OKX

OKX is a centralized crypto exchange where customers trade spot crypto, futures, perpetual swaps and options, alongside a separate self-custody Web3 wallet. The global platform is operated by Aux Cayes FinTech Co. Ltd., a company registered in the Seychelles. Its terms of service, updated on 22 October 2026, list eleven other entities that contract with users in specific regions, from OKX Europe Limited in Malta to OKX INC. in Delaware.

The exchange launched as OKEx in 2017 and later renamed itself OKX. Its roots are in OK Group, which Mingxing "Star" Xu founded in 2013 and which ran the earlier OKCoin exchange; reporting in 2026 describes Xu as both founder and chief executive. The US Justice Department describes Aux Cayes as having operated the platform since at least 2017.

OKX is privately held and does not publish its shareholders. In March 2026 Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, bought a minority stake and a board seat at a $25 billion valuation, according to The Block, which also reported OKX's user base at about 120 million. Bloomberg and others reported in October 2026 that Circle, Ripple, SC Ventures and Qube Research and Technologies joined the round at the same valuation; the amount was not disclosed.

The group's token is OKB, which OKX describes as its native utility token: holders get trading fee discounts and access to token sales. OKB is one of the assets covered by the exchange's proof of reserves, which showed it at 100% in October 2026.

For most of the world, okx.com is a single account that holds balances across spot, margin and derivatives. Users are sorted into a regular tier and VIP tiers by 30-day trading volume or account balance, and the tier sets both the trading fee and the daily withdrawal limit. OKX also offers an API for automated trading and a broker program; the API documentation is public.

Which company you are dealing with depends on where you live. OKX's terms route EEA residents to OKX Europe Limited, US residents to OKX INC., Australians to OKX Australia, UAE residents to OKX Middle East Fintech FZE, Brazilians to OKX Servicos Digitais, and certain Singapore users to OKX SG Pte. Ltd. Everyone else is a customer of the Seychelles company. The products on offer differ by entity: OKX's risk disclosure says derivatives are restricted in Australia, Brazil, South Korea and the United Kingdom, and retail products in the Bahamas.

The OKX Wallet, also called the Web3 wallet, is a separate self-custody product: the user holds the keys, and the exchange cannot freeze or lose those funds. It includes a decentralized exchange aggregator that routes swaps through on-chain liquidity. OKX paused that aggregator in March 2025 after saying North Korean hackers had tried to use it to launder stolen funds, while wallet services stayed open.

OKX publishes its fee schedule on its site. For spot trading on its main group of pairs, a regular user with less than $1 million of 30-day volume and under $100,000 in assets pays 0.08% as a maker and 0.10% as a taker. Rates fall through nine VIP tiers; from VIP 7 upward the maker fee turns negative, meaning OKX pays a small rebate on orders that add liquidity. Some pairs are in other fee groups, including zero-fee pairs, and OKX says fees can differ by region and that groups are reviewed about every three months.

Futures, perpetual swaps and options have their own tier tables on the same page. Crypto withdrawals carry a per-network fee shown before you confirm. The base tier's 24-hour withdrawal limit is the equivalent of $10 million.

On 14 July 2026 this site measured an all-in cost of 0.10% for a $10,000 bitcoin market buy on OKX and 0.1005% at $100,000, with 80.9 BTC of resting orders within 0.1% of the best ask. The small difference between the two sizes reflects order-book depth: a larger order barely moved the price. How OKX compares on cost with other exchanges is covered on its rating card.

OKX's risk and compliance disclosure, last updated on 8 July 2026, lists the places where its services may be restricted or prohibited: Afghanistan, Canada, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, North Korea, Syria, Uzbekistan, Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, and US territories. It also limits specific services elsewhere, such as derivatives and certain yield products in the UK and Australia and fiat payment services in Russia.

In the United States the global platform is closed to residents. OKX INC., which OKX relaunched for Americans in April 2025 with a base in San Jose, California, holds money transmitter licences in 43 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and is registered with FinCEN under NMLS number 1767779. It does not serve New York, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or the US Virgin Islands, and its product range is narrower than the global site's. Which exchanges Americans can use explains how this fits the wider market.

In the European Economic Area, OKX Europe Limited is authorised under MiCA by the Malta Financial Services Authority, with the authorisation dated 27 January 2025 on ESMA's register and passported to 29 EEA states. OKX SG Pte. Ltd. received a Major Payment Institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in September 2024. OKX's terms also name entities in Australia, the UAE, Brazil, El Salvador, Argentina and the Bahamas.

Every account must complete identity verification. The Justice Department's case records that OKX allowed trading without KYC until about November 2022 and that some accounts kept trading without it into early 2023; that is no longer the case.

