Rating report
OKX
Grade B, 3.7 out of 5
OKX publishes monthly zk-STARK proof of reserves with an open-source verification tool and holds Dubai VARA and Malta MiCA authorisations, but its Seychelles operating entity pleaded guilty in the U.S. in February 2025 and paid over $504m.
By Safety Desk. Facts checked against official sources on .
Findings, check by check
Every KripZen grade comes from the same five weighted checks. Here is how OKX scores on each.
Proof of reserves 30%
Monthly zk-STARK v2 proof of reserves — the 44th report covered $22.65bn in primary reserve assets — with an open-source verification tool on GitHub so users can check their own balances against the published Merkle root.
What “Proof of reserves” meansDisclosed
Custody 25%
Cold/hot storage split is not disclosed; we could not confirm it from a primary source.
What “Custody” meansPartial or unaudited
Regulation 20%
Dubai VARA VASP licence VL/23/12/003 and an EU MiCA CASP authorisation via OKX Europe Limited (Malta MFSA, 27 January 2025); operating entity Aux Cayes FinTech Co. Ltd. pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court on 24 February 2025 to running an unlicensed money-transmitting business and paid over $504m.
What “Regulation” meansPartial or unaudited
Insurance 15%
No insurance or safety fund is publicly disclosed beyond the proof-of-reserves programme. That is a statement about what OKX discloses, not a finding that it is uninsured — but an undisclosed fund is one a user cannot rely on.
Not disclosed
Incident history 10%
No confirmed major security incident found in our research.
Disclosed
The weights are the same for every exchange. Read the full methodology
Licences and registrations
The 1 entries we could confirm for OKX on a regulator’s register or the exchange’s own legal pages. A licence in one country does not mean the service is open to you.
| Regulator | Licence or registration | Register number |
|---|---|---|
| Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA)Malta | MiCA CASP OKX Europe Limited | LEI 54930069NLWEIGLHXU42; authorised 27/01/2025 |
Fees, products and reach
- Spot fees (base tier)
- 0.08% maker, 0.1% takerRegular user (Lv1 / level 0), 30-day volume <1,000,000 USD (standard rates in page data)
- Proof of reserves
- PublishedLatest report seen: 2026-10
- Products
- Spot, Futures, P2P, Card purchases, Copy trading
- Founded
- 2017
- Not offered under its own terms in
- Afghanistan, Canada, Cuba, Hong Kong, Iran, India, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, North Korea, Syria, Uzbekistan, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands
Base-tier fees from the exchange’s own fee page. Your real cost depends on order type, volume tier and spread; try your numbers in the Exchange Fee Calculator
Our OKX review
OKX publishes the most reader-verifiable reserve proof in this corpus and discloses no loss cover at all. Those two facts pull in opposite directions, and a B is where they settle.
What checks out
Proof of reserves is monthly and uses zk-STARKs — the 44th report covered $22.65bn in primary reserve assets — with an open-source verification tool on GitHub so you can check your own balance against the published Merkle root yourself. That last part matters more than the headline number: almost every other venue asks you to trust a PDF, and this one hands you the means to test it. We found no confirmed major security incident.
Where the evidence stops
No insurance or safety fund is publicly disclosed beyond the reserve programme. That is a statement about what OKX tells you, not a finding that it is uninsured — but a fund nobody has described is a fund you cannot count on. The cold/hot storage split is likewise undisclosed and we could not confirm it from a primary source. On licensing, OKX holds Dubai VARA VASP licence VL/23/12/003 and an EU MiCA CASP authorisation through OKX Europe Limited, granted by the Malta MFSA on 27 January 2025. Against that, operating entity Aux Cayes FinTech Co. Ltd. pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court on 24 February 2025 to running an unlicensed money-transmitting business and paid over $504m.
How to read the grade
OKX is strongest exactly where most exchanges are weakest — you can verify the reserves rather than take them on faith. It is weakest where a reserve proof cannot help you: if funds are taken, nothing published says who absorbs the loss. Read the B as a venue that shows its balance sheet and not its safety net.
Sources
Every fact on this page comes from one of these official pages, checked on October 20, 2026.
Where to go next
Other exchanges we've graded
How to read these grades: each is derived from published, checkable disclosures — proof-of-reserves attestations, public regulatory registers, disclosed insurance funds and the documented incident record — using the weighted rubric below. Where an exchange does not disclose something, we mark it unverified rather than assume it. These are not audits and not investment advice; they reflect what was published as of our last review. Cryptocurrency investments carry risk, including loss of principal. Nothing on KripZen is financial advice — always do your own research before buying, trading or moving funds.