OKEx resumes all functions except selling and withdrawal

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On the morning of October 21st, OKEx resumed P2P trading for the Chinese Yuan (CNY), the Indian Rupee (INR), as well as the Vietnamese Dong (VND).

“P2P, Buy Crypto will reopen at 12:00 pm UTC today in select markets. [However,] sell Crypto via Fiat Gateway remains suspended,” said OKEx in a Twitter update regarding the suspended withdrawal fiasco that began on October 16th.

“All @OKEx functions are up and running, except withdrawals. More updates to come.”

Unfortunately, OKEx withdrawals have been suspended for nearly a week now, which has many OKEx users and observers questioning what is happening at the exchange.

The OKEx fiasco

OKEx has not been operating with full functionality since October 16th. It all began when the OKEx exchange suspended withdrawals because they had been out of touch with one of their private key holders and therefore, OKEx’s associated authorizations could not be completed.

Later in the day, it was revealed that OKEx’s founder, Xu ‘Star’ Mingxing had been taken into police custody for a matter that is allegedly unrelated to OKEx operations. 

Unfortunately, this news had a negative impact on the digital currency markets, and the price of Bitcoin (BSV) dropped by roughly 7% shortly after the news was released.

What’s going on at OKEx

No one is really sure what is going on at OKEx and why they are allowing market participants to deposit more capital and buy more digital assets on their platform but not let any money leave their platform by way of selling or withdrawal.

Market participates, especially day-traders, get upset when a platform goes down for unscheduled maintenance–so imagine the frustration when a platform suddenly announces an unscheduled suspension of selling and withdrawing. When these features are unavailable, a trader’s wealth can be significantly impacted, for better or for worse. 

When news broke that OKEx had suspended selling and withdrawals, the digital currency markets dropped, leaving OKEx traders with a loss and no way to liquidate. Lucky for them, the news of PayPal announcing support for digital currency services has brought the market up by roughly 3%.

See also: OKEx Director of Financial Markets Lennix Lai’s participate in “The Future of Exchanges & Trading in a Tokenized World” presentation at CoinGeek Live