Exclusive: FX Veteran Ilies Larbi Launches Ouinex, a Crypto Exchange with a TradFi Engine

Ilies Larbi, a long-time FX industry veteran, is set to unveil Ouinex today (Thursday) in a closed-door launch to its community, FinanceMagnates.com has learned. The new crypto exchange aims to merge professional-grade trading infrastructure with a unified venue for both digital assets and traditional markets.

The launch is fully in line with the ongoing trend of convergence of traditional finance (TradFi) and the crypto ecosystem. However, unlike crypto-native platforms that offer tokenized equities or traditional brokers that offer crypto via CFDs, Ouinex is positioning itself as a hybrid trading venue.

A Hybrid Architecture Combining Crypto and Traditional Markets

Its architecture supports not only spot crypto and perpetual futures, but also FX and other derivatives, all accessible from one unified trading wallet. This design effectively combines a brokerage-style execution engine with a crypto exchange interface.

A central feature of the platform is its “protective order model,” which aims to improve execution fairness for retail traders by shielding limit orders and ensuring that liquidity providers compete strictly on pricing — an approach that more closely mirrors best-execution standards in regulated FX environments.

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The multi-asset structure is one of Ouinex’s core differentiators. Users can trade spot crypto, crypto perpetual futures, FX derivatives, commodities, indices, and stocks without switching accounts or interfaces. Crypto balances can be used as collateral across leveraged markets, enabling a single-wallet, cross-asset setup closer to a broker-dealer model than to a traditional crypto exchange.

Regulatory Foundations and the Project’s Extended Timeline

Ouinex began laying the regulatory groundwork early. The company secured a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) registration in Poland in late 2023, originally targeting a 2024 launch. As the project expanded in scope and regulatory coverage, the full exchange rollout materialized only now, in December 2025.

The Polish registration remains a key component of the company’s European footprint.

“Our goal is to accelerate the convergence between crypto and traditional markets,” said Larbi, Founder and CEO of Ouinex.

Early User Traction and a Community-Driven Development Model

According to the company, more than 40,000 users joined the platform during its pre-launch SocialFi-driven onboarding phase. Larbi noted that community involvement played a central role in shaping the platform: “Ouinex has been fully funded, shaped, and supported by retail traders—the very people who stand behind this platform.”

In 2024 the company raised over $5 million through a series of private funding rounds with the aim of enhancing the platform and securing additional regulatory licenses.

With business development teams already active across Africa, LATAM, and Asia, and the upcoming launch of its native $OUIX token, Ouinex is entering a crowded market with an infrastructure model that differs noticeably from both crypto exchanges and traditional multi-asset brokers.