CoinEx will stop operating its exchange business and formally shut the platform on Dec. 22, 2026, according to a public letter founder Haipo Yang released on Sept. 15. That closes the book on about nine years of business after the exchange was founded in 2017.
Yang said CoinEx never turned into the industry-leading exchange he had wanted to build. He also said security and compliance risks had become tougher to keep under control. Users, he said, will be able to withdraw their assets in full, and the platform will buy back its CET token at 0.005 USDT per coin with no limit on quantity.
From CPBL All-Star sponsor to exchange exit
CoinEx had built some name recognition in Taiwan before announcing the shutdown. In 2024, it sponsored the Chinese Professional Baseball League All-Star Game at Taipei Dome and used the event to get its brand in front of more people.
Now it is getting out of the exchange business after surviving more than one bull market and bear market cycle. In its closure notice, CoinEx said the decision came from a long crypto market slump, weaker trading volume and liquidity across the industry, and heavier regulatory demands and compliance costs in major jurisdictions.
Yang put it more bluntly in his public letter. He wrote that the real reason for the shutdown was the widening mismatch between business income and the responsibilities the platform had to carry: "Revenue may fall, but responsibility does not. Taking on unlimited risk for limited income is no longer a rational choice."
He also said CoinEx did not become the top-tier exchange he first imagined. But he still wanted to shut it down fully and responsibly for users, employees, and CET holders.
Services will be wound down in stages
CoinEx is not pulling the plug on everything at once. The reported schedule shows a phased shutdown:
- Starting Sept. 15: new user registration stops, futures trading moves to reduce-only mode, and several financial services stop taking new orders or subscriptions.
- Sept. 22: non-spot services will end, and regular on-chain deposits will close, while CET deposits will follow a separate extended arrangement.
- Sept. 29: spot trading will stop, and CoinEx Smart Chain (CSC) and OneSwap will shut down at the same time.
- Dec. 22: the withdrawal deadline arrives, and the exchange platform will officially close.
CoinEx Wallet and CoinEx Vault are listed separately and are not part of this exchange shutdown.
Yang said the platform’s reserve ratio is above 100% and that all user assets are fully backed. He added that some tokens could take longer to process because of transfers between cold and hot wallets, but said all withdrawal requests submitted during the withdrawal period would be handled. The report said the reserve statement and the promise to fulfill withdrawals are claims made by the platform and its founder.
CET buyback and Yang’s abandoned sale plan
As for CET, Yang said CoinEx will conduct an uncapped buyback at the token’s initial listing price of 0.005 USDT.
He said CET stood for holders’ trust in CoinEx and, for some users, trust in him personally. He apologized to holders for not creating the long-term value they had expected, and said the buyback was part of the responsibility he needed to take in winding down the token business.
Yang also said he had seriously weighed selling CoinEx, then decided against it. In his view, users placed assets on the platform because they trusted both the exchange and its founder, and passing that trust to a new operator would not have been the right way to close the business.
So the priorities became full user withdrawals, staff arrangements, and CET’s exit plan.
KOL shifts debate to compliance costs, mentions HashKey
The CoinEx shutdown also sparked a wider argument in the crypto community over how expensive exchange compliance has become. KOL "Big Beauty | C Labs" (@giantcutie666) zeroed in on the line in the notice saying compliance spending had gone beyond a reasonable range, then dragged HashKey into the discussion, writing: "I’m actually pretty eager to see how long HashKey can keep going."
In the post, the KOL said HashKey had cash and bank balances of about HK$2.806 billion as of Dec. 31, 2025, and asked why that same figure did not show up in financial results released in August this year. The point was used to criticize the cost pressure that compliant operations may put on a business.
ViaBTC says operations are separate, miners need to change auto-withdraw settings
After CoinEx announced the wind-down, ViaBTC released its own statement saying the two businesses have separate legal entities, financial accounts, technical infrastructure, and server operations.
ViaBTC said CoinEx’s shutdown would not affect its mining pool services. Deposits, withdrawals, settlement, and mining payout distribution are still operating normally. But one thing is changing. The withdrawal function tied to CoinEx will be removed.
According to ViaBTC’s notice, the "withdraw to CoinEx" function will be canceled on Sept. 22, 2026. Users who turned on automatic withdrawals to CoinEx need to go to the asset page and reset the withdrawal address.