CoinEx closes after nine years: what the final announcement says, date by date — and what it does not

An exchange shutting down is not a price event; it is a calendar. What matters to the people who kept money there is a short list of dates and what stops on each of them. CoinEx, an exchange that launched on 22 December 2017, published that list on 14 September 2026 under the title "Important Notice on CoinEx's Orderly Cessation of Operations". This article records the dates, the stated reasons and the mechanics as the notice gives them, and marks what the notice does not say.

The notice opens with a single sentence of explanation. It cites "the prolonged downturn in the cryptocurrency market, the significant contraction in overall industry trading volume and liquidity, and the continuously rising regulatory requirements across major jurisdictions, as well as compliance costs and operational uncertainties that have exceeded reasonable boundaries". On that basis, it says, "CoinEx has decided to cease operations and enter into an orderly cessation process."

The same wording appears in the exchange's post on X on 15 September. A separate X post the same day, signed by Haipo Yang, puts it in the first person: "Today, I am announcing that CoinEx will cease operations and begin an orderly wind-down." His post adds the detail the announcement itself closes on: "Exactly nine years later, on December 22, 2026, the platform will be formally closed."

The notice also states that the exchange maintains an asset reserve ratio of over 100 percent, and that "All user assets are fully backed and available to withdraw." That is the exchange's own claim, with a link to its proof-of-reserves page; we have not verified the reserve figure independently and record it as a statement, not a finding.

15 September 2026. New user registrations cease. Referral rebates and rewards stop. Futures markets enter reduce-only mode, meaning existing positions can be closed but not opened. No new orders are accepted for fiat services, margin trading, loans, Earn, staking or strategic trading products such as auto-invest and grid strategies.

22 September 2026. All non-spot services cease. On-chain deposits stop, with one exception: deposits of CET, the exchange's own token, remain open until 29 September. Unfilled futures orders are cancelled and any open positions "will be forcibly settled by the platform, with the settlement price based on the index price". Outstanding loans are handled under the existing liquidation rules. All Earn and staking products are redeemed by the platform, with fixed-savings yields "calculated in proportion to the actual lock-up period".

29 September 2026. Spot trading ends and unexecuted spot orders are cancelled. From 02:00 UTC that day the platform begins disposing of non-USDT assets left in accounts: those with liquidity on external markets are sold there in batches and returned as USDT "based on the net proceeds from the actual sale"; those without external liquidity are delisted, and the notice says the platform "will no longer assume responsibility for the custody or redemption of such assets". Anyone who wants an asset back in its original form has to withdraw it before that 02:00 UTC cut-off. CoinEx Smart Chain and the OneSwap exchange also stop on this date.

22 December 2026. Withdrawals close at 02:00 UTC. The notice describes this as the end of the 90-day window under clause 5.3 of the terms of service.

Between 15 and 29 September the exchange places standing buy orders for CET at 0.005 USDT per token, with trading fees on the CET/USDT pair waived. On 29 September any CET still in user accounts is repurchased automatically at the same price and credited as USDT, "with no quantity limit and no additional conditions". After that, the notice says, "no further repurchase or redemption arrangement will be provided for CET".

We have not looked up CET's market price before the announcement and do not compare the repurchase level to it here; readers who hold the token can do that on any price service, and our own Market Observation page tracks the larger assets, not CET.

This is the part of the notice that most shutdown coverage skips. After 22 December, USDT that has not been withdrawn "will be transferred by the platform into independent custody". A custody fee then applies, charged monthly, at 5 percent "of the original asset balance as of the end of the withdrawal period". Claims go through the exchange's support address, may require identity re-verification, and must be lodged by 22 August 2028. Assets unclaimed by that date "will be disposed of in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and relevant procedures".

Read plainly: a balance left untouched for a year after the deadline would lose a large share of its value to the custody charge before any disposal. The notice states the fee; it does not state whether the fee is capped.

The notice separates the exchange from two other products: "CoinEx Wallet and CoinEx Vault are business services independent of the CoinEx exchange platform and are not within the scope of this cessation of operations."

It also declares itself final: "This announcement is the final announcement issued by CoinEx. All arrangements shall be subject to this announcement, and no further announcements will be issued thereafter. Any 'new announcement,' 'supplementary rules,' or 'policy adjustment' appearing in the name of CoinEx is fraudulent." Further withdrawal reminders, it says, come only by email, in-app message and verified social accounts. The exchange adds that it will never ask for private keys, passwords or verification codes, nor for transfers to any address for "unfreezing", "compensation" or "airdrops". That warning is standard, and in a wind-down it is also the moment when impersonation attempts multiply; anyone with a balance there should assume that every unsolicited message about CoinEx is false until checked against the official site.

The notice gives no user count beyond "tens of millions of users" in its farewell section, no figure for assets on the platform, no breakdown of which jurisdictions' requirements it means, and no statement about staff numbers. It does not name a successor or a buyer. It does not say whether the reserve ratio will be published again during the wind-down. Blockhead, reporting on 15 September, describes CoinEx as "the second major platform to exit the market in three months"; we have not checked which exit it counts as the first and leave that claim to its source.

For readers who want to understand what an exchange actually holds on a customer's behalf, and why "assets on an exchange" and "assets in your own wallet" are different legal positions, the Kripto Akadémia is where we start from the basics. Our earlier record of the Symbiosis bridge exploit is a companion piece on a different kind of counterparty failure. The team behind these articles is described on the About page.

• CoinEx, "Important Notice on CoinEx's Orderly Cessation of Operations", published 14 September 2026 (announcement page, signed "CoinEx Team, Sep 15, 2026") — all dates, the reasons sentence, the reserve claim, the CET repurchase terms, the custody fee, the 22 August 2028 claims deadline, the Wallet/Vault exclusion, the "final announcement" wording.
• @coinexcom on X, 15 September 2026 — the announcement text and timeline as posted.
• Haipo Yang (@yhaiyang) on X, 15 September 2026 — "Today, I am announcing that CoinEx will cease operations…" and the nine-years-to-the-day sentence.
• Yahoo Finance / BeInCrypto, "CoinEx Sets December Deadline for Withdrawals as Exchange Winds Down", 15 September 2026 — corroboration of the 22 December deadline and the 29 September spot cut-off.
• crypto.news, "CoinEx to shut down exchange after nearly nine years", 15 September 2026 — corroboration and the link to the official notice.
• Blockhead, "CoinEx to Wind Down Operations by December, Citing Market Downturn and Compliance Costs", 15 September 2026 — the "second major platform in three months" claim, not verified here.

Educational content. Not investment advice.