Where is OKX restricted?
OKX is restricted in 12 of the 195 countries we cover: Afghanistan,
Canada,
Cuba,
India,
Iran,
Japan,
Malaysia,
Nepal,
North Korea,
Syria,
Thailand and
Uzbekistan.
Eleven come straight from OKX’s risk and compliance disclosure (last updated 8 July 2026), which also lists Hong Kong, the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine and every US territory. Three are market exits: OKX stopped serving Canada in 2023, closing accounts by 22 June according to Cointelegraph, ended services in India on 30 April 2024 according to CoinDesk, and withdrew its Hong Kong licence application in May 2024. Cuba, Iran and North Korea are also under comprehensive US sanctions (OFAC programmes for Cuba, Iran and North Korea). For the other six OKX gives no public reason.
Thailand is not on OKX’s list. Thailand’s SEC said on 29 May 2025 that it had filed criminal complaints against OKX for running an unlicensed exchange and had reported it to the digital economy ministry, which restricted access from 28 June 2025. The same order covered Bybit, which we also record as restricted there.

OKX enforces its own list at the door: in every listed country we reached, the home page loaded behind a pop-up saying OKX Exchange is not available there. The full list, with the reason for each country, is below.
| Category | Countries | Context | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geographic block | On OKX's restricted-locations list (updated 8 July 2026). | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| License requirement | Not on OKX's own list, but Thailand's SEC had access to OKX blocked from 28 June 2025 for running an unlicensed exchange. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Geographic block | OKX ended services in India on 30 April 2024 without FIU-IND registration and lists it as restricted. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Geographic block | OKX left Canada in 2023 (no new accounts from 24 March, accounts closed by 22 June) and lists it as restricted. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Geographic block | OKX withdrew its Hong Kong VASP application and stopped serving residents on 31 May 2024. | 16 Oct 2026 |
Where is OKX limited?
OKX is limited in 11 countries: Australia, the
Bahamas,
Brazil,
Eritrea, the
Kazakhstan, the
Philippines,
Russia,
South Korea,
Ukraine, the
United Kingdom and the
United States.
Seven come from the partial restrictions in the same OKX disclosure: derivatives and CeFi services in Australia, retail products in the Bahamas, derivatives and P2P in Brazil and South Korea, P2P in Eritrea, fiat payments in Russia, and derivatives, CeFi and P2P in the UK. Ukraine is limited because the disclosure excludes Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, and the United States because the global platform excludes it while OKX’s separate US company serves Americans (covered below). The Philippines is not on OKX’s list: the SEC named OKX among ten unregistered exchanges in August 2025, after which the main internet providers restricted access, as BitPinas reported. Kazakhstan is not on the list either: the AIFC regulator AFSA named OKX in its 29 April 2026 warning on unlicensed platforms.

Limited means OKX still serves the country, but something is cut back. In Australia, derivatives run through OKX Australia Financial under its own licence and terms, so the restriction is about which entity offers them, not a full ban. The countries and what applies in each are below.
| Category | Countries | Context | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geographic block | Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk are on OKX's restricted list; the rest of Ukraine is not. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Regulatory warning | Not on OKX's own list, but named in the SEC's August 2025 advisory on unregistered exchanges, after which major ISPs restricted access. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Regulatory warning | Not on OKX's restricted-locations list (updated 8 July 2026), but AFSA named OKX in its 29 April 2026 warning on unlicensed platforms. | 19 Oct 2026 | |
| Partial service | Not on the restricted list, but OKX restricts derivatives and P2P services in South Korea. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Partial service | OKX INC. holds money transmitter licences in 45 jurisdictions, including Puerto Rico, but does not serve New York, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or the US Virgin Islands; the global platform excludes US users. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Partial service | OKX INC. is licensed in Puerto Rico (TM-116) and serves it through OKX US, with spot and OTC only. | 07 Nov 2026 | |
| Partial service | OKX's disclosure restricts P2P services in Eritrea. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Partial service | OKX's disclosure restricts retail products in the Bahamas. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Partial service | OKX's disclosure says fiat payment services may be restricted in Russia. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Partial service | Served by the local entity OKX Serviços Digitais Ltda., but OKX restricts derivatives and P2P services in Brazil. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Partial service | Spot trading is open to UK users under an FCA risk warning, but OKX restricts derivatives, CeFi and P2P services in the UK. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| Partial service | Spot trading is served by OKX Australia Pty Ltd (AUSTRAC), but OKX restricts derivatives and CeFi services in Australia. | 16 Oct 2026 |
Where is OKX available?
OKX is available in the other 172 of the 195 countries we cover, including all 30 EEA countries, Turkey,
Singapore, the
United Arab Emirates and most of Africa and Latin America.
Five of them host an OKX licence, registration or listing (covered in the licences section below): El Salvador,
Malta, Singapore, Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates. The other 29 EEA countries are served by OKX Europe under its Maltese MiCA licence, and 14 more, such as
Argentina,
Mexico and
Indonesia, have a written basis of their own: an OKX page that serves them, or a check by name against the restricted list. The remaining 125 are available under our coverage rule: no official document from OKX or a regulator restricts them.

Our geo-access test loaded OKX without a block in 110 of the 173, 38 of them on a regional OKX site. Available means OKX serves the country, not that local law allows crypto trading: China and
Bangladesh are on this list because OKX does not exclude them, whatever their own rules say. The countries we hold a written basis for are below.
| Category | Countries | Context | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| No restriction | Served by OKX Europe Limited under an MFSA MiCA licence (27 Jan 2025), passported across the EEA. | 19 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Not on OKX's restricted-locations list (updated 8 July 2026). | 20 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Not on OKX's restricted-locations list (updated 8 July 2026), and not blocked in our geo-access test. | 07 Nov 2026 | |
| No restriction | Not on OKX's restricted-locations list (updated 8 July 2026); our geo-access test loaded the site. | 20 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Not on OKX's restricted-locations list, and its pages loaded in our geo-access test. | 20 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Georgia is not on OKX's restricted list (updated 8 July 2026), and its pages loaded in our geo-access test. | 19 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Home of OKX Europe Limited, MiCA-licensed by the MFSA on 27 January 2025. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Not among the restricted locations in OKX's risk disclosure (updated 8 July 2026), and not blocked in our geo-access test. | 19 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Not on OKX's July 2026 restricted list, though its older EEA disclosure (November 2025) names Nigeria. | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Not on OKX's restricted-locations list (updated 8 July 2026), and its pages loaded in our geo-access test. | 19 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Not on OKX's restricted-locations list (updated 8 July 2026); okx.com offered the OKX Europe site in our test. | 07 Nov 2026 | |
| No restriction | Not on OKX's restricted-locations list of 8 July 2026, and its pages loaded in our geo-access test. | 19 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Not on OKX's restricted-locations list, and not blocked in our geo-access test. | 07 Nov 2026 | |
| No restriction | OKX Fintech, S.A. de C.V. (Sucursal Argentina) is on the CNV register (No. 141, 21 April 2025); it serves users registered since 19 February 2026. | 17 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Registered with the CNAD and the central bank as OKX Fintech, S.A. de C.V.; not on OKX's restricted-locations list (updated 8 July 2026), and not blocked in our geo-access test. | 19 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Served by OKX Middle East Fintech FZE under a Dubai VARA licence (VL/23/12/003). | 16 Oct 2026 | |
| No restriction | Served by OKX SG Pte. Ltd., a MAS-licensed major payment institution. | 16 Oct 2026 |
Where do OKX’s visitors come from?
The United States and Brazil appear in every traffic estimate we checked for okx.com; Japan leads in Semrush and in Similarweb’s May figures, and Singapore and Hong Kong follow the US in Similarweb’s September list.
Similarweb puts the United States first for September 2026 (22.11% of desktop visits), ahead of Singapore at 17.82% and Hong Kong at 9.39%, on 33.2 million visits over three months. Its May 2026 figures, published by BitRSS, had Japan first at 8.42%. Semrush counts 30.35 million visits in September, down from 66.6 million in August, with Japan at 29.19% and the United States at 18.46%.

Two restricted places sit in these lists, Japan and Hong Kong, and our test shows why: from both, okx.com still loads, with the block shown as a pop-up over the page, so price checks and research count as visits. The US and Singapore figures mean something else. okx.com serves OKX United States and OKX Singapore on the same domain, so those visits largely reach OKX’s licensed local businesses. Estimators model traffic from panels and samples, so treat any single share as an estimate.
OKX geo-access test: what we saw from 128 countries
In our test OKX’s home page refused visitors by IP address in 8 of the 128 countries we reached, all of them on its own restricted list, and switched 41 others to a regional OKX site.
We ran the test ourselves on 14 October 2026, with the same method as for every platform. A browser with a VPN connected to one country at a time and loaded OKX’s home page and its sign-up page, each time in a fresh private window with no cookies. Cookie banners were hidden but never accepted, and bot checks were waited out, never solved. Every run saved the page text and a screenshot.
Of the 131 places tested (128 of our 195 countries plus Hong Kong, Puerto Rico and Taiwan), 58 of the countries went through VPN servers located there and 70 through virtual locations hosted elsewhere, which earlier tests showed OKX treats as the intended country. A virtual location tests OKX’s own blocking only; it cannot see a block run by a country’s internet providers. Runs from the first hours of the test, before our tool recognised OKX’s regional sites, were re-read from the page titles they saved.

Blocked by IP: a pop-up over the home page
“OKX Exchange is currently not available in Canada due to local laws and regulations.”

The same block from a Japanese address
“OKX Exchange is currently not available in Japan due to local laws and regulations.”

Blocked in Hong Kong, two years after OKX withdrew its licence bid
“OKX Exchange is currently not available in Hong Kong SAR (China) due to local laws and regulations.”

Blocked from India through a virtual location
“OKX Exchange is currently not available in India due to local laws and regulations.”

Syria gets its own wording
“We're sorry, OKX exchange products aren't available in Syria because of local laws and regulations.”

No block: okx.com becomes OKX United States, run by OKX INC.
“OKX United States”

EEA visitors land on OKX Europe, the MiCA-licensed entity
“OKX Europe”

OKX UAE, licensed by Dubai's VARA
“OKX UAE”

OKX Australia, where derivatives and CeFi services are restricted
“OKX Australia”

Limited (no derivatives or P2P), yet sign-up loads with no notice

Blocked by Thai ISPs since June 2025; a virtual location cannot see that block

The Netherlands: sign-up is served by OKX Europe
“Sign Up On OKX's Website | OKX Europe”

Spain: sign-up is served by OKX Europe
“Sign Up On OKX's Website | OKX Europe”

Italian visitors land on OKX Europe, the MiCA-licensed entity
“OKX Europe”

Poland: sign-up is served by OKX Europe

South Africa: the home page loaded with no barrier

Turkey: the global site loads with no notice

Loaded with no barrier; a virtual location cannot see the block philippine internet providers apply, so this does not show the August 2025 block

No barrier: the home page loads normally

Nigeria: the OKX home page loads with no notice

Mexico: the sign-up page loads with no barrier
“Sign Up On OKX's Website”

Belgium: sign-up is served by OKX Europe
“Sign Up On OKX's Website | OKX Europe”

Portugal: sign-up is served by OKX Europe
“Sign Up On OKX's Website | OKX Europe”

Ireland: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Austria: visitors land on the OKX Europe site
“OKX Europe”

New Zealand: the page loads with no notice

Kenya: the OKX home page loads with no notice

Sweden: okx.com serves OKX Europe, the local site
“OKX Europe”

Norway: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Liechtenstein: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Luxembourg: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Czechia: sign-up is served by OKX Europe

Romania: sign-up is served by OKX Europe

Finland: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Denmark: okx.com serves OKX Europe, the local site
“OKX Europe”

Greece: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Qatar: the sign-up page loads with no barrier and no local-site redirect

Bulgaria: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Croatia: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Latvia: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Estonia: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Egypt: sign-up loads with no notice

Lithuania: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Slovakia: sign-up is served by OKX Europe

Morocco: the OKX home page loads with no notice

Slovenia: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Iceland: okx.com points visitors to the OKX Europe site

Bahrain: the sign-up page loads with no barrier and no local-site redirect

Pakistan: the sign-up page loads with no barrier

Kazakhstan: the sign-up page loads with no barrier, though AFSA named OKX in an April 2026 warning

Ghana: the OKX home page loads with no notice

Georgia: the home page loads with no notice

Venezuela: sign-up loads with no barrier

Serbia: okx.com loads the OKX Europe site
The test does not decide a country’s status on its own: official documents come first, and a page that loads is not permission to use OKX.

Three patterns stand out. First, OKX blocks at the door: Afghanistan, Canada, India, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Syria and Uzbekistan all got the pop-up, as did Hong Kong. That is the opposite of Binance, whose sign-up page blocked only three of its ten restricted countries in the same test. Second, Thailand loaded with no barrier, because its restriction is a government block run by Thai internet providers, which our virtual location cannot see. Third, okx.com routes visitors by country: 36 places landed on OKX Europe, including Switzerland, Serbia and other non-EEA neighbours, and the US, Puerto Rico, the UAE, Australia, Brazil and Singapore on their local OKX sites. In the UK, which is limited, the global site loaded with no notice.
Cuba answered with a bot check that never cleared, and Iran and North Korea were not tested: our VPN offers no location in either. The full result for every country is below.
All 131 test results, country by country
OKX licences and registrations
OKX holds 41 licences and registrations in 9 jurisdictions, none of them in the UK, Canada, India or Hong Kong.
There is no single licences page: OKX publishes them region by region, and we checked them against regulators’ registers where we could. 35 are licences or authorisations (28 of them US state money transmitter licences), five are registrations, and one is a transitional listing in Türkiye that lets OKX TR operate while it applies.

Europe
- Malta (EEA passport): OKX Europe Limited has been authorised as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCA by the Malta Financial Services Authority since 27 January 2025, and ESMA’s register shows the authorisation passported to the 29 other EEA states. OKX Europe Markets Limited is licensed as a MiFID II investment firm for X-Perps, options and tokenised equities, according to its terms (updated 2 October 2026). A payment institution licence for OKX Pay and OKX Card was reported by CoinDesk in February 2026; we have not yet confirmed it on the MFSA register.
- Türkiye: OKX TR is on the Capital Markets Board’s list of providers in operation, which lets a firm keep operating while it applies; the SPK says the listing is not an authorisation.
Middle East
- Dubai, United Arab Emirates: OKX Middle East Fintech FZE holds VARA licence VL/23/12/003, issued on 17 September 2024, for exchange services (including derivatives), broker-dealer, lending and borrowing, and management and investment, according to the VARA register.
Asia-Pacific
- Singapore: OKX SG Pte. Ltd. is a major payment institution licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore for digital payment token and cross-border transfer services.
- Australia: OKX Australia Pty Ltd is registered with AUSTRAC as a digital currency exchange, and OKX Australia Financial Pty Ltd holds Australian financial services licence 379035 for derivatives.
Americas
- United States: OKX INC. is registered with FinCEN as a money services business (NMLS 1767779) and holds money transmitter licences in 43 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico.
- El Salvador: OKX Fintech S.A. de C.V. is registered with the CNAD as a digital asset service provider (PSAD-0052, 23 May 2025) and with the central bank as a bitcoin service provider; OKX says it serves users in El Salvador and Argentina.
OKX and MiCA in the EU
OKX has held a MiCA licence since 27 January 2025, so OKX Europe serves all 30 EEA countries, and the end of the transition period on 1 July 2026 changed nothing for its users there.
MiCA is the EU’s crypto rulebook, and since 30 December 2024 it has required exchanges serving EU clients to hold an authorisation from one member state (our MiCA article covers the rules). OKX chose Malta. The licence covers every crypto service MiCA lists except advice, and OKX’s EEA terms (updated 26 May 2026) name no excluded member state. Derivatives sit in a second Maltese company under MiFID II, which is why OKX can offer EEA users futures-style X-Perps that MiCA itself does not cover.

OKX is one of eight authorised platforms among the 14 centralised exchanges in our MiCA dataset, and one of three licensed in Malta, with Crypto.com and Gate. That puts it under a regulator with its own scrutiny: ESMA’s peer review of the MFSA in July 2025 found that one authorisation had been granted with material issues unresolved, without naming the firm. Unlike Bitget, whose EU entity only applied in Austria the day after the deadline, OKX had its licence a year and a half before it.
Stablecoins are where OKX’s EEA service still changes. Under the EEA terms, stablecoins without MiCA authorisation are limited to deposits and withdrawals, and ESMA has since told firms to wind down remaining services in them by early January 2027 (see our coverage).
OKX MiCA timeline

OKX’s record in Europe is not only licences. Malta’s financial intelligence unit fined OKCoin Europe Ltd €1,054,269 in April 2025 over anti-money-laundering failings found in a 2023 examination, MaltaToday reported. In September 2025 the Dutch central bank published a €2.25 million fine on Aux Cayes FinTech for serving Dutch customers without registration from July 2023 to August 2024, before they moved to a registered OKX entity.
Is OKX available in the US?
Not on the global platform: OKX’s terms exclude the United States, and Americans are served by OKX INC., a separate US company that offers spot trading everywhere in the US except New York and four territories.
OKX INC., formerly OKCoin USA, runs okx.com/en-us. When we loaded okx.com from a US address on 14 October 2026 it switched to OKX United States without a block. OKX launched the US exchange on 16 April 2025 and named Roshan Robert its US chief executive. Its US disclosures limit it to spot trading and OTC buy, sell and convert, with no derivatives.
Where does OKX work in the US?

OKX’s US licences page (updated 15 September 2026) says OKX INC. does not serve:
- States: New York.
- Territories: American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the US Virgin Islands.
It lists money transmitter licences in 43 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico. Six states, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, have no licence on the page but are not excluded either, and OKX’s US terms carry specific rules for Massachusetts residents. The page notes that the licences in Alaska, Louisiana, Tennessee and Virginia do not cover virtual currency transmission.
OKX’s US guilty plea
On 24 February 2025 Aux Cayes FinTech, the Seychelles company behind OKX’s global platform, pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and agreed to penalties of more than $504 million, an $84.4 million fine and $420.3 million in forfeiture, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. OKX said the plea resolved the investigation, and launched its licensed US exchange seven weeks later.
The settlement did not bar OKX from the US market; it closed the global platform to it. In March 2026 the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, ICE, invested in OKX at a $25 billion valuation and took a board seat.
OKX regulator actions and market moves: timeline

OKX KYC and identity verification
OKX has one level of identity verification, and an account cannot buy, sell, deposit or withdraw until it is complete; OKX publishes no limits beyond that.
OKX’s verification guide (updated 25 August 2026) asks for country of residence, nationality, full name, date of birth, ID number and residential address, a photo of a government ID (no screenshots) and a selfie, with proof of address when asked: issued within six months for EEA users and three months elsewhere. OKX says it reviews applications within 24 hours. Its sign-up guide spells out what an unverified account cannot do: buy or sell crypto, deposit or withdraw, transfer or borrow. The US flow adds a Social Security Number.

Verification is not a one-off. OKX’s KYC explainer describes regular reviews that can ask for occupation, source of income or source of funds. An existing account that misses a deadline can be frozen, but OKX says the owner can still reach the funds and withdraw them.
OKX verification history
Under its old name, OKEx, the exchange barred unverified accounts from withdrawing from 28 August 2018 and capped basic-level withdrawals at 2 BTC a day, CoinPost reported, while fully verified accounts could take out 100 BTC. In August 2023 ForkLog reported that OKX gave users until 21 September to pass document and face verification.

Today’s help pages name a single level and no amounts. Older tier tables with daily limits still circulate on OKX’s legacy help centre and on third-party sites, but they contradict each other and the current pages, so we do not repeat them. For how OKX’s checks compare with other exchanges, see our guide to crypto exchange KYC.
What if OKX is restricted where you live?
It depends on the country: of the 21 other platforms we track, 14 are available in Thailand, 13 in Malaysia and 10 in India, but only one, KuCoin, in Cuba, Iran and North Korea, where Bitstamp is limited.
A VPN is no route around it. OKX’s terms do not name VPNs, but they bar anyone who does not meet its eligibility rules, verification asks where you live and may ask you to prove it, and in our test OKX blocked by IP in every listed country we reached. What is left is a platform that is allowed to serve you where you live.

The chart shows how much choice each restricted country has. India, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan keep several open platforms, though only two centralised exchanges in Japan, where Coinbase is also restricted. Canada has three, one of them a centralised exchange. Nepal and Uzbekistan keep 19 and 16 open platforms, most of them centralised exchanges, and in Cuba, Iran and North Korea the one platform recorded as available is KuCoin, under our coverage rule; Bitstamp is limited there.
Each country page lists every platform we track there with its status and sources; start from our country index.