OKX's main piece of evidence is a monthly proof of reserves. The 48th report, with a latest verification date of 3 October 2026, shows $29.4 billion in primary assets and these reserve ratios: BTC 110%, ETH 100%, USDT 105%, USDC 101%, XRP 107%, DOGE 101%, SOL 105% and OKB 100%. The page says reports cover 22 coins and break holdings into OKX's own wallets and assets held with third-party custodians, such as 6,212 BTC in third-party custody against 150,263 BTC on the exchange.

Since the September 2024 report OKX has used a zk-STARK proof, a zero-knowledge method that lets each customer check that their balance was included in the total without revealing other users' balances. OKX publishes its on-chain wallet addresses and open-source verification tools. No accounting or audit firm is named on the page: the check is mathematical, and nobody independent signs off that the list of liabilities was complete. How to spot a weak proof of reserves explains why that distinction matters.

OKX's reserve and terms pages describe no insurance on customer crypto. A ratio of 100%, as for ETH and OKB, means the exchange held no surplus in that coin at the snapshot. A proof of reserves covers listed assets at one moment and says nothing about the company's other debts.

No theft of customer funds from the exchange's own wallets has been reported. The two security incidents on record involved OKX's decentralized products: a December 2023 exploit of an old DEX contract, and the 2025 misuse of the DEX aggregator by hackers moving stolen money.

The largest item is a US criminal case. On 24 February 2025 Aux Cayes FinTech pleaded guilty in the Southern District of New York to one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. According to the Justice Department, OKX had a policy against US customers but sought them out anyway; US customers made more than $1 trillion of transactions on the platform between about 2018 and early 2024, and the exchange was used for more than $5 billion of suspicious transactions and criminal proceeds. OKX agreed to forfeit $420.3 million and pay a criminal fine of about $84.4 million, and must keep an external compliance consultant through February 2027. The case named no individuals.

In Malta, OKX's local arm reached a EUR 304,000 settlement with the Malta Financial Services Authority, reported in March 2024, and in April 2025 the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit fined Okcoin Europe EUR 1.1 million for anti-money-laundering failures. In March 2025 OKX paused its DEX aggregator after reports that EU regulators were examining its role in laundering money from the Bybit theft; OKX called those reports misleading.

Earlier, in October 2020, the exchange then called OKEx halted withdrawals for about six weeks because one of its private-key holders was assisting a police investigation and could not be reached. It reopened withdrawals on 26 November 2020.

A balance on OKX is a claim on whichever OKX company holds your account. For users outside the licensed regions that is a Seychelles company that has admitted in a US court to years of operating outside US rules. Being licensed in the EU, the US or Singapore matters only if your account sits with that entity; customers of the global platform do not get the protections those regimes require.

The 2020 withdrawal freeze is the most direct example of what can go wrong: the problem was not missing money but a single key holder becoming unavailable. OKX does not publish who can sign withdrawals today or how its key-holder arrangements have changed since.

Product and access rules change. OKX restricts or withdraws services country by country, and its terms say services may not be available in every market. Anyone using a VPN to reach a restricted product risks having the account closed. The general advice is the same as for any exchange: keep there only what you trade, use an authenticator app or passkey, and move the rest to a wallet you control.

Accounts are opened on okx.com or in the OKX app, and identity verification is required before trading. Which site and app you should use depends on your country: US residents are directed to OKX US, EEA residents to OKX Europe. Funding methods and fiat currencies differ by entity.

To withdraw crypto, choose the asset and network; the fee is shown before you confirm, and the base tier caps withdrawals at the equivalent of $10 million a day. Send a small test amount first to any new address. Funds in the self-custody OKX Wallet are already under your control and are not affected by closing an exchange account, so keep that wallet's recovery phrase safe.

OKX runs a help center, with a chat option described in its own guides, and a published status page. Its scam-prevention guidance says official staff do not message users unprompted, will never ask for passwords, SMS or authenticator codes, seed phrases or screen sharing, and will never ask you to move assets, including when a caller claims to be from the police and says your account is linked to money laundering.

OKX publishes a channel verification tool on its site and in the app (Profile, then Support center, then Official channel verification) for checking whether a Telegram group, account or website is genuine. Its official X account is @okx. Searches for "OKX support number" often surface fake numbers; check any contact through the verification tool before acting on it.

Dated milestones from OKX, regulator records and press reports:

• 2013: Star Xu founds OK Group, which runs the OKCoin exchange.
• 2017: OKEx launches; the Justice Department dates Aux Cayes's operation of the platform from at least 2017.
• October-November 2020: Withdrawals suspended for about six weeks while a key holder assists police.
• 2022: Customers required to complete KYC (about November 2022, per court documents); OKEx renamed OKX.
• September 2024: OKX SG receives a Major Payment Institution licence in Singapore.
• 27 January 2025: OKX Europe Limited authorised under MiCA in Malta.
• 24 February 2025: Guilty plea in New York; penalties of more than $504 million.
• April 2025: OKX relaunches its US exchange through OKX INC.
• March 2026: Intercontinental Exchange invests at a $25 billion valuation.
• October 2026: Further investors join at the same valuation, according to press reports.