Orionx

Orionx is a Latin American digital assets exchange and financial infrastructure platform founded in Chile in 2017. Positioned as the leading cryptocurrency exchange in its home market, the platform has expanded its footprint to Peru, Colombia, and Mexico, processing over $2 billion across more than eight years of operation. It serves more than 100,000 registered users and has attracted backing from two of the industry's largest stablecoin and exchange operators: Bitfinex and Tether.

How Orionx Works

The platform divides its retail offering into two distinct products designed for different experience levels.

Instant is a simplified buy-and-sell interface aimed at first-time crypto users. It provides quick execution without requiring familiarity with order books, limit orders, or trading mechanics. Users can purchase digital assets directly with local fiat currency and hold balances in an integrated personal wallet.

Exchange is the full-featured trading platform for more experienced participants. It exposes order books, multiple order types, and access to a broader set of trading pairs. Pricing on both products is displayed in Chilean Pesos (CLP) and US Dollars (USD), reflecting the platform's regional anchoring in South American fiat markets.

Supported Assets

Orionx supports trading in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Ripple (XRP), USDT stablecoins, and additional digital assets. The platform's stated goal is to connect Latin American users and businesses with global digital asset markets through locally denominated fiat on-ramps, reducing the friction of cross-border currency conversion.

Business Infrastructure Layer

Beyond retail trading, Orionx has invested substantially in a B2B infrastructure layer marketed under the Orionx Business brand. This offering positions the company as a financial infrastructure provider rather than just an exchange.

The core B2B product is a Remittances as a Service model. Businesses can use Orionx's infrastructure to offer cross-border payment capabilities to their own customers, enabling low-cost settlement with local currency conversions on each end. The service targets remittance corridors across Latin America where traditional banking fees are high and processing delays are common.

Additional enterprise services include collections, treasury management, and OTC trading. Companies can integrate Orionx's capabilities into their own applications via a developer API.

API and Developer Access

Orionx provides two modes of programmatic access. The Exchange API allows individual account holders to interact with their accounts through code—placing and querying orders, retrieving balances, and accessing market data. The Orionx Business API extends this to enterprise clients building their own applications on Orionx's financial rails.

The API is built on GraphQL rather than traditional REST endpoints, with WebSocket connections available for real-time data streaming. Official SDKs are available, including a JavaScript SDK. The documentation is maintained at docs.orionx.com and covers authentication, request signing, and standard trading operations.

Security and Compliance

Orionx stores 98% of customer assets in cold wallets, keeping the vast majority of holdings offline and insulated from exchange-level security incidents. All sensitive user data is protected through encryption, and the company enforces strict internal security protocols for staff.

The platform maintains a compliance relationship with Chainalysis, the blockchain analytics and compliance firm, which provides transaction monitoring and anti-money-laundering tooling. Orionx describes this partnership as part of its commitment to certified security standards. The company operates under Chilean fintech regulation and emphasizes regulatory compliance as a core part of its institutional pitch to businesses.

Team and History

Joel Vainstein serves as CEO. The company was incorporated in Chile in November 2017 and has operated continuously since then, making it one of the longer-running crypto exchanges in the Latin American market.

Bitfinex investment (May 2023): Bitfinex announced an undisclosed strategic investment in Orionx as part of a broader push to expand its presence in Latin America. The partnership was framed around promoting financial inclusion and supporting crypto education initiatives in the region, including work with Chilean universities. At the time, Orionx was preparing to expand into Peru, Colombia, and Mexico and was targeting one million registered users by 2024.

Tether-led Series A (June 2025): Tether announced it had led Orionx's Series A funding round, with the specific amount undisclosed. The round was framed around accelerating Orionx's stablecoin payment infrastructure and B2B expansion, particularly in remittances and treasury services for businesses. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino described the investment as advancing Tether's mission to make "stablecoin-powered financial tools accessible to underserved communities across the region." CEO Joel Vainstein cited growing business demand for faster, cheaper payment solutions as the primary driver. The timing aligned with Chainalysis data showing Latin America received approximately $415 billion in cryptocurrency transactions between July 2023 and June 2024, with USDT accounting for a significant share of that flow.

Latin American Market Context

Latin America is among the fastest-growing regions for cryptocurrency adoption globally, driven by high inflation in several economies, large unbanked or underbanked populations, and expensive legacy remittance corridors. Orionx's positioning targets all three dynamics: its stablecoin trading provides a USD-denominated store of value for users in high-inflation markets, its onboarding is designed for users without formal banking relationships, and its Remittances as a Service product directly competes with traditional wire transfer and money transfer services.

The sequential investments from Bitfinex (2023) and Tether (2025)—two entities sharing common ownership under iFinex—suggest a coordinated strategy to establish Orionx as the preferred Latin American on-ramp and payment layer for the broader Tether stablecoin ecosystem.

Solana Ecosystem Position

Orionx lists Solana (SOL) among its supported spot trading assets, making it one of the access points through which retail users in Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico can acquire SOL using local fiat currencies. The platform does not operate on-chain programs on Solana and is not a DeFi protocol or native Solana application. Its relevance to the Solana ecosystem is that of a centralized exchange providing fiat-to-SOL conversion and SOL custody for Latin American retail and institutional participants who might otherwise lack accessible on-ramps to the network.