A principal desk
We deal as principal. When you sell us USDT, we buy it — we are the counterparty to your trade, not a broker matching you against somebody else and taking a commission from the middle.
About the desk
An international desk
An international desk
with one address.
Conexus converts USDT and other crypto assets into the currency you bank in, and back, at a rate agreed before anything moves. Clients are wherever they are. The office is in Cape Town, and you can walk into it.
Conexus
Indicative USDT rate
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USDT / ZAR
Quoted by a dealer
Why a desk, not an app
A different transaction, not a better screen.
A retail exchange is a queue. You place an order into a public order book and take whatever the book gives you. For a small ticket that is fine — the book is deeper than your order and the fill lands close to the screen price.
Order books are thinner than they look. In South Africa, the market this desk knows best, somewhere around R500 000 to R1 million, depending on the asset and the hour, your own order becomes the market. The first part fills at the price you saw, and the rest fills progressively worse as it eats through the book. You do not find out what the trade actually cost you until it is finished. Split the order across a week and you swap slippage for market risk instead.
An over-the-counter desk solves a narrow problem: it prices the whole ticket at once, before execution, and carries the risk of sourcing or disposing of the asset itself. You get one number, in writing, and you decide against that number rather than against a moving screen.
That is the entire proposition. It is not a better app, it is a different transaction structure — one where a person quotes you, a person is accountable for the settlement, and both sides know the price before anything moves. If your trade is small enough that the order book will absorb it without moving, an exchange is the cheaper tool and we will say so.
The mechanics of a single trade are set out step by step on the how it works page, and the case for pricing a block in one go is on the large-volume trades page.
The operating model
Four sentences, then the detail.
These describe what Conexus is. Everything else on this site is detail hanging off them.
Not a custodial exchange
There is no Conexus account, no wallet balance, no login holding your value. We do not hold client funds on an ongoing basis. Crypto assets and fiat pass through settlement and land in your own wallet or your own bank account.
Bank settlement, in your name
Fiat settles into an account in the same name as the verified client. In South Africa that is EFT, RTC or PayShap; elsewhere it is the rail confirmed before the quote. We do not pay third parties and do not accept payment from one.
Documented every time
Every completed trade produces a written confirmation with the reference, the asset, the rate, the gross and the net. Records are kept for five years because sections 22 and 23 of the FIC Act require it.
Because the desk deals as principal, the price you are quoted already contains everything we earn. There is no separate commission line, no maker-taker schedule, and no "network fee" quietly marked up. What that costs is set out below and on the fees and limits page.
Because the desk is not a custodial exchange, there is nothing to withdraw from and nothing to be locked out of. That also means the desk cannot hold value for you overnight "while the market settles" — if a trade concludes, it settles. Money that has nowhere to be held cannot be frozen, lent out or lost in someone else's insolvency, and that is deliberate.
Which currency the desk can settle in for you, and on which rail, is confirmed before a quote is given rather than assumed from a list on a website. That is one conversation, and it happens first.
South Africa is the market this desk documents in most detail, because it is the one it has an office in. Crypto assets became a financial product under the FAIS Act by General Notice 1350, Government Gazette 47334, of 19 October 2022. Providing intermediary services in relation to them requires an FSCA Financial Services Provider licence, and the transitional exemption for unlicensed operators closed on 30 November 2023. A Category I licence covers advice and intermediary services, which is where an OTC desk sits. Category II is discretionary management — trading a client's money at our own discretion — and the desk does not do it. Our licence position is published in full on the compliance page, where you can check it rather than take a claim from a marketing page.
The refusals
What this desk will not do.
This list is longer than most firms would publish. Every item on it is a service someone has asked for and been refused.
- No custody, no balances, no interest
- We do not hold your assets, we do not run an account you can leave value in, and we do not pay anything for money left with us. There is no yield product here because there is no product here at all beyond an exchange.
- No discretionary trading
- We do not trade on your behalf, we do not run managed accounts, and we do not sell signals or strategies. A dealer will explain what a trade will cost. A dealer will not tell you whether to make it.
- No advice
- Advice in relation to a financial product is a separately licensed activity in most markets, and tax advice belongs with a registered practitioner. We describe mechanics, costs and legal obligations. We do not tell you what to buy, when, or how to structure your affairs.
