CoinEx Sets Final Shutdown Date as Crypto Exchanges Retreat

WASHINGTON — CoinEx will permanently close on Dec. 22, 2026, ending the nine-year-old platform’s operations as tightening global regulation and a prolonged market squeeze accelerate consolidation among mid-tier cryptocurrency exchanges. The announcement follows similar wind-down plans from BitMEX and BitMart, two industry veterans that, like CoinEx, operated below global volume leaders Binance and Coinbase.

CoinEx has chosen an orderly, phased wind-down rather than a sudden collapse. Founder and CEO Haipo Yang said the exchange immediately stopped registering new users and halted its referral program. Futures trading was placed in “reduce-only” mode, while all non-spot services ended on Sept. 22.

The retail-focused BitMart, established in 2017, announced its own plan just days apart from BitMEX, the pioneering derivatives platform founded in 2014 that once dominated the crypto leverage market. Both exchanges joined a broader trend of mid-market capitulation in 2026.

CoinEx’s spot trading desk is scheduled to close on Sept. 29. Users will then have until Dec. 22, 2026—the ninth anniversary of the exchange’s launch—to withdraw their holdings. At its peak, the venue served millions of users globally.

The exchange has also established a liquidation facility for its native token, CoinEx Token (CET). From Sept. 15 through Sept. 29, CoinEx is buying back CET at its original listing price of 0.005 USDT with no volume caps. Any CET left on the platform after spot trading ends will be automatically converted at that same rate.

Yang founded the major mining pool ViaBTC in 2016 and launched CoinEx in December 2017. He said he selected outright liquidation rather than selling the firm to guarantee a “clean ending” for employees, clients, and token holders. Writing on social media, Yang said, “the security and compliance risks of running a crypto exchange have become increasingly difficult to contain.”

The exchange’s retreat follows years of escalating pressure from international regulators and blockchain analytics firms. For mid-tier offshore platforms, maintaining legal access to global markets has become dramatically more expensive as compliance costs, enforcement actions, and liquidity pressures increase.

CoinEx faced a major legal setback in the United States in February 2023, when New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the platform. She accused CoinEx of operating as an unregistered securities and commodities broker-dealer. By June of that year, the exchange agreed to a settlement involving $1.7 million in penalties and refunds and was legally barred from offering its services to New York residents.

The platform later faced scrutiny over international sanctions compliance. In June, blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs alleged that more than $3.8 billion in cryptocurrency had moved between CoinEx and dozens of sanctioned Iranian exchanges over a seven-year period. CoinEx denied the allegations. The report came as Western authorities intensified their focus on illicit finance and sanctions evasion involving mid-sized exchanges.

CoinEx maintained that its reserve ratio remains above 100%, meaning all user assets are fully backed. Its daily transaction volumes, however, had fallen to the tens of millions of dollars. In an industry where liquidity begets liquidity, those volumes made it increasingly difficult to compete with institutional-grade platforms able to absorb the overhead costs of modern regulatory compliance, including Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework and stricter anti-money laundering mandates globally.

For retail users who remain on the platform, Dec. 22 will mark the final chapter of a trading venue that ultimately found the modern regulatory environment too costly to navigate.