The LSE Directory / Crypto exchanges
CEX.IO is a cryptocurrency exchange and brokerage headquartered in London, offering spot trading in a range of cryptoassets, a simplified buy/sell interface for retail customers, a staking and savings product line (CEX.IO Earn) covering assets such as Polkadot, Cardano and Cosmos, and mobile apps on iOS and Android. After achieving PCI DSS compliance in 2014 it became the first crypto exchange to let customers buy digital assets directly with a credit or debit card, a payments capability it still leans on for retail onboarding. The company's clearer point of differentiation is CEX.IO Prime, its institutional and B2B arm, which aggregates liquidity from multiple providers behind a single API, assigns account managers to clients, and supports high volume spot and margin execution; the company states Prime has processed more than 1 million transactions and over 4 billion dollars in trading volume across more than 50 active institutional clients. On the compliance side CEX.IO has built out a multi entity regulatory footprint rather than operating from a single license: money service business registration with the US FinCEN since 2015, an FCA authorised electronic money institution license held by its Decent Finance Limited subsidiary since January 2020, a further FCA registration for CEX.IO Markets UK Limited under the UK's Money Laundering Regulations, a Gibraltar Financial Services Commission DLT Provider license held by CEX.IO Limited, and a Cyprus Investment Firm license (no. 381/19, confirmed on CySEC's own register) held by CEX Markets Ltd for market making and order execution services. CEX.IO was founded in 2013 by Oleksandr Lutskevych, originally as a companion exchange to the GHash.io bitcoin mining pool under the slogan "Buy, Mine, Trade." GHash.io became a flashpoint in bitcoin history when it briefly exceeded 50 percent of the network's global hashrate in mid-2014, prompting community alarm over a possible 51 percent attack; GHash.io publicly pledged to cap its share at 39.99 percent and wound down mining operations by the end of 2015, while the CEX.IO exchange continued independently. At its 10 year anniversary in November 2023 the company said it had guided over six million registered users worldwide since launch. In September 2023, CEX.IO suspended onboarding of new UK based clients ahead of the FCA's expanded financial promotion rules for cryptoasset marketing (effective October 8, 2023), rolling out dedicated UK web pages and IP geo-fencing before resuming UK signups once compliant. The company has continued adding jurisdiction specific compliance infrastructure since, including a dedicated money laundering reporting officer for a Lithuania expansion.
