OKX: the crypto exchange and its business in Europe

MiCA, the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, decides who may offer crypto trading and custody to customers in the EU. OKX Europe Limited is authorized by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) as a crypto-asset service provider, a CASP. According to OKX Europe, the license covers nine of the ten services MiCA knows, among them custody, order execution, the operation of a trading platform and transfers. A CASP license from one member state can be passported to the whole European Economic Area, so OKX Europe can serve customers in Germany from Malta. Malta also granted OKX a payment institution license, which covers euro payments next to the crypto business. Why exchanges pick one home regulator for the whole EU is on MiCA in Europe, and Malta's place among Europe's crypto centers on crypto hubs in Europe.

OKX states on its about page that customer funds sit in segregated accounts, apart from the company's own money, backed one to one, and that it checks its reserves every month through proof of reserves. What a CASP license requires in detail is on the CASP license page, and the German side of the rules, with BaFin and the KMAG, is on MiCA in Germany.

OKX Institutional is the part of OKX that serves banks, asset managers, trading firms and other companies. It describes its work as "empowering institutions for the digital asset era". For an institution in the EU the MiCA license matters because it can reach OKX's trading and custody under one supervisor. Institutions that trade crypto still have to check custody, AML duties and the travel rule on their own side; the crypto custody and travel rule answers in the knowledge hub explain both.

At the Finance Loop side event during Sibos 2025, Maria Allott gave the keynote for OKX Institutional, after Andreas Glänzel of Frankfurt Main Finance. The evening was for people in payments, banking, stablecoins and digital assets with a focus on institutional use cases.

OKX and Finance Loop announced their cooperation with a Deep Dive Workshop at the Steigenberger ICON Frankfurter Hof. Crypto investors from Frankfurt talked there with OKX leadership and product managers and gave feedback on the product.

For the Sibos 2025 side event, Finance Loop organized an evening at TechQuartier, across the street from Messe Frankfurt, where Sibos took place. Frankfurt Main Finance and OKX Institutional presented it, in collaboration with TechQuartier and EDITH, the European Digital Innovation Hub of Hesse. OKX is also listed among the event and network partners of Finance Loop. Upcoming OKX events and meetups in Frankfurt appear on the Finance Loop events page when Finance Loop takes part.

OKX is a centralized crypto exchange: customers buy, sell and hold crypto assets on its platform, and OKX keeps the assets in custody. It also runs a self-custody wallet and a Web3 wallet, which work without an account at the exchange. How a centralized exchange differs from a decentralized one is explained in DEX vs CEX.

Yes. OKX serves customers in Germany through OKX Europe Limited and its MiCA license from Malta. The license is passported to Germany, so the MFSA in Malta is the supervisor that granted it, and BaFin does not issue a separate license for OKX. A comparison with other platforms is on the largest crypto exchanges in Germany.

The OK Group, the owner of OKX, was founded in China in 2013. According to The Block, the international exchange entity of OKX is incorporated in the Seychelles, and its European business is run from Malta by OKX Europe Limited. The exchanges licensed in Europe are compared on European crypto exchanges.