OKX Ventures and HashKey Capital have announced a strategic investment in Vietnam Prosperity Crypto Asset Exchange (CAEX), a platform operating within the financial ecosystem of VPBank, one of Vietnam’s largest private lenders. The announcement, made on April 10, positions CAEX as one of the most well-capitalized contenders for Vietnam‘s incoming regulated crypto pilot, a program that, by design, will admit no more than five licensed exchanges in the entire country.
The $380 million barrier to entry
The capital injection is designed to help CAEX meet a 10 trillion dong (approximately $380 million) charter capital requirement, a financial threshold that is a prerequisite for any firm hoping to secure one of the few licenses available under the government’s new pilot program.
The four shareholders now backing CAEX are OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, VPBank Securities (VPBankS), and digital identity technology company LynkiD. CAEX Chairman and CEO Nguyen Hong Trung said the firm has completed preparations in technological infrastructure, expert recruitment, and international cooperation frameworks to ensure it can roll out services immediately upon official licensing.
OKX Founder and CEO Star Xu confirmed the investment in a blog post published April 10, stating the company will contribute capital alongside other shareholders before the end of the month. According to Xu, the goal is to support CAEX’s development across infrastructure, compliance, security, risk management, and liquidity, helping it scale responsibly within Vietnam’s evolving regulatory framework. OKX told Cointelegraph it could not disclose the size of the investment or the specific equity stakes, saying it would not be appropriate to comment further on the regulatory process.
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Under the partnership, OKX and HashKey will work with CAEX on technical infrastructure, security systems, compliance, and risk management. OKX also brings its track record of operating licensed platforms across the US, Europe, Singapore, and Dubai, including a Payment Institution licence obtained in Malta in 2026 under the EU’s MiCA and PSD2 frameworks.
A race with only five finishing spots
Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Finance Nguyen Duc Chi has confirmed that only a maximum of five enterprises will be licensed under the pilot. The government issued Resolution No. 05/2025/NQ-CP on September 9, 2025, approving a five-year pilot programme for the crypto asset market. Subsequently, the Ministry of Finance promulgated Decision No. 96/QD-BTC on January 20, 2026, detailing licensing and operational procedures, formally opening the licensing window.
The regulatory framework sets unusually steep entry conditions. Foreign ownership is capped at 49%, and at least 65% of total capital must be held by institutional shareholders. These structural requirements are designed to ensure only well-capitalized, professionally governed entities make it through.
CAEX is far from the only institution in the running. Since 2025, the market has seen the emergence of several companies positioning themselves in the sector, including Vimexchange, which achieved charter capital of 10 trillion VND shortly after its establishment in June 2025, as well as VIXEX, TCEX, DNEX, and LPEX.
Techcombank Securities submitted its TCEX license application before January 15, and LPEX drew attention in February 2026 by increasing its charter capital from 6.8 billion VND to 360 billion VND, more than 50 times, through private investors. Banks and brokerages, including HDBank’s securities arm, Military Bank, and SSI Inc have also established crypto exchange joint ventures. CAEX’s OKX and HashKey-backed bid arrives into a field already crowded with well-funded local competitors.
Why offshore giants need an onshore partner
The urgency behind the OKX and HashKey play goes well beyond capital allocation. Vietnamese authorities have signaled they may block access to unlicensed overseas platforms once the first onshore exchanges become operational, a policy shift that would effectively push millions of Vietnamese crypto users toward domestic, regulated venues and cut off offshore exchanges without a local structure.
Vietnam was added to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list in 2023 for weak anti-money laundering controls, particularly regarding virtual assets. This categorization has been a primary driver of the regulatory overhaul. According to the new framework, crypto companies must obtain licenses, verify their customers, monitor their transactions, and file compliance reports. These measures would help Vietnam bring itself closer to global standards of anti-money laundering (AML) and remove it from the grey list.
Star Xu of OKX characterized the investment in Vietnam as consistent with its global regulatory-first agenda. Following this logic of regulatory-compliant expansion into Asia’s most active retail markets, HashKey, which is already the operator of one of Hong Kong’s few licensed retail crypto exchanges, is acquiring a stake in CAEX.
A booming market that regulators can no longer ignore
Vietnam’s crypto market has grown into one of the most active in the world. Chainalysis ranked the country fourth globally for crypto adoption in 2025. A separate Chainalysis report found that the total value of crypto received in Vietnam reached $220 billion between July 2024 and June 2025, a 55% jump compared to the prior period, placing the country third in the Asia-Pacific region, behind only India and South Korea. That volume runs largely through P2P channels, with major offshore exchanges including OKX, Binance, and Bybit all operating localized P2P features for Vietnamese users.
Unfortunately, this expansion has led to major issues. In March 2026, Vietnamese authorities arrested a number of people in connection with the ONUS platform, which is accused of misappropriating billions from investors. Prior to this, the head of Nexttech had been detained and prosecuted over a major fraud case involving the AntEx digital asset project. Such high-profile matters have provided the regulators the justification and the impetus to act quickly.
As per Tran Quy, the President of the Vietnam Institute of Digital Economy Development, the Vietnamese digital economy is expected to reach around $50 billion by the end of 2026. Completion of legal mechanisms, and pilot rollout will provide further expansion, he noted.
Quy noted that the ten trillion VND level capital requirement would function as a “strict macro level safety filter”. Moreover, with a proposed 0.1% transaction tax being imposed on the total value of each transaction of crypto trading, investors are pushing back as it may affect trading volume.
For Vietnam’s government, tightly overseeing crypto trading is also tied to a broader economic ambition: establishing international financial centers in Ho Chi Minh City and Danang, with HCMC focused on capital markets and Danang on green and digital infrastructure. A regulated, functioning crypto exchange market would strengthen both.
Industry context
Whether CAEX earns one of the five pilot licenses remains subject to regulatory confirmation. What is clear is that Vietnam’s framework is now moving from policy to implementation, and the race for those five seats is intensifying. With a $380 million capital base, VPBank’s banking infrastructure, and the operational, compliance, and liquidity capabilities of OKX and HashKey behind it, CAEX has positioned itself at the front of an increasingly competitive queue.
As Xu put it, the future of crypto will be built on regulated, local platforms that users can trust. For Vietnam, a market of 100 million people, $220 billion in annual crypto flows, and a government that is finally ready to formalize the rules, that future is arriving faster than most expected.
