OKX

Is OKX safe?

OKX has never reported losing customer funds to a hack, and since 2025 it has moved quickly to get licensed in Europe and the US. Its big weakness is the past. In February 2025 the company that runs the global exchange pleaded guilty to US federal charges and paid more than $504 million. We score it 61/100, ahead of Binance but well behind licensed exchanges such as Kraken.

For an EU customer, using OKX's MiCAMiCAThe EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, which requires crypto exchanges and other providers to be licensed and supervised.More in the glossary-licensed European entity is a meaningfully safer setup than the global platform.

The 2025 guilty plea

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York said OKX had a policy against US customers but knew they could, and did, open accounts easily. Over about seven years it processed more than $1 trillion in transactions for US users without a money transmitter licence, and was used for more than $5 billion of suspicious transactions and criminal proceeds, according to the Justice Department.

Aux Cayes FinTech pleaded guilty on 24 February 2025 to one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. It agreed to an $84.4 million fine and forfeiture of $420.3 million. Unlike in the Binance case, no executive was charged.

Smaller cases followed in Europe. In January 2024 OKCoin Europe agreed to pay Malta's financial regulator, the MFSA, €304,000 to settle failings under Article 41 of the Virtual Financial Assets Act. In April 2025 Malta's Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit fined it €1,054,269 for anti-money-launderingAnti-money launderingThe rules and checks that stop criminals from moving illegal money through banks, payment firms and crypto exchanges.More in the glossary failures found in an April 2023 examination, including a weak business risk assessment and transactions that were not adequately scrutinised in about 80% of the customer files reviewed.

The 2020 withdrawal freeze

The incident older users remember is not a hack. On 16 October 2020 OKEx suspended all withdrawals because one of its private-key holders was "cooperating with a public security bureau investigation" in China and could not be reached. Withdrawals stayed frozen for about five weeks, until late November. No money was lost, but it showed a single-person dependency in key management.

Proof of reserves

OKX publishes a proof of reservesProof of reservesA report in which a crypto exchange shows that it holds enough coins to cover all customer balances, ideally checked by an outside firm.More in the glossary every month. It uses a Merkle treeMerkle treeA way to combine many records into one short code, so that each person can check their own record is included without seeing anyone else's.More in the glossary so you can check your own balance, and a zk-STARK proof meant to show that total customer liabilities are fully covered and no account has been given a negative balance. The report verified on 8 September 2026 showed 109% for bitcoin, 101% for ether and 105% for USDT.

That is better than a bare list of wallet addresses, but it is self-published. No accounting firm signs it, and OKX does not publish audited financial statements, so debts outside customer balances are not visible.

Licences since 2025

Market	Status
EU	MiCAMiCAThe EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, which requires crypto exchanges and other providers to be licensed and supervised.More in the glossary licence from Malta's MFSA for OKX Europe Ltd (27 January 2025); payment institution licence (February 2026)
US	OKX US launched April 2025 under state licences
UAE	Dubai VARA licence (OKX Middle East Fintech FZE)
Japan	OKCoin Japan, a separate local exchange, registered with the FSA since 2020
Singapore	Major payment institution licence
Australia	OKX Australia Pty Ltd and OKX Australia Financial Pty Ltd
Brazil	OKX Serviços Digitais Ltda.
Latin America	OKX Fintech, S.A. de C.V. (El Salvador, with an Argentina branch) for new users since 19 February 2026
UK	No UK company in the terms; UK adverts approved by Gateway 21 Limited, FRN 999557 (23 September 2024)
Global platform	Run from the Seychelles

The UK is the gap. OKX's UK website carries the line "Approved by Gateway 21 Limited", meaning an FCA-authorised firm signed off its adverts under the financial promotions rules, but its terms name no UK company. UK residents therefore appear to fall under "all other users", whose contract is with Aux Cayes FinTech in the Seychelles, and neither the FCA's client-money rules nor the Financial Ombudsman should be assumed to cover them.

On 3 March 2026 Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, agreed to buy $200 million of preferred shares in OKX's parent, OKC Holdings, a stake of less than 1% according to ICE's quarterly filing. That is a vote of confidence from a regulated company, though it does not change OKX's own regulatory status.

OKX also runs a self-custodySelf-custodyHolding crypto in a wallet where you alone control the private keys, rather than leaving it with an exchange or another company.More in the glossary Web3 wallet and a decentralised exchange aggregator. In March 2025 it paused the aggregator after reports that it had been used to launder funds from the Bybit hack, and said it had upgraded its screening. Coins in the self-custody wallet are not held by OKX at all, so exchange protections do not apply there, and neither do exchange risks. We score the wallet separately on our OKX Wallet page.

How to use OKX more safely

• Sign up with the entity licensed where you live (OKX EU in Europe, OKX US in the US), not the global site.
• Turn on a passkeyPasskeyA way to sign in without a password. Your device holds a key tied to one website or app and unlocks it with your fingerprint, face or PIN.More in the glossary, use an authenticator app instead of SMS and set an anti-phishing code.
• Use the withdrawal address allowlist so crypto can only go to addresses you have saved.
• Treat the exchange as a place to trade. Move savings to your own wallet so a freeze like the one in 2020 cannot lock them up.

How we scored it

Security history (78) is OKX's strongest factor: no hack of customer funds, but a five-week freeze in 2020. Legal record (27) is the weakest because of the 2025 guilty plea. Reserves (54) and custody (58) lose points for the lack of audited accounts; the reserves score matches Binance, which uses the same kind of self-published proof. Licensing (68) sits in between: strong EU, Dubai and US entities, but a global platform run from the Seychelles. For a similar offshore exchange with an EU licence, see Bybit.