Star Xu is out of police custody

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OKEx founder Mingxing “Star” Xu is out of custody and has made a statement regarding his hiatus.

The company completed an equity M&A transaction several years ago. As the acquired party was involved in a complicated judicial case, I was required to cooperate in the investigation. At present, the judicial organ has ascertained the facts and returned my innocence.

Said Xu via Wechat.

Although OKEx never confirmed which of their private key holders was in police custody, the disappearance of Star Xu as well as his return aligns with OKEx suspending withdrawals on October 16th and announcing withdrawals would be returning on November 27.

42 days without withdrawals

On November 19th, OKEx announced that they would resume unrestricted withdrawals after a 42-day long suspension of that feature. When OKEx first announced suspended withdrawals, it had a significant effect on the digital currency markets as well as OKEx’s operations. The amount of hash power in the OKEx mining pool dropped by roughly 99%, and the price of the OKB token plummeted 30% shortly after the news broke. 

Throughout the withdrawal suspension, OKEx was keen to say that the OKEx exchange had no relation to the investigation of its private key holder. Shortly after Star Xu was released from police custody, an OKEx representative said, 

OKEx has been a separate entity from OK Group from 2017, Star, therefore, has not been in any kind of operation in OKEx. In the interests of user security, OKEx maintains all details about private key holders confidential, as such, we are unable to comment on this neither can we provide any comment on Star Xu.

No other digital currency exchange has ever suspended its withdrawal feature for such a long period of time. However, now that OKEx will be getting back to business as usual, there is likely to be a positive impact on the digital currency industry considering that OKEx is one of the largest digital currency exchanges, especially in the Asia Pacific region.