- No externalisation of capital
- In South Africa, SARB Financial Surveillance will not approve a cross-border transfer for the purpose of purchasing crypto assets, and buying crypto in South Africa in order to move capital offshore contravenes the Exchange Control Regulations — a criminal offence. Value also cannot be brought into South Africa through crypto under the allowances. We will not help with any of it, and we will end the conversation if that is the purpose. The same answer applies wherever a client is: the desk does not route around another country’s capital controls either.
- No anonymity
- Identity is verified wherever the desk deals. In South Africa the duty is specific: Conexus is an accountable institution under Item 22 of Schedule 1 to the FIC Act, effective 19 December 2022, so customer due diligence under section 21, enhanced due diligence under section 21A where it applies, and five-year record keeping are legal obligations. FIC Directive 9 of 2024 — the Travel Rule — has been in force since 30 April 2025 with no minimum threshold. Below R5 000 a reduced information set applies and the ordering institution need not verify it; that is verification relief, not anonymity, and anyone selling it to you as privacy is lying.
- No third-party settlement
- Funds move between the verified client and the desk. Not a friend, not a company you are a director of unless that company is the verified client, and never an account in a name we have not checked.
- No cash settlement
- Fiat moves through the banking system, where it leaves a record for you and for us. In South Africa, cash transactions above R49 999.99 are reportable to the Financial Intelligence Centre under section 28 in any event.
- No rate comparisons we cannot show our working on
- We will not publish a claim that we beat a named competitor. Comparing headline rates without a published methodology is meaningless, and FAIS General Code of Conduct section 14 requires advertising to be factually correct and balanced.
How the desk earns
One spread, with nothing hidden behind it.
The desk earns a spread. That is the whole answer.
When you sell a crypto asset to us, we quote you slightly below the price at which we expect to dispose of it. When you buy, we quote slightly above the price at which we expect to source it. The difference between those two numbers — the spread — is the desk's income. It is built into the single rate you are shown, which is why there is no commission line on your confirmation.
Two things follow from that, and both are in your interest to understand.
The spread is not fixed. It reflects the size of the ticket, the liquidity of the asset, how volatile the market is at that moment, and the settlement rail. A R100 000 USDT trade at midday and a R20 million Bitcoin trade on a Friday night are not the same risk to warehouse, and they are not priced the same. Larger tickets generally carry a narrower percentage spread, because the desk earns on volume rather than on margin.
You should always ask for the number. A dealer will tell you the spread applied to your quote if you ask, and the quote screen on this site shows an indicative desk margin at the size you enter. Any desk that will not tell you what it is earning on your trade is worth walking away from. The current margin ladder is published on the fees and limits page rather than negotiated case by case in private.
Costs that are not ours we pass through at cost and name separately: blockchain network fees, and bank charges where a settlement rail carries one. On the tax treatment in South Africa, the supply of a crypto asset is a deemed financial service and is exempt from VAT under section 2(1) of the VAT Act. Where a separate service fee is charged for something other than the supply itself, VAT may apply to that fee, and it will be shown.
The spread is the only thing the desk earns
If anyone claiming to be Conexus asks for an "activation fee", a "security deposit" or a "verification payment", it is not us. No such charge exists.
Verification
Check us before you trust us.
You are about to move a large sum of money. Verifying a counterparty takes fifteen minutes and is the cheapest insurance available.
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Check the company on the register
The registered entity is registered company name — to be confirmed, registration number CIPC registration number — to be confirmed. Search that number on the CIPC eServices portal or on BizPortal — both are official South African government services — and confirm the name, the status and the registration date match what we have told you. Section 32(4) of the Companies Act requires us to publish the registered name and registration number on every electronic publication, including this site, so you can always find them in the footer.
Five minutes -
Check the licence position at the FSCA
The FSCA publishes a searchable list of regulated entities and persons on fsca.co.za. Our compliance page states our licence position in full, including the number when there is one to publish — look it up there and confirm the category and the products it covers. A Category I licence with crypto-asset permissions is what an OTC desk sits under. If a firm cannot give you something to check, that is your answer.
Five minutes -
Check that you are talking to us
Impersonation, not hacking, is the most common way people lose money in this market — a lookalike, not a breach. Confirm the phone number, the Telegram handle and the domain against our published list before you send anything, and initiate the contact yourself from the number on this site rather than replying to whoever contacted you.
Two minutes -
Come and look at the room
For a large first trade, meet the desk. Book a time, come to Buitenkant Street, put a face to the person who will be quoting you, and do the first ticket in the room if you want to. Nothing on a website replaces that, and a desk with no room to show you is asking you to trust a phone number.
By arrangement
Everything above is checkable by you, from public registers, without asking us for anything. That is the point. Our licence position and compliance programme are on the compliance page, the exact channel identifiers are on the verify our channels page, and the controls around funds, keys and data are on the security page.
We do not publish trading volumes, client numbers, reserve figures or founding dates on this site. Not because they are unflattering, but because a number a reader cannot verify is decoration, and FAIS General Code of Conduct section 14 requires any statistic to carry its source and date. When there is something verifiable to publish, it will appear with a source attached.
The office
One address, and it is a real one.
The office is at Tiny Empire, 37 Buitenkant Street, District Six, Cape Town, 7925 — the Tiny Empire building on Buitenkant Street, in District Six, at the eastern edge of the City Bowl. Tiny Empire is a membership building, so meetings happen by arrangement rather than by walking in off the street. It is a working room, not a showroom: dealing positions, a meeting table, and a door.
Having somewhere to sit down is an asset, not a limitation. Anyone can rent a virtual office and print a prestigious postcode on a website. Very few will let a client with a large ticket walk in, sit at the table, look at the screens and watch the settlement happen. Full directions, parking and what to bring are on the Cape Town office page.
Everyone else deals with the same desk remotely, and the trade runs identically. Clients in Gauteng are served that way, and meetings there are arranged individually rather than pretended into a permanent branch — which is set out honestly on the Johannesburg page.
About the company
The registered entity is registered company name — to be confirmed, registration number CIPC registration number — to be confirmed. The directors are named in the ECTA disclosure block on the contact page as directors — to be confirmed, and the same details appear on the public register, where you can confirm them independently rather than taking a website's word for it.
We do not publish a founding date or a track-record claim on this site, because a reader cannot verify either. The company registration date is on the public register and will tell you exactly when the entity was registered. Check it there.
The corridor is confirmed before a quote is given, because the answer depends on the amount, the rail and the compliance outcome. What the desk can settle in for you, on the day, is a question for a dealer rather than for a marketing page — and it is answered before you are quoted, not after.
No, not on an ongoing basis. There is no account to fund and no balance to hold. Crypto assets and fiat pass through settlement on the day of the trade and land in your own wallet and your own bank account. The mechanics are described on the security page.
A spread, built into the rate you are quoted — nothing else, unless a separate service fee is named to you in advance. Ask your dealer for the spread on your quote and you will be told. The indicative desk margin also appears on the quote calculator on this site as you change the size.
No. SARB Financial Surveillance will not approve cross-border transfers for the purpose of purchasing crypto assets, and buying crypto assets in South Africa in order to externalise capital contravenes the Exchange Control Regulations and is a criminal offence. Value cannot be repatriated into the country through crypto under the allowances either. The single discretionary allowance is R2 million per calendar year and the foreign capital allowance is R10 million with a SARS Tax Compliance Status PIN — both are exchange-control routes through an authorised dealer bank, not something a crypto desk can substitute for.
No. The desk exchanges crypto assets for fiat and fiat for crypto assets at an agreed rate. It does not take deposits, manage money, pay interest, offer returns or provide trading signals, and it does not do discretionary management.
Where to look next
Compliance
Licensing position, FICA, sanctions screening, the Travel Rule and what gets reported.
The Cape Town office
Directions, parking, what to bring and what happens in the room.
Security
How funds, keys and your personal information are handled, described honestly.
Verify first. Then ask for a number.
Ask for the registration number, check it, then ask for a quote. In that order if you like — we would rather you verified us first.
Investing in crypto assets may result in the loss of capital, as the value is variable and can go up as well as down. A crypto asset is not legal tender and is not a regulated deposit. Conexus Crypto provides an exchange service only and does not provide financial, investment or tax advice.