Nine-year veteran CoinEx announces shutdown amid 'substantial' cryptocurrency market decline
According to CoinEx, declining trade volumes and market liquidity, combined with mounting costs related to regulation and compliance, have surpassed what the exchange considers "reasonable boundaries," with the withdrawal window staying active through Dec. 22.
Cryptocurrency trading platform CoinEx has announced plans to shut down its operations, pointing to an extended downturn in the cryptocurrency marketplace, diminishing trading volumes and market liquidity, alongside mounting costs associated with regulatory compliance and oversight, the platform revealed in a Tuesday announcement.
The wind-down process will see CoinEx discontinuing new user account registrations, terminating referral commission programs and halting other incentive rewards. The platform's futures trading contracts will transition into a "Reduce-Only" operational mode. Additionally, CoinEx will no longer process new orders or accept subscriptions for its fiat currency services, margin trading operations, lending programs, earn products, staking services and strategic trading offerings.
After much reflection, I have come to accept a hard truth. 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.
CoinEx CEO Haipo Yang
The platform's shutdown contributes to an expanding list of cryptocurrency exchanges that have terminated their operations during the current year due to comparable challenges, with BitMart, BitMEX and AscendEX among those joining the closure wave.
Starting Sept. 22, CoinEx will terminate all services unrelated to spot trading and will stop accepting onchain deposits, with CET deposits being the sole exception to this policy.
Beginning Sept. 29, the platform will shut down all spot trading operations, and assets other than USDT will undergo processing.
Starting Dec. 22, the withdrawal window will close, and the exchange will completely cease all operations. Any USDT balances that remain unwithdrawn will be moved to an independent custody provider, resulting in monthly custodial fees for users.
The exchange has also announced a buyback program for CET tokens at the original listing price of 0.005 USDT per token, which represents a marginally higher valuation than Monday's price prior to the shutdown announcement.
Both CoinEx Wallet and CoinEx Vault will continue normal operations without interruption, given that these services function independently from the main exchange platform.
The CoinEx platform was initially established in December 2017 by cryptocurrency mining pool operator ViaBTC. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the cryptocurrency exchange currently holds the 33rd position in rankings with $58 million in trading volume recorded over a 24-hour period.
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