Updated Rules checked 2026-10-13
Whether Pionex is safe can only be judged from its public record. By the source standard I use, as of 2026-10-12 there are no public reports of Pionex being hacked, halting withdrawals for a long period or receiving major regulatory penalties. Transparency is its weaker side: Pionex’s proof of reserves (PoR) consists of a single third-party report from 2022-12-13, when the USDT reserve ratio on its own was 90.02%, and I found no newer report after that.
On fees, Pionex’s 0.05% spot fee is in the low tier among the 13 exchanges, and futures are 0.02% Maker and 0.05% Taker. Trading bots such as Grid and Martingale are free to use, with only the regular fee charged on each fill; this is the biggest difference between Pionex and other exchanges. If you use it from Taiwan, note that Pionex is not on the anti-money laundering (AML) registration list of Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), so if something goes wrong you can’t turn to Taiwan’s investor protection mechanisms.
This article doesn’t give star ratings. It collects fees, the referral code fee reduction, reserves, the safety record, restricted regions and products in one place, with a source for every number. For sign-up steps and the referral code, see Pionex referral code.
Key points: For regular Pionex users (VIP 0), spot Maker and Taker fees are both 0.05%, and USDT-margined futures are 0.02% Maker and 0.05% Taker; Pionex has no platform token, so there is no platform token discount either. Trading bots such as Grid and Martingale charge no usage fee, only the trading fee on fills; the exception is Futures Moon, which takes 20% of total profit when there is a profit. Pionex’s only reserve report is a snapshot from 2022-12-13, with a BTC reserve ratio of 117.60% and ETH of 110.00%, but USDT on its own at only 90.02% (stablecoins combined 103.69%). By this site’s source standard, as of 2026-10-12 there are no public reports of Pionex being hacked, halting withdrawals for a long period or receiving major regulatory penalties. As of the list updated by Taiwan’s Securities and Futures Bureau (SFB) on 2026-09-29, Pionex is not on the FSC’s AML registration list.
The data below was checked against official pages on 2026-10-13 (the data check date) and is provided for reference.
What are Pionex’s fees?
The table shows the official VIP 0 rates. Spot Maker and Taker cost the same, and on futures maker orders are 60% cheaper than taker orders:
| Market | Maker | Taker | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spot | 0.05% | 0.05% | Same rate for Spot Grid and stablecoin pairs | Pionex trading fee overview |
| USDT-margined futures | 0.02% | 0.05% | Futures Grid uses maker orders, so Maker applies | Pionex fee page |
| Leveraged tokens, US stock tokens (spot) | 0.1% | 0.1% | Fixed rate, no VIP discount | Pionex trading fee overview |
| Spot Innovation Zone | 0.5% | 0.5% | Fixed rate | Pionex trading fee overview |
| MEME Guru tokens | 1% | 1% | Fixed rate | Pionex trading fee overview |
Fees checked on 2026-10-11. In amounts: with 100,000 USDT of spot volume a month, a typical exchange charging 0.1% costs 100 USDT, while Pionex costs 50 USDT. With 300,000 USDT of futures volume a month, all taker orders cost 300,000 × 0.05% = 150 USDT, and all maker orders cost 60 USDT. The high rates are on a few special products: for the same 1,000 USDT, a round trip in leveraged tokens costs 2 USDT, and a round trip in MEME Guru tokens costs 20 USDT.
VIP does little for retail traders. From 2026-09-04, Pionex’s VIP 1 threshold is 20 BTC of spot volume or 3 million USDT of futures volume in 30 days, or 50,000 USDT in assets. And the spot Taker fee is 0.05% from VIP 0 all the way to the top tier, while the VIP 1 futures Taker fee only drops to 0.048% (Pionex VIP tier rules).
Futures fees are charged on notional value. Opening a 10x position with 1,000 USDT of margin gives a notional value of 10,000 USDT, and the Taker fee to open and close is 10 USDT. If the position is fully liquidated, the liquidation fee rate in Pionex’s example is 1.75%, so a 20,000 USDT position pays 350 USDT (Pionex liquidation explanation). With leverage, if the market moves against you, the position may be forcibly liquidated. The full fee schedule is in Pionex fees explained. To work out trading fees and funding fees together, use the perpetual futures cost calculator.
How much is the Pionex referral code fee reduction, and has it changed?
Sign up to Pionex with a referral code and the fee reduction is currently 15%. The reduction doesn’t appear on the order page; after trades settle, it is paid back separately in USDT to your main account, and the records update every hour. The chart and table below record changes to this rate and sync with the exchange’s settings every day.
- 15% (tracking started)
Rates sync with the exchange daily; every change is recorded automatically.
Pionex calls the referral code benefit an invite cashback or a fee discount; this site calls it a fee reduction throughout. The rate is set when the referral code is created and can’t be changed afterward. It is calculated on the fees each trade actually generates, with no Maker/Taker distinction, and covers fills in spot, leveraged tokens, futures and bots (Pionex rebate rules v3). US stock tokens (spot) and MEME don’t count; Futures Moon charges no trading fee while it runs, so there is nothing to reduce.
A few conditions to know first: the invitee must make a first deposit and a first trade within 30 days of signing up, or later trades won’t count, and an eligible user’s cumulative deposits must reach 100 USDT. Pionex’s rules state that referrals from non-KOL referrers only count the invitee’s trades within 365 days of signing up; the Pionex referral code this site provides is a professional KOL referral code, so that limit doesn’t apply.
You can add a referral code within 14 days of signing up, or within only 3 days if you’ve already placed a trade, and it can’t be changed once bound (Pionex guide to adding a referral code). The code and sign-up steps are in Pionex referral code, and the steps for adding one later are in add a Pionex referral code after signing up.
Does Pionex have proof of reserves?
Only once, in 2022. Pionex published an agreed-upon procedures report carried out by the accounting firms Elite Partners CPA and Moore, with a snapshot taken at 14:00 on 2022-12-13 (Hong Kong time). I found no newer report published officially after that.
| Item | 2022-12-13 report |
|---|---|
| BTC reserve ratio | 117.60% |
| ETH reserve ratio | 110.00% |
| USDT reserve ratio | 90.02% |
| Combined stablecoin reserve ratio | 103.69% |
| Merkle tree self-verification | Yes |
| Out of scope | Liabilities of leveraged tokens and their matching assets |
| Nature of the report | Agreed-upon procedures; the report states it is not an assurance engagement |
This report shows the blind spot of combined figures: stablecoins combined come to 103.69%, which looks above 100%, but broken out, USDT is only 90.02%. The report also states that it is not an assurance engagement, and the accountants express no opinion or assurance conclusion. As of 2026-10-12, 7 of the 13 exchanges have figures from September 2026 or later that can be read, while Pionex’s report hasn’t been updated in nearly four years. As for a protection fund, I couldn’t find an official size published by Pionex. For a comparison across exchanges, see exchange proof of reserves compared.
Has Pionex had any security or withdrawal incidents?
By the source standard I use (official exchange announcements first, then The Block, CoinDesk, Bloomberg, the US Department of Justice and regulators’ announcements), as of 2026-10-12 I found no public reports of Pionex in any of these three categories of major incident:
- Platform wallet theft: none found.
- Long withdrawal halts: none found.
- Major regulatory penalties: none found.
“None found” means nothing turned up under the standard above; it doesn’t mean nothing has ever happened. For comparison, 7 of the 13 exchanges this site covers have had platform wallets drained, 8 incidents in total. For the full records, see exchange safety records.
Which countries can’t use Pionex?
The eligibility clause of the Pionex terms of service (effective 2024-07-09) states that users may not be located in, under the control of, or nationals or residents of the following regions: mainland China, Hong Kong, the United States, Singapore, Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain and France. The terms also declare that Pionex’s products and services are not offered to individual or institutional users in Hong Kong.
Like Binance, Pionex counts nationality too, not just place of residence; if a region is added to the restrictions later, Pionex can immediately suspend accounts and block trading. These terms are the 2024 version, relatively old among the 13 exchanges. For a table of 13 exchanges across 16 regions, see exchange restricted countries.
What products does Pionex offer?
According to its official help pages, Pionex currently offers:
- Spot and futures: spot at 0.05%; USDT-margined and coin-margined perpetual futures; plus leveraged tokens, US stock tokens, the Spot Innovation Zone and MEME Guru tokens, which carry higher fees.
- Trading bots: Spot Grid, Futures Grid, Infinity Grid, Martingale, the Rebalancing Bot and others are free to use, with only the trading fee charged on fills. A complete buy and sell on one Spot Grid level is charged 0.05% twice, so each grid spacing needs to be wider than about 0.1% to make a net profit; for Futures Grid it’s about 0.04%. For the calculation, see Pionex grid bot fees.
- Futures Moon: no trading fee while it runs; when you close it, reduce the position or withdraw profit, it takes 20% of total profit, and nothing if there’s no profit (Pionex Futures Moon explanation).
- KOL copy trading: a profit share is charged only if there’s a profit when the bot closes, at a percentage set by the KOL (Pionex KOL copy trading explanation).
- USDT flexible savings: no tiers, with an estimated 1.92% APR for the next period on 2026-10-13 and interest calculated hourly (Pionex Earning; see USDT flexible savings rates compared).
- Other: Swap charges no fee, but Pionex is the counterparty, so quotes may include slippage; Pionex.AI is a separately subscribed AI assistant service, and you don’t need a subscription to use the regular trading bots.
Funding fees are paid between longs and shorts, and Pionex takes none. Major coins settle every 8 hours and highly volatile coins every 4 hours, and in extreme markets this may change to every hour (Pionex funding fee explanation). Futures Grid holds futures positions, so funding fees settle as usual; see what is the funding rate.
What should users in Taiwan watch out for with Pionex?
FSC registration: as of the list of “businesses and persons providing virtual asset services” updated by the SFB on 2026-09-29, Pionex is not on the FSC’s AML registration list. When the FSC commented on the FTX collapse, it pointed out that offshore trading platforms are not covered by the dispute-handling mechanisms of the Securities and Futures Investors Protection Center or the Financial Ombudsman Institution.
Buying crypto by card is expensive: Pionex supports Visa and Mastercard for TWD 400 to 90,000 per transaction, with a 2.6% to 2.8% fee for cards issued in Taiwan plus a fixed fee of up to 0.5 U (Pionex bank card purchase FAQ). On a TWD 10,000 card purchase, the fee alone is TWD 260 to 280, about 52 to 56 times the fee on a spot trade.
C2C isn’t available in Taiwan: Pionex C2C is currently open only to users in 12 countries and regions, and Taiwan isn’t on the list (Pionex C2C explanation). The cheaper route is to buy USDT with New Taiwan dollars (TWD) on MAX or BitoPro, transfer it on-chain to Pionex (crypto deposits to Pionex are free), and reverse the steps to cash out. Based on official fees:
| Route | Suggested network | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Pionex → MAX | Avalanche C-Chain | 0.081 USDT |
| Pionex → BitoPro | BEP20 | 0.2 USDT |
| Pionex withdrawal via TRC20 | TRC20 | 1 USDT |
| Pionex withdrawal via Plasma | Plasma | 0.011 USDT (neither MAX nor BitoPro accepts it) |
| MAX → Pionex | Avalanche C-Chain | MAX withdrawal fee 0 |
Pionex’s fees are taken from the Pionex crypto withdrawal fee guide (2026-10-11), and the MAX and BitoPro figures are from 2026-10-12. Pionex has no Polygon network for USDT, so transfers in from BitoPro need BEP20. Transfers to another Pionex account via Internal Quick Transfer are free. For full fees at every exchange, see USDT withdrawal fees compared; the two Taiwanese exchanges, MAX and BitoPro, have referral code guides on the Traditional Chinese version of this site.
Official channels: the official domain is pionex.com; the provider on the Taiwan App Store is BitUniverse CO.,Limited (checked 2026-10-15), and on Google Play it is Pionex (checked 2026-10-12). The official channels listed in the Pionex help center are www.pionex.com, [email protected] and download.pionex.com, and there is also an official verification page where you can enter an account name, URL or email to check it (Pionex official channel verification guide). Impersonation tactics are covered in crypto exchange scam types.
Who is Pionex a good fit for?
Judging by fees and products, Pionex fits these uses best:
- People who want to use bots such as Grid and Martingale: the bots are free, Spot Grid pays 0.05% per fill and Futures Grid pays the 0.02% Maker fee, so the only cost is the trading fee.
- Mainly spot traders: the 0.05% spot Taker fee is half the 0.1% most exchanges charge, the same tier as MEXC, and among the 13 exchanges only Ourbit’s 0% is lower.
Where it fits less well: if reserve transparency matters to you, Pionex has only one report, from 2022. If you’re used to buying crypto by card, the 2.6% to 2.8% fee eats a lot. If you want to park idle USDT in flexible savings, Pionex’s 1.92% has no tiers, and on 1,000 USDT it’s well below XT’s roughly 5.65% for the whole amount and Ourbit’s 5.00% (XT from the 2026-10-12 snapshot, the others from 2026-10-13). Grids set too fine also get eaten by fees: over a 10% range, a geometric Spot Grid with more than about 95 levels makes no net profit.
FAQ
Is Pionex safe?
No exchange can guarantee safety. By this site’s source standard, as of 2026-10-12 there are no public reports of Pionex being hacked, halting withdrawals for a long period or receiving major regulatory penalties. But it has only one reserve report, from 2022-12-13, with a USDT reserve ratio on its own of 90.02%. Pionex is also not on the AML registration list of Taiwan’s FSC.
Is Pionex a scam?
Pionex itself is not a scam; it is an exchange in actual operation: the official site is pionex.com, its terms of service state that the operator is Marketa Trading Inc. (Pionex terms of service), and the provider on the Taiwan App Store is BitUniverse CO.,Limited. What people online call a “Pionex scam” is usually a fake website, fake app, fake customer support or fake investment group using Pionex’s name. The usual demands are to add someone on LINE, to transfer USDT to a “platform” outside the exchange, or to pay an “unfreezing fee” or “security deposit” before you can withdraw. Accounts or URLs claiming to be Pionex can be checked on Pionex’s official verification page (Pionex official channel verification guide). Not being a scam doesn’t mean there’s no risk: Pionex has published only one reserve report, dated 2022-12-13, and Pionex is not on the FSC’s AML registration list either, so any dispute can only be handled under the platform’s terms. Impersonation tactics are covered in crypto exchange scam types, and referral-code-related scams in rebate scam warning signs.
Has Pionex been hacked?
By the source standard this site uses, as of 2026-10-12 there are no public reports of a Pionex platform wallet being drained. That doesn’t mean it has never happened; it only means nothing turned up in exchange announcements, major media or regulators’ announcements.
Could Pionex go under? Are its reserves enough?
Nobody can predict that. Pionex’s only reserve report is a snapshot from 2022-12-13, with stablecoins combined at 103.69% and USDT on its own at 90.02%, and the report states it is not an assurance engagement. There has been no new report since, so there’s no way to check the current situation. If it ever collapsed, you would have to go through proceedings where the platform is based; Taiwan’s Securities and Futures Investors Protection Center can’t help.
Can I use Pionex in Taiwan?
Taiwan isn’t on the restricted list in Pionex’s terms of service, but that doesn’t mean Taiwan’s regulators have approved it: Pionex is not on the FSC’s AML registration list (2026-09-29 version). Pionex’s terms are the version effective 2024-07-09, so check them yourself before you sign up.
Can I withdraw from Pionex to a Taiwanese bank account?
The official help pages don’t describe withdrawing TWD directly to a Taiwanese bank account, and C2C isn’t available in Taiwan. The common approach is to transfer USDT to MAX or BitoPro and convert it to TWD under that platform’s rules; sending from Pionex to MAX over Avalanche C-Chain costs 0.081 USDT.
Do Pionex bots cost extra?
No. Bots such as Grid and Martingale are free to use, with only the regular trading fee charged on fills: 0.05% per fill for Spot Grid, and the 0.02% Maker fee for Futures Grid, which uses maker orders. The exception is Futures Moon, which takes 20% of total profit when there is a profit; KOL copy trading charges the profit share set by the KOL when there is a profit.
Can I add a Pionex referral code later?
Yes, within a deadline: 14 days after signing up, or only 3 days if you’ve already placed a trade, and it can’t be changed once bound. For the steps, see add a Pionex referral code after signing up; for how the rules compare across exchanges, see can you add a referral code after signing up.
The Pionex referral code and sign-up steps are in Pionex referral code, the full fee schedule is in Pionex fees explained, and the grid break-even calculation is in Pionex grid bot fees. For each exchange’s actual fees after the fee reduction, see actual fees after referral rebates, and for whether a VIP upgrade affects the reduction, see does your referral rebate survive a VIP upgrade. Referral codes for other exchanges are collected in crypto exchange referral codes.