Terms of service

These terms are an agreement between you and Spotex EQ, a company registered in the State of California, United States under number [THE COMPANY NUMBER HAS NOT YET BEEN ISSUED], with its registered office at [THE OFFICE HAS NOT YET BEEN ESTABLISHED] ("we", "us", "the exchange"). They apply every time you use SpotEx.trade — the website, the trading interface and the API.

By creating an account you accept these terms, our privacy policy and our risk disclosure. If you do not accept them, do not create an account.

Who may use the exchange

You may open an account only if all of the following are true.

• You are at least 18 years old and have the legal capacity to enter into this agreement.
• You are not a resident of, or located in, a country or territory we do not serve. The current list is at [RESTRICTED JURISDICTIONS URL].
• You are not subject to sanctions imposed by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and you do not act for anyone who is.
• You are acting for yourself, not on behalf of another person, unless we have agreed otherwise in writing.

You may hold one account. Additional accounts opened by the same person may be closed, and we may consolidate their balances into a single account.

Your account

You give us an email address, a username and a name when you register, and you keep them accurate. We confirm the email address before the account can be used, because it is how we reach you about your money.

You are responsible for everything done through your account. That means keeping your password to yourself, enrolling an authenticator, storing your recovery codes somewhere safe, and reviewing the sessions and devices listed in your account.

Every email we send carries your anti-phishing code. A message claiming to be from us without that code is not from us. We will never ask you for your password, an authenticator code, a recovery code or an API secret, and we will never ask you to send funds anywhere.

If you think someone else has access to your account, freeze it immediately from the Security page. Freezing blocks withdrawals, trading and API access, ends every session and revokes every API key. Only we can lift a freeze, and we will do so only once we are satisfied the account is yours again.

Tell us as soon as you notice anything you did not do. We are not responsible for losses arising from your failure to keep your credentials safe or from a delay in telling us.

What we hold, and how

The exchange is custodial. When you deposit crypto assets, we hold them for you, and the balance shown in your account is our record of what we owe you. You do not hold the private keys and you cannot sign transactions yourself.

• We hold assets in a mix of hot and cold wallets. Cold wallets are never part of the ordinary withdrawal path.
• We hold customer assets separately from our own operating funds, and we reconcile what we hold against what we owe on a schedule.
• Your balance is not a bank deposit. It is not protected by any deposit guarantee or investor compensation scheme.
• We do not lend out, stake, rehypothecate or otherwise use your assets for our own account.

**We are not regulated.** Spotex EQ holds no licence, registration or authorisation from any financial regulator, and none supervises this exchange. Nobody audits what we hold, we are not required to keep capital against what we owe you, there is no compensation scheme if we fail, and there is no ombudsman to complain to. The commitments in this section are ours, and the only thing standing behind them is us. The risk disclosure explains what that means in full, and you should read it before depositing anything.

If we ever hold less of an asset than we owe our customers in total, we will say so.

Deposits

Send only the asset and network shown on the deposit page, to the address shown there for that asset. An address is issued for one asset on one network.

• Assets sent on the wrong network, or of a kind we do not support, are usually unrecoverable. Where recovery is technically possible we may attempt it at our discretion and may charge the cost of doing so.
• A deposit is credited after the number of confirmations shown for that network, not when it is broadcast.
• We may hold a deposit for review where we are required to, or where it appears connected to fraud, theft or sanctioned activity. We will tell you when a deposit is held.
• If a transaction we credited is later removed from the chain by a reorganisation, we may reverse the credit.

We do not control block times, network fees or confirmation times.

Withdrawals

You may withdraw your available balance at any time, subject to the checks below. Funds reserved by an open order are not available until the order is cancelled or filled.

• Withdrawals require recent authentication, and an authenticator code where your account or our policy requires one.
• Daily limits apply per account, and an overall daily limit applies across the exchange.
• If you have turned on the withdrawal address allowlist, withdrawals go only to addresses saved in your address book. Turning the allowlist off, or changing your password, starts a cooldown during which withdrawals are paused.
• Withdrawals above a threshold, or that our risk checks flag, are reviewed by our staff before they are sent. Review takes time; we do not promise a deadline.
• We may refuse or delay a withdrawal where we are required to by law, where we reasonably suspect fraud, theft, sanctions evasion or money laundering, or where the account is frozen or suspended.

You pay the network fee for a withdrawal. It is shown before you confirm. Once a transaction is broadcast to a blockchain it cannot be recalled, reversed or amended by us or by anyone else. Check the destination address and network before you confirm — funds sent to an address you got wrong are gone.

Trading

The exchange matches your orders against other customers' orders on a price-time priority basis. We provide the venue; we do not act as your counterparty, broker or adviser, and we do not trade against you on our own account.

