OKX

On the question of whether the coins exist, OKX gives a better answer than most exchanges its size. It has published a proof-of-reserves report every month since late 2022. The current format uses a Merkle tree plus a zk-STARK proof, so a customer can check that their own balance was included in the liability total and that no account was counted with a negative balance to shrink it. The 45th report, dated 30 July 2026, showed $23.1 billion in reserves against user balances across four assets.

Two limits apply. The proof only covers the assets it lists, and it says nothing about the group's other debts, such as loans, legal liabilities or the $504 million it agreed to pay US prosecutors in 2025. A reserve ratio above 100% tells you customer coins are there on the snapshot date. It does not tell you the company is solvent.

The track record on custody is clean where it matters most: we found no case of OKX exchange customers losing funds to a hack. The closest event was October 2020, when the exchange froze all crypto withdrawals for about five weeks because one of its private-key holders was cooperating with a Chinese police investigation and could not be reached. Withdrawals resumed in late November 2020. That episode showed a real key-management weakness, and it is the reason to read OKX's custody claims closely.

The bigger risk is legal. In February 2025 Aux Cayes FinTech, the Seychelles company that runs the global exchange, pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Prosecutors said it handled more than $1 trillion of US-linked transactions between 2018 and early 2024 while letting users skip KYC. Since then OKX has collected licences quickly, and ICE listed the US, the EEA (under MiCA), the UAE, Singapore and Australia in its March 2026 announcement. If you live outside those markets you are most likely a customer of the Seychelles entity, where regulator protection is thin.

OKX charges maker/taker fees on spot trades. Your tier depends either on 30-day trading volume and assets held (the VIP track) or on how much OKB you hold (the regular-user track). A new account starts at Lv1.

The OKB discount is a real cost. Holding 2,000 OKB to save two basis points a trade only makes sense for someone trading heavy volume, and the saving can disappear if OKB falls. Price the token position as part of the fee.

Withdrawal fees are set per network and change often, so check the figure on the withdrawal screen before you send. Futures have their own fee schedule, separate from spot.

Fee tiers change. The current table is at okx.com/fees. US accounts on OKX's American platform have a separate schedule.

OKX is a centralised exchange for spot crypto, perpetual futures and options, and it also offers a self-custodial wallet. Star Xu founded it, first as OKEx in 2017, as the international sister of OKCoin, which he had started in China in 2013. OKEx exited mainland China in 2021 and renamed itself OKX in January 2022. Xu is still founder and CEO.

• Global exchange: Aux Cayes FinTech Co. Ltd, Seychelles. This is the entity that pleaded guilty in the US.
• US platform: relaunched in April 2025 from San Jose, California, under US CEO Roshan Robert (Fortune).
• EU: served under a MiCA licence obtained through Malta, where the group's local entity paid a €1.1 million anti-money-laundering fine in April 2025.
• Outside investor: Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the NYSE, took a minority stake in March 2026 at a $25 billion valuation and got a board seat.

OKB is the group's token. In August 2025 OKX burned 65.26 million OKB from past buybacks and reserves, capped supply at 21 million, and removed minting from the contract. OKB is now the gas token of X Layer, OKX's Ethereum layer-2 network. Holding OKB still lowers trading fees. For live supply and price data, see the OKB market page.

Yes, since April 2025, through a separate US platform. The global okx.com exchange still excludes US residents, and that exclusion is where OKX's legal trouble started. The DOJ found that from 2018 to early 2024 Americans used the offshore exchange anyway. Many of them never completed identity checks.

A US account is a different product from okx.com. It runs under US licences, lists a different set of products, and has its own fee schedule, so do not assume a feature you see on okx.com is available to you.

OKX Wallet is a self-custodial wallet and is separate from exchange accounts. You hold the keys, and OKX's reserve proofs do not cover it. The wallet includes a DEX aggregator that routes swaps across many chains, and both of the incidents on OKX's record since 2023 involve this non-custodial side.

• December 2023: a deprecated OKX DEX proxy contract was upgraded by someone holding a leaked admin key. The attacker then drained tokens from wallets that still had approvals on it, about $2.7 million by The Block's count. OKX said it would compensate affected users.
• March–May 2025: OKX suspended the aggregator after Bybit said North Korea's Lazarus Group had pushed about $100 million of its stolen funds through OKX Web3, and after EU regulators discussed the case. It restarted on 5 May 2025 with abuse detection added.

If you use the wallet, revoke old token approvals. The 2023 loss came from approvals that users had forgotten they granted.