The LSE Directory / Crypto exchanges
CoinEx is a centralised cryptocurrency exchange offering spot, margin, and futures (perpetual and delivery) trading, an automated market maker (AMM) product, staking and other earn products, and a peer-to-peer fiat on-ramp branded CoinEx Pay. The exchange lists several hundred coins across more than a thousand trading pairs and states it operates in over 200 countries, supporting a large number of fiat currencies. In July 2025 it launched CoinEx Vault, a self-custodial cold wallet for individuals and institutions, audited by security firms including SlowMist. The exchange positions itself toward retail and beginner-to-intermediate traders rather than institutional order flow, competing on a simple interface, a long tail of altcoin listings, and low trading fees, plus VIP and market-maker tiers for higher-volume users. Its native CET token is used across the platform for fee discounts, voting on new listings, and governance, with a deflationary burn mechanism reducing supply over time. CoinEx has published monthly proof-of-reserve reports since launching the programme on 15 December 2022, initially covering BTC, ETH, CET, USDT, USDC and SHIB, a transparency practice it markets as a custody-trust differentiator against rival exchanges. CoinEx was founded in Hong Kong in December 2017 by Haipo Yang, who had earlier founded the ViaBTC mining pool in 2016; the exchange built its early traction around Bitcoin Cash trading after an earlier ViaBTC-branded exchange was shut down. It has since moved its operating headquarters to the Seychelles and holds a Financial Intelligence Unit registration in Estonia, obtained in 2019, and a virtual asset service provider registration in Poland, obtained in 2024. In September 2023, attackers compromised CoinEx hot-wallet private keys and stole roughly 70 million dollars in assets across Ethereum, Tron and Polygon; blockchain analytics firm Elliptic linked the theft to North Korea's Lazarus Group, and CoinEx said it reimbursed affected users in full within months. In June 2023, CoinEx settled a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James over operating as an unregistered securities and commodities broker-dealer, paying roughly 1.7 million dollars in investor refunds and penalties and agreeing to block New York users and exit the state. As of mid-2026, CoinEx continues to publish its proof-of-reserve figures monthly, reporting reserve ratios at or above 100 percent for its major covered assets, and states on its own site that it serves more than 10 million registered users globally.
