7.8/10

OKX

Solidranked 3 of 6 in crypto exchanges◆ Sources checked · 27 Sept 2026

The strongest reserve disclosure among the offshore venues: monthly Merkle-tree proofs plus a zk-STARK proof that the liability total contains no negative balances, so a user can check their own inclusion. It now holds licences in the US, the EEA (MiCA), the UAE, Singapore and Australia, but its main entity pleaded guilty in the US in February 2025 and paid more than $504M.

Best for: Derivatives depth with better reserve disclosure than most offshore venues

Company file: OKX, owners, incidents →

How this score was reached

7.8 is the weighted average of the five pillar findings below. Dependable, with trade-offs a reader should know about first.

Custody & Security30%: 7.9
Cost & Fee Transparency20%: 8.5
Regulation & Legal Standing20%: 6.2
Performance & Reliability20%: 8.9
Access & Support10%: 7.4

Strengths

Monthly proof of reserves that covers user liabilities, checkable against your own balance
Derivatives depth close to the category leader
Competitive, clearly published fee tiers

Against it

Guilty plea in the US in Feb 2025 over years of unlicensed operation
Protection depends on which OKX entity you sign up with
Documentation quality lags the regulated venues

The best reserve disclosure offshore

OKX has published proof of reserves every month since late 2022. Each report uses a Merkle tree, so a user can check their own balance was counted, and a zk-STARK proof that the liability total contains no negative balances used to shrink it. That covers both sides of the customer ledger, which an accountant's letter about aggregate holdings does not. The July 2026 report showed $23.1B in reserves, with BTC at 105% and ETH at 103%. It still says nothing about the group's other debts, including the $504M it agreed to pay US prosecutors.

The regulatory side is better than it was and worse than the licensed venues. In February 2025 Aux Cayes FinTech, the Seychelles company that runs the global exchange, pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, over more than $1 trillion of US-linked transactions between 2018 and early 2024. Since then OKX has collected licences in the US, the EEA under MiCA, the UAE, Singapore and Australia. A user outside those markets most likely contracts with the Seychelles entity, where regulator protection is thin.

Where it earns its place

Derivatives depth close to the category leader, competitive published fees (0.08% maker / 0.10% taker at the base tier) and a strong uptime record through the volatile sessions on the record. The one custody episode to know is October 2020, when withdrawals froze for about five weeks because a private-key holder could not be reached.

Frequently asked questions

What makes OKX proof-of-reserves different?+

It combines a monthly Merkle-tree proof, which lets a user verify their own balance was included, with a zk-STARK proof that the liability total has no negative balances. Most competitors publish an attestation of aggregate holdings. Neither kind covers the company's debts beyond customer balances, so neither proves solvency.

Is OKX regulated?+

Partly. It holds licences in the US (through a separate platform relaunched in April 2025), the EEA under MiCA, the UAE, Singapore and Australia. The global exchange is run from the Seychelles, and that entity pleaded guilty in the US in February 2025, paying more than $504M and keeping a compliance consultant until February 2027. That record is the main thing holding its score down.

Is OKX safe for large balances?+

Its reserve disclosure is the best available offshore and there is no loss of exchange customer funds on record. The open question is legal rather than technical: which entity holds your balance, and what recourse exists if it stops honouring it. For large amounts that question matters more than the proof of reserves does.

Assessed by

By Emily Volker

Editor-in-Chief · September 27, 2026

◆ Disclosure

CoinRadar Daily is a non-commercial project. We have no commercial relationship with OKX, earn nothing from any link on this page, and carry no advertising or sponsorship anywhere on the site. Findings rest on public sources; we did not open an account or transact.

Rubric v2.0How we score →

The rest of the crypto exchanges table

01KrakenTraders who use Kraken Pro and want reserve proofs they can check themselves8.4
02BitstampEuropean and UK users who want a boring exchange, in the good sense8.1
03OKX — you are hereDerivatives depth with better reserve disclosure than most offshore venues7.8
04CoinbaseUS users who value an audited, listed counterparty over cheap trading7.8
05GeminiUS users who want the strictest state custody regime and will pay for it7.1
06BinanceDepth and asset coverage outside the US and EU, if you accept the counterparty question5.9