claims immediately.
According to CoinEx’s shutdown arrangements, unwithdrawn USDT will be transferred into independent custody after the withdrawal period.
However, this comes with a significant condition.
A monthly custody fee equal to 5 per cent of the original balance recorded at the end of the withdrawal period will apply.
Users will be able to submit claims for the remaining funds by contacting CoinEx’s support address. The claim period runs until August 22, 2028.
That makes withdrawing before the December deadline considerably simpler than leaving assets to be handled through the post-closure custody process.
CoinEx Wallet and Vault are not shutting down
There is another important distinction users should understand.
The shutdown applies to the CoinEx exchange.
CoinEx says its separate CoinEx Wallet and CoinEx Vault products are not affected by the closure and will continue operating normally.
Users should therefore avoid assuming that every product carrying the CoinEx name is being discontinued.
The exchange, however, is being wound down according to the published schedule.
CoinEx has faced regulatory and security challenges before
The shutdown is not the first major challenge CoinEx has faced.
In 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James reached a settlement with CoinEx over its operation in New York without the required registration. The agreement required CoinEx to refund more than $1.1 million to New York investors, pay more than $600,000 in penalties and stop offering its platform to New York users. CoinEx subsequently announced its withdrawal from the United States.
CoinEx also suffered a major security incident in September 2023, when attackers gained access to hot-wallet private keys and made unauthorised withdrawals. CoinEx said at the time that its cold-wallet assets were not affected and that it would cover the losses associated with the incident.
The incident was later linked by cybersecurity researchers to the North Korean Lazarus Group, with the U.S.-focused Council on Foreign Relations listing the incident as a suspected North Korean cyber operation involving almost $54 million in stolen cryptocurrency.
These earlier events form part of the broader regulatory and security environment in which CoinEx has operated, although the company has specifically cited market conditions, declining industry activity, regulatory requirements, compliance costs and operational uncertainty as the reasons for its 2026 closure.
CoinEx’s shutdown comes as crypto exchanges face changing conditions
CoinEx is not the only cryptocurrency exchange to scale back or leave the market as the industry matures.
Running a centralised exchange requires maintaining liquidity, security infrastructure, customer support, regulatory systems and compliance operations across multiple jurisdictions.
Those requirements can become particularly difficult when trading activity and revenues decline.
For CoinEx, the company says the combination of these pressures eventually made continuing the exchange business unreasonable.
The closure therefore represents more than the end of one cryptocurrency platform. It also highlights how the exchange industry has changed since CoinEx launched in 2017.
What CoinEx users should do now
Anyone who still has assets on CoinEx should pay attention to the shutdown calendar instead of waiting for December.
The most important steps are:
- Withdraw assets you want to keep as soon as possible.
- Review futures positions before they are forcibly settled.
- Check any active Earn, staking, lending or other investment products.
- Review CET holdings and understand the exchange’s 0.005 USDT buyback arrangement.
- Move assets before the September 29 spot-trading deadline if you want to trade or convert them yourself.
- Do not send unnecessary deposits to CoinEx after the relevant deposit services close.
- Complete all withdrawals before December 22, 2026.
- Be cautious of emails, social-media posts or websites claiming to offer a new CoinEx withdrawal procedure.
The last point is particularly important.
CoinEx says its shutdown announcement is its final official communication and has warned users that later messages claiming to come from the exchange should be treated as fraudulent.
For customers, the practical takeaway is straightforward: CoinEx is winding down its exchange, but users have a defined period to recover their assets.
The exchange’s trading services are disappearing much sooner than the final withdrawal deadline, so users should not confuse December 22 with the date when trading ends.
For now, CoinEx says its priority is completing the shutdown while allowing customers to recover their funds safely.
After almost nine years, the cryptocurrency exchange is preparing to close a significant chapter of its operations.
