Chinese blockchain news site Jinse Caijing is reporting that the Bitcoin cold wallet for cryptocurrency exchange OKEx is single-signature, with founder Xu Mingxing holding the private key.
That is problematic for OKEx users, given that Xu was “taken away by police” in China several weeks ago. As a result, on October 16, OKEx said it had halted withdrawals, which continue to be unavailable.
Image: Twitter
In a statement at that time, the company explained, "One of our private key holders [presumably Xu] is currently cooperating with a public security bureau in investigations where required. We have been out of touch with the concerned private key holder. As such, the associated authorization could not be completed."
Jinse Caijing’s reporting cites people close to senior management. Assuming its reporting is accurate, Xu is either the only key holder for the exchange’s Bitcoin wallet or the exchange is sharing one private key among its staff rather than use a multi-sig wallet or other solution.
That's the equivalent of sharing one's Netflix password, but with more at stake than someone seeing your browsing history. Glassnode estimates that OKEx holds 200,000 Bitcoin (worth roughly $2.65 billion today) in its vaults.
According to our data, around 200,000 BTC (1.1% of the circulating #bitcoin supply) are currently held in #OKEx wallets.
Xu has been linked to a money laundering investigation, though OKEx denied that his visit with police was related to that. In 2018, Xu faced fraud accusations but was not charged.
An OKEx spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Stablecoin issuer Tether is ending its USDT support for five blockchains effective on September 1, the company announced on Friday, ending redemptions and freezing the remaining assets on those blockchains.
Last June, the firm ended its minting function on Algorand and EOS (now called Vaulta), meaning it would no longer issue new stablecoins on those chains. In 2023, it announced the same for Bitcoin Cash, Kusama, and Omni Layer Protocol.
Now, Tether has put a hard end date on its stablecoin s...
Solana token launchpad Pump.fun is prepping for its initial coin offering, aka ICO, on Saturday, July 12. With U.S. and UK citizens banned from participating, traders are eagerly awaiting its full launch to purchase PUMP—but will it pump or dump once it starts trading?
The token is set to go on sale via six centralized exchanges (Bybit, Kraken, Bitget, MEXC, KuCoin, and Gate.io) as well as the Pump.fun website Saturday, with 150 billion tokens up for grabs at $0.004 each. Within 48 to 72 hours a...
U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds pulled in over $1.17 billion on Thursday, notching their second-highest day of inflows ever as institutional capital flooded into digital assets.
The massive inflows to Bitcoin ETFs were led by BlackRock's IBIT with $448.5 million, followed by Fidelity's FBTC at $324.3 million and ARK's ARKB with $268.7 million, according to Farside Investors data.
Even with $40.2 million in outflows from Grayscale’s GBTC, total net flows turned sharply positive.
The infl...