• Order types, the minimum and maximum size of an order, price and quantity increments, and the minimum order value are shown for each market and may change.
• A market order fills at the best prices available at the time and is bounded by a maximum slippage we set. The price you get may be materially worse than the last traded price.
• A stop order is held by us until the last traded price crosses your trigger, and is only then sent to the market. It is not a guarantee of execution or of price: in a fast or illiquid market it may fill far from your trigger, or not at all.
• We may halt a market automatically after a sharp price move, or suspend one for maintenance. While a market is halted you may cancel orders but not place them.
• We may cancel or reverse trades that resulted from a clear error, a malfunction, or manipulation. We will tell you if we do.

Nothing on the exchange is investment advice, a recommendation, or a solicitation to buy or sell anything. Prices, charts and market data are provided as-is for information.

Fees

Trading fees are charged per fill, to the maker and the taker at the rates shown for that market and for your fee tier. Your tier is worked out from your trading volume over a rolling window. Withdrawal fees cover the network fee and are shown before you confirm a withdrawal.

Current fees are published at https://spotex.trade/fees. We may change fees, and we will publish the change before it takes effect. Promotional rates end on the date shown.

If you were referred by another customer, part of the fee you pay may be paid to them. That does not change what you pay.

API access

You may create API keys to trade and read your account programmatically. API keys cannot withdraw.

You are responsible for anything done with your keys. Keep the secret safe, restrict a key to the addresses you use where you can, and revoke a key you no longer need. We may rate-limit, suspend or revoke API access to protect the exchange.

What you must not do

You must not:

• break any law that applies to you, or use the exchange to launder money, finance terrorism or evade sanctions;
• manipulate a market — including wash trading, spoofing, layering, quote stuffing, or trading with yourself to create the appearance of volume;
• use another person's account, or let anyone else use yours;
• give us false information, or use the exchange on behalf of someone you have not told us about;
• interfere with the exchange's operation, attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of it, or test its security without our written permission;
• scrape, overload or abuse the API or the website, or circumvent a rate limit;
• use the exchange if you are in a jurisdiction we do not serve, including by using a VPN or any other means to hide where you are.

Suspending, freezing and closing accounts

We may suspend an account, freeze it, restrict what it can do, or close it, where:

• we are required to by law, a court, or a regulator;
• we reasonably suspect fraud, theft, market manipulation, money laundering, sanctions evasion or any other breach of these terms;
• you have given us false information, or we cannot verify information we are required to hold;
• the account has been compromised, or you have asked us to freeze it.

Where we can, we will tell you what has happened and what you can do about it. Sometimes the law prevents us from telling you why.

You may close your account at any time once you have withdrawn your balance and have no open orders or pending withdrawals. Closing an account does not delete records we are required to keep — see the privacy policy.

If your account is closed and a balance remains, we will hold it for you and return it on request, subject to any legal obligation that prevents us.

Availability

We try to keep the exchange running, and we do not promise that it will be. It may be unavailable because of maintenance, a failure in our systems or a provider's, a blockchain problem, a network attack, or something outside our control. We may suspend trading, deposits or withdrawals where we reasonably believe it is necessary to protect customers or the exchange.

Our responsibility to you

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for fraud, for fraudulent misrepresentation, for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for anything else that cannot be limited under the law that applies.

Subject to that:

• We are not responsible for losses caused by the price of a crypto asset moving, by your own trading decisions, or by your failure to keep your credentials safe.
• We are not responsible for losses caused by a blockchain, a network fork, a smart contract, a third-party wallet or a third-party service you chose to use.
• We are not responsible for indirect or consequential losses, for lost profits, or for lost opportunity.
• Where we are responsible, our total liability to you in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in that period and [LIABILITY CAP].

Your responsibility to us

You will cover any loss, cost or claim we suffer because you broke these terms, broke the law, or used the exchange fraudulently.

Tax

Working out and paying any tax on what you do here is yours to do. We do not give tax advice. We may be required to report information about you or your activity to a tax authority, and if we are, we will.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. We will publish the new version with the date it was updated, and where the change is material we will tell you by email before it takes effect. Continuing to use the exchange after that means you accept the new version. If you do not accept it, withdraw your balance and close your account.

Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of the State of California, United States. Disputes will be dealt with by the courts of Fresno County, California, except where the law that protects you as a consumer gives you the right to bring a claim somewhere else.

Before bringing a claim, please contact us at legal@spotex.trade so we can try to put it right.

How to reach us

Spotex EQ [THE OFFICE HAS NOT YET BEEN ESTABLISHED] legal@spotex.trade

We do not have a public office. The address above is where formal and legal notices should be sent; it is not somewhere you can visit, and nobody there can help you in person. Everything else — support, account problems, questions about these terms — is handled by email, and we answer from the address above.