$ 22M in Bitcoin moves from Huobi to OKEx despite freezing of withdrawals

Large Bitcoin (BTC) transactions from cryptocurrency exchange Huobi are shifting to OKEx despite the latter having temporarily suspended cryptocurrency withdrawals.

According to data from the cryptographic tracking service Whale Alert, a total of 1,995 BTC ($ 22.5 million) was sent from Huobi to OKEx shortly after OKEx officially announced it was suspending withdrawals on October 16.

The funds were transferred in two separate BTC transactions for one value 998 BTC ($ 11.3 million) e 997 BTC ($ 11.3 million) at 3:51 am EST and 6:22 am EST, respectively.

The transfers raise some questions as 1.995 BTC is now locked on the platform due to the platform temporarily blocking cryptocurrency withdrawals. “Dude, go the other way,” someone from the encrypted community commented on Twitter. Others suggested that the problem could be the result of delayed BTC transactions.

Huobi’s transactions bring a significant amount of Bitcoin into OKEx’s total BTC balance. According to data from Chain.info, BTC balance-based trading ranking, OKEx now holds a total of 276,184 BTC in its cold deposit, hot wallets and deposit wallets. At the time of publication, a total of 6,269 BTC has left OKEx in the past 24 hours.

About five hours later, Whale Alert honked the horn on another big BTC move, but this time the funds seemingly somehow left OKEx, amid closed withdrawals. Someone sent 3,500 Bitcoins, worth approximately $ 39,627,432 at the time of transfer, to Binance from OKEx, Whale alert tweeted, adding: “We suspect these are internal currency transfers. We are investigating the matter right now.”

Referring to the 3,500 BTC OKEx withdrawal tweet from Whale Alert, a public statement from OKEx explained:

“OKEx’s portfolio team confirmed that the source wallet addresses in said transactions do not belong to OKEx. The chief economist of leading blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis also confirmed in a tweet today that the transactions in question were “mislabeled” and in fact did not come from OKEx. ”

Today, Chinese media reported that OKEx Star founder Xu was questioned by police a week ago.

UPDATE October 16, 18:43 UTC: This article has been updated with more information.