Crypto asset exchange Ouinex has closed a $3.5 million equity round, bringing total funding to $9 million. The full amount came from retail and professional traders connected to its platform, with venture capital absent from the cap table.
The company is also introducing Ouinex Launchpad, a token sale platform built around verified access, trader engagement, and loyalty.
The announcement comes during a period of low trust across crypto trading venues. Many retail traders remain cautious about exchanges with business models tied to client losses. Ouinex is building around a different relationship between platform and user, with traders serving as both customers and shareholders.
Ilies Larbi, CEO of Ouinex, said community funding has influenced how the company approaches regulation. He said user shareholders give Ouinex more room to invest in licensing and legal work across five continents, with long-term safety and platform durability guiding those decisions.
Trader Capital Becomes Product Growth
Ouinex began its community funding strategy in June 2023 with a $2 million pre-seed round backed by more than 2,000 traders. Many came from foreign exchange, CFDs, and equities.
In February 2024, the company completed its seed and first private rounds, raising more than $4 million. A private allocation planned for four weeks sold out in under 48 hours, leading the team to open an additional allocation.
The latest $3.5 million round brings Ouinex’s total funding to $9 million from more than 10,000 retail and professional traders.
Rodolphe Steffan, founder of Interactive Trading, said the trader-led model made the investment an easy fit. In his view, traders have wanted a transparent venue built with trader money, with users aligned around platform growth instead of outside investor pressure.
Part of the funding has gone into Ouinex Launchpad. The platform gives users priority access to early-stage token sales, with allocation rules based on engagement instead of private investor circles.
OUIX Leads the First Sale
The first Ouinex Launchpad sale will feature OUIX, the exchange’s native token. The sale has a hard cap of $160,000, with tokens priced at $0.1334.
Access will use a six-level OUIX Power Level system. Higher-ranked users receive larger allocation caps and earlier entry windows. Each participant needs a verified Ouinex account with completed KYC. Oversubscribed allocations receive automatic refunds, while retail users pay zero participation fees.
OUIX is scheduled for launch in Q2 2026. Ouinex says 65 million tokens have already been sold to its community. The token is expected to support governance, fee reductions, and staking yields across the exchange.
Trading With the Market as Counterparty
Ouinex uses a proprietary execution model called No-CLOB, short for No Central Limit Order Book. The company says this setup removes the exchange as the counterparty to user trades and helps address practices such as stop-hunting and front-running.
The platform supports spot crypto, perpetuals, forex, indices, stocks, and commodities derivatives from one account. Users can also use crypto holdings as collateral while accessing digital assets and traditional markets within the same trading environment.
Samuel Rondot, Head of Trading and Strategy at Ouinex, said the model is designed to restore trust between traders and the venue they use. He described the model as a way to keep order book visibility away from market makers, leaving traders exposed to market conditions rather than platform-side conflicts.
What Comes Next for Ouinex
Ouinex launched in December 2025 and reports more than 40,000 downloads and 10,000 monthly active users. The company says it has regulatory coverage across five continents and a team of more than 25 exchange veterans, including former staff from Crypto.com and Bybit.
The platform also offers TradingView integration for advanced charting, along with iOS and Android apps.
Its 2026 roadmap includes risk management tools such as Stop Break-even and Stop Win orders. The goal is to give traders more control over execution, collateral use, and market access inside one account.
For Ouinex, the launchpad adds another use case for its trader-funded community. For users, exchange activity becomes a path into early token access, with verified participation replacing private allocation networks.
