CoinEx: crypto exchanges rating breakdown

Custody of funds: 3/10

Proof-of-reserves: does it exist, who attests it, does it include liabilities (a PoR without liabilities is close to meaningless), how often. Insurance fund: size, is the address public, and has it ever actually paid out. Hack history — and above all whether users were made whole. Licences by jurisdiction, and the enforcement record behind them. Every claim here is sourced to a primary document: a regulator’s register, a court filing, or the venue’s own published proof.

Scored 3 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 19th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 40% weight that is 0.80 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

Monthly, Merkle-based, liabilities included — and entirely self-computed, with no named auditor anywhere. Two further catches: it covers roughly six tokens rather than the full asset list, and the live page rendered “Latest Audition: --” with no snapshot date when we checked it. A “Shield Fund” funded by 10% of trading fees. CoinEx has never published its balance, never defined the “unforeseen risks” it covers, and publishes no claims process or on-chain address. A figure circulates on review sites; it has no primary source, so we do not repeat it.

True cost of trading: 5/10

Measured by us, not read off a fee page. We walk the live order book and fill $1,000 / $10,000 / $100,000 of BTC/USDT, then add the venue’s published taker fee. That sum — fee + spread + realised slippage — is the effective cost. Separately: the markup on network withdrawal fees, and the hidden spread inside “convert” / “buy in one click” flows.

Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 20th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 16% weight that is 0.16 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Liquidity and execution: 4/10

Order-book depth within ±0.1% and ±0.5% of mid, measured from the live book. Uptime over 12 months from the status page. Behaviour under stress: were there outages on days the market moved more than 5%.

Scored 4 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 20th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.22 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

Assets and networks: 8/10

Number of pairs, adjusted for quality: the share of listings delisted within a year. Which networks are actually supported for deposit and withdrawal — not merely “supports USDT”.

Scored 8 of 10 against a category median of 6.5, which places it 6th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 9% weight that is 0.14 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

~1,155 spot pairs across ~901 coins

Fiat on/off ramp: 1/10

Which methods are actually available per country, their fees, and their limits per verification tier — read from the venue’s published terms and cited. Where a venue does not publish this, that opacity is itself the finding, and it scores accordingly.

Scored 1 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 22nd of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 11% weight that is 0.49 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.

None of its own. Every fiat route runs through eight third-party providers — the bank leg belongs to them, not to CoinEx.

KYC and access: 5/10

Verification tiers and their limits, what is genuinely usable without verification, and the country deny-list — from the venue’s published policy, cited. A venue that will not tell you your withdrawal ceiling before you sign up is marked down for it.

Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 17th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is 0.08 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.

Tiers are documented publicly, but the actual 24h withdrawal quotas are not — the numbers circulating online come only from review sites. United States: Exited the US under a June 2023 New York Attorney General settlement: barred from opening new US accounts; existing US customers may only withdraw. It paid about $1.7m in refunds and penalties. European Union: None — absent from the ESMA register. Doubly closed: no CASP licence, and the European Economic Area is on its own prohibited-regions list.

Product, API and docs: 5/10

API documentation quality, whether rate limits are documented, whether a public status page with uptime history exists, and the API response latency we measured ourselves while pulling the order book.

Scored 5 of 10 against a category median of 5.5, which places it 15th of 28 among centralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 5% weight that is 0.03 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 4.

Documented API and rate limits. No status page exists at all.