CoinEx to Shut Down After 9 Years, Gives Users Until Dec. 22 to Withdraw
September 15, 2026
CoinEx Announces an Orderly Exit After Nine Years
CoinEx, a crypto exchange that has served users since 2017, is shutting down. Founder and CEO Haipo Yang announced the decision on X early Tuesday, saying the platform will begin an orderly wind-down and formally close on December 22, 2026, exactly nine years after it went live.
The exchange blamed a prolonged market downturn, shrinking trading volume and liquidity, and rising regulatory and compliance costs, according to The Block. New sign-ups stopped immediately.
For users, the key number is the deadline. Anyone with funds on CoinEx now has 14 weeks to withdraw them.
The Key Dates CoinEx Users Need to Know
The wind-down runs in stages rather than all at once. From September 15, new registrations and referral rewards ended, and futures markets moved into reduce-only mode. That means traders can close or shrink existing positions but cannot open new ones.
On September 22, all non-spot services are due to stop. On September 29, spot trading ends and most remaining exchange services close. From that point, assets that have not been withdrawn may be sold into USDT, the dollar-pegged stablecoin.
CoinEx’s own token, CET, gets a fixed exit. Yang said the exchange will buy back CET at its initial listing price of 0.005 USDT per token, with no cap on quantity. He also apologised to holders, writing that the team was “not able to create the long-term value we once hoped CET would deliver.”
Funds Left Behind Face a 5% Monthly Fee
Withdrawals stay open until December 22. After that date, any USDT remaining on the platform will be transferred to an independent custodian, which charges a monthly fee of 5% of the original balance. Users will have until August 22, 2028, to submit claims.
That structure makes waiting expensive. A $1,000 balance left behind would lose $50 per month, so the full amount would be paid off after 20 months, which falls on the same August 2028 date as the claims deadline.
Yang said CoinEx’s reserve ratio exceeds 100%, meaning it reports holding more than enough assets to cover every user balance. He added that every withdrawal request made within the window will be processed, although some tokens may take longer while funds move between cold and hot wallets.
Why Founder Haipo Yang Chose Closure Over a Sale
Yang was unusually blunt about the reasons. “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,” he wrote in his announcement on X.
He added: “Revenues can decline; responsibility does not. Carrying unlimited risk for limited revenue is no longer a rational choice.”
Yang said he seriously considered selling the business but rejected the idea because users had trusted the platform and, in many cases, him personally. Handing that trust to a new owner did not feel right. “A clean ending is the right ending,” he wrote.
What It Means When an Exchange Holds Your Coins
The closure is a useful reminder of how centralized exchanges work. When someone buys crypto on an exchange and leaves it there, the exchange usually holds the private keys, the secret codes that control the coins on the blockchain. The user sees a balance, but the platform has custody.
That setup is convenient for trading. It also means access depends on the exchange staying open, solvent and willing to process withdrawals. When a platform winds down, users must follow its schedule.
The alternative is self-custody, where coins are held in a digital wallet that the user controls directly. The trade-off is responsibility: lose the recovery phrase and there is no support desk to call. Many users split the difference, keeping only active trading funds on an exchange. Anyone searching for the best crypto exchange may also want to check whether a platform publishes proof of its reserves.
Could More Mid-Tier Exchanges Follow CoinEx Out?
CoinEx is not the only established platform heading for the exit. BitMart and BitMEX both announced closures earlier this year, and Digitap covered BitMEX’s decision to shut down trading after 11 years in August.
The numbers show the pressure. CoinEx’s 24-hour trading volume sits just above $70 million, CoinDesk reported, citing CoinGecko data, far behind Asian rivals Gate at $1.6 billion and CoinW at $1.18 billion. CoinDesk described the string of closures as a sign of broader consolidation as retail spot trading declines.
If trading activity stays weak and compliance costs keep rising, more smaller venues could face the same choice between selling, merging or closing. Volume may then concentrate further on the largest exchanges, thereby spreading licensing and security costs across far more users.
An Orderly Goodbye in a Market That Remembers Collapses
The manner of CoinEx’s exit may matter as much as the closure itself. Earlier cycles were marked by exchanges that froze withdrawals without warning. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao pointed to that contrast on X, writing that recent wind-downs “have allowed users to withdraw their assets, a sharp contrast to the ‘QuadrigaCx styles’ in the previous cycles.”
Not everyone is handing out credit yet. On-chain investigator ZachXBT replied to Yang that the exchange would deserve respect if it actually returns user assets and maintains solvency, while criticising how CoinEx handled the aftermath of a past hack linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.
CoinEx now has 14 weeks to show its reserve claims hold up in practice. If every withdrawal clears on schedule, the closure could stand as evidence that a crypto exchange can fail commercially without failing its customers, a distinction that has been rare in this industry’s history.
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Madiha Riaz
Madiha is a seasoned researcher in cryptocurrency, blockchain, and emerging Web3 technologies. With a background in organic chemistry and a sharp analytical mindset, she brings scientific depth to decentralized innovation. Since discovering crypto in 2017 and investing in 2018, she’s been uncovering and sharing deep insights into how blockchain is redefining the digital asset landscape